Are they art? James Parkinson, Art+Object's director of valuations and collections management, was one of the first to see the treasure's value. Two years ago, while doing an evaluation for the Hawkes Bay museum, he was called by Baldwin for advice on what he held.
"Allan proceeded to get out this staggering collection of images and told me his story," says Parkinson who was astounded by the quality of the images and Baldwin's integrity as a photographer. "Marti Friedlander has done a lot of work in this area, but so has Allan Baldwin. Allan is the unsung hero."
Parkinson was amazed such a collection had remained under the radar for so long. Baldwin belonged to the Hastings camera club and had entered some of his images of kuia with moko at exhibitions at the Auckland Easter Show and Dunedin Festival in the late 60s, as well as for the Photographic Society of New Zealand National Exhibition in 1970.
"The club was not at all interested in my presentations," says Baldwin. "Strangely, I was awarded the highest honour at the Dunedin Festival on my first try of a 'nga wahine mau moko' print."
That was his 1969 photo of Tiripou Haerewa from Ruatahuna, which adorned the cover of the 2nd Dunedin Festival Catalogue. What puzzles Parkinson is that no one had noticed Baldwin's talent and the historical significance of his work. "What I don't get is how people didn't get it."
They're going to get it now. Baldwin's motoring around the North Island for moko, which began in 1964 and finished in 1974, goes to air next week on Mäori Television. The documentary Allan Baldwin: In Frame by Monsoon Pictures tells of a man strangely drawn to "Te Kuia Mau Moko" - worried the kuia with moko would all disappear and no one would know about them. So every weekend after shutting up his Hastings paint and art supplies store at 9pm, he'd load his caravan with food, lights and photographic gear, hitch up and go looking.
In Frame director Tearepa Kahi says he was taken by Baldwin's curiosity and the fact that he wasn't on a journey seeking fame and fortune. "He just happened to love one tiny thing - the moko kauae - and wondered whether he could capture it on film."
Baldwin's first trip was to Waikaremoana in the Urewera where, asking directions at a remote house, he found "the door opened by a lovely face with a moko." Baldwin, who had taken some night classes in Mäori at Hastings Boys High, explained his quest as best he could, but the kuia, suspicious of the strange pakeha, said she needed to talk to her husband when he came home.
Another chance encounter proved to be the expedition's catalyst, when he met "a Mäori gentlemen" - on horseback with a deer slung across his saddle. It was Jack Tawa, whose wife Hokimoana, having since taken her mother's moko, also features in the documentary. After talking to his kaumatua, Tawa decided Baldwin was on the level and helped introduce him to five kuia with moko in the district who all gave permission to be photographed. Among the five was the wahine with the lovely face - the husband she was consulting, it turned out, had died some years previously.
Word soon spread and Baldwin was off - to the East Coast, Raglan, Kawhia, Wanganui, Auckland, Foxton, Hamilton, Ruatahuna and Taneatua. Why? "I don't know really. I was a bit mad about it. I seemed to get carried away once I talked to these people," says Baldwin. "There is something there I don't understand. I just had to go and go and go until I stopped."
Kahi says while there is something intoxicating about the lens and film, it was something else that drew Baldwin further down the road and around the next corner. "You think he was on a grand mission of preservation, but I don't think that's what got him up in the morning. It was about a genuine sense of discovery."
Along the way Baldwin copped a bit of flak - often addressed as "pakeha" and with suspicion. Like the master carver at Rotorua. "I asked if he would help me find moko-ed kuia and this chap gave me what-oh. 'You pakeha, what do you think you're doing?' I took it and retreated a bit and settled him down."
There was the kuia who paused a photo shoot to make a cup of tea, cutting kindling with an axe, the wood held between her feet. Baldwin expressed some concern at her technique. "If you concentrate on cutting the wood pakeha you won't cut your toe," came the reply. It was Baldwin's respect for his subjects that won the day. Along his journey he met some incredible kuia and heard about their lives - such as two wives of the T?hoe prophet Rua K?nana at Maungap?hatu and Ngakahikatea Whirihana who was 119 when Baldwin photographed her.
Kahi was transfixed when he first held her 35mm colour slide up to the light. "There staring at me was Ngakahikatea Whirihana. I knew something about this kuia and there is an iwi connection. I was looking back through a window in time, but she was right there very present. It felt like we were meeting."
While Baldwin did do some photos in situ - like Herepo Rongo who he met fishing on a beach - his preference was for studio-style shots. "I took backdrops and lights because it was just much more controllable and I could take more care getting the portrait right," he says. "Sometimes the house had no electricity, so I had to use the Pentax which I used for photos of children and landscapes around the places I visited."
Baldwin thinks his "hankering for things Maori" may have stemmed from his upbringing. His mother died when he was three and his father when he was five, so he was brought up by his mother's sister. He left school at 11 to work on a Havelock North dairy farm. One of his two brothers, Eric, 15 years older, worked a Maori sheep station in the Motu. "I loved hearing his stories about his life there - it kind of rubbed off on me."
His fascination with photography began at age 15 with a Box Brownie costing "12 shillings and sixpence". Baldwin was influenced by photographers Yousuf Karsh and Ansel Easton Adams - impressed with their lighting systems and that "the subject is seldom looking at the camera". He was also a fan of artist Charles Goldie.
For his portraits Baldwin took both black and white and colour of each kuia - always making sure he gave them a print afterwards. He used both a 5x4 inch format Linhof and a twin lens 2.25x2.25 inch Mamiya - preferring the latter for its ease of operation compared to the heavier Linhof which, although it produced "top of the line" results, also used very expensive film.
While the documentary weaves stories of some of the kuia Baldwin photographed with that of his own, what's not covered is the year or so in 1969/70 when he worked with the late, celebrated historian Michael King. They met at a tangi while King was working at the Waikato Times.
Baldwin suggested he might like to join his project - with King taking the notes leaving Baldwin free to concentrate on his lights and camera. "We got on very well for a while," says Baldwin.
"We were having trouble finding more moko and running out of patience. Michael said it's time to write the book. I said: 'Not yet Michael. We've got a lot of work to do. We've got to get down to the Turnbull Library and trace back how this moko was done and why it was done and then we can do something.' He got the pip. He didn't say anything. I took him home and that was the last I saw of him."
What happens next is history. King went on to write Moko: Maori tattooing in the 20th century, his first book published in 1972 with photographs by Marti Friedlander - revisiting many of the same kuia Baldwin and King had met together. Baldwin does get a single mention in the book's acknowledgements, but nothing is said about his pioneering work.
"I was upset that he would go ahead and do a book without me, using many of the women I introduced him to - and to not use my photographs," says Baldwin. " I felt pushed out of the project." It was shortly after exhibiting his photos at the Auckland Building Centre in 1974 that Baldwin packed his collection away.
"I didn't want to take into the political and talk about a fallout," says Kahi. "It was a tough decision because we discarded an element which is socially very interesting to New Zealanders." In this version, says Kahi, the decision was to focus on the man, his actions and his art.
"He [Michael King] has got all the notes, which are now in the Turnbull library, [some with Baldwin's contact prints attached] and I've got the photos," says Baldwin. "It should have worked better than, that but he was in a hurry." But Baldwin is quick to add: "My hurts are well and truly forgiven and forgotten." And now, finally, his "family"- the kuia he has protected for so long - will at last show their sacred moko to the world.
Allan Baldwin: In Frame premieres on Maori Television's Pakipumeka Aotearoa series on Saturday 29 October at 8.30pm
