Historic images sold to US

A chunk of Northland's photographic history has been sold to an American photo archive.

Fairfax Media - which owns The Whangarei Leader, The Bay Chronicle, The Northern News and The Dargaville and Districts News as well as national and regional newspapers - plans to start shipping its old photos to Rogers Photo Archive next week. Prints will go first with negatives to follow later this year.

The company, based in Little Rock, Arkansas, specialises is restoring, scanning and ''monetising'' photo archives. It will send digital versions of the photos back to New Zealand but will retain the originals.

The deal means the end of local efforts to digitise The Northern News photo archive, which sparked a flurry of letters to the editor and protests on Fairfax Facebook pages.

Debbie Beadle, of the Kaikohe Photographic Centre, had a verbal agreement to scan the newspaper's old photos and place them online for people to identify. While prints could be ordered from her shop or The Northern News, she said her primary goal was to create a community database allowing people to reconnect with old photos of friends and family.

Under the agreement Ms Beadle retained digital versions of the photos but returned the originals to The Northern News along with copies of the scanned images. Fairfax kept the copyright.

Last month, however, Ms Beadle was ordered to stop scanning the photos and hand over any prints she still had. Her database, from various sources, now contains 94,000 images.

The Northern News archive was donated to Kaikohe's Pioneer Village some years ago but returned when it transpired photos were being given away.

Fairfax editor-in-chief Paul Thompson told NZ Herald media commentator John Drinnan the company had weighed up the impact of sending archive prints offshore and had also approached the National Archives to look after them. However, it would have cost tens of millions of dollars to digitise the pictures. They were not properly stored and some had been lost in the Christchurch earthquakes.

Mr Thompson said the deal did not involve Fairfax getting any cash in hand. Fairfax retained the copyright.

Mr Drinnan said Rogers Photo Archive also approached the Herald for its archives several months ago but was rebuffed - although it is hoping to meet the Herald's owners APN News and Media again. APN, Fairfax's main rival, also owns The Northern Advocate and The Northland Age.

Rogers Photo Archive and its photo leasing arm, Argenta Images, claim to have the world's biggest digital library of vintage and historic images with more than 170 million photos. It sells subscriptions to media companies which use the photos in newspapers, magazines, books and documentaries.

While some have criticised the Fairfax move, others say the company would otherwise be unable to digitise and preserve its photo collection.

Fairfax acquired much of the archive when it bought Independent Newspapers in 2003. In Auckland it includes photos from the discontinued Auckland Star, The Sunday Star-Times, Sunday News and Truth.