PHOTO CALL: Richard Cranenburgh with the exhibition of portraits taken by Barbara Faithfull. PHOTO/MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM
PHOTO CALL: Richard Cranenburgh with the exhibition of portraits taken by Barbara Faithfull. PHOTO/MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM
A photographic exhibition called Brides and Babies has been pulling in viewers whose task it is to help identify as well as admire the smiling subjects.
Brides and Babies is a delightful slice of time, showing a small section of thousands of photos taken by Faithfull Photography in mainly 1960sWhangarei, and it has provided a place for visitors to recount stories of other times and people.
The portraits are among unclaimed originals left behind in Barbara Faithfull's archive, of people whose names she no longer has yet whose images she can't throw away. The exhibition compiled by Whangarei Old Library manager and graphic artist Richard Cranenburgh will end on Tuesday next week.
Mr Cranenburgh became interested after an article in the Northern Advocate about Mrs Faithfull's call for help curating or eventually housing the many photos she had been left holding.
Some of the photos of the bonny babes or beaming bridal parties have been recognised and claimed by families, with a modest fee going toward the archival and exhibiting costs.
Little notes have been left alongside some photos, such as beside a black and white portrait of a smiling toddler with a tulle of damp curl atop her head. Her hair was red, the note says, and she is now a Catholic nun in California.
Mrs Faithfull has been at the Old Library for about two hours a day, enjoying chatting with the many people drawn to the unusual exhibition. She has kept the portraits for more than 50 years, even packing up her archive and moving it to Auckland 40 of those years before her return to Whangarei in recent years.
She said the exhibition had been worthwhile and she had received good feedback, although she would have liked a bigger exhibition using the wider subject matter of the collection she still isn't sure what to do with. Those subjects include sports teams, schools, businesses developments, landscapes, choirs and public events - a true pictorial account of Whangarei's not too distant history. "It's only a smattering of what I have. It's a shame I can't show them all," she said.
