Fenton St looking south from inside lakefront reserve, date unknown. Photograph by Edward W Payton (English, b.1859, d.1944). Photo / Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa
Fenton St looking south from inside lakefront reserve, date unknown. Photograph by Edward W Payton (English, b.1859, d.1944). Photo / Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa
Rotorua’s museum has been closed for six years, but all the while its collection has been tenderly cared for, ready for it to return to the public. This month, Local Democracy Reporting took a peer behind the curtain at some of the district’s most prized taonga.
Rotorua Museum’s photography collectionhas an eye on the past.
The collection, currently held in the museum’s storage facility, provides an insight into the history of the town and how it has changed and developed, with many photographs taken from sites very familiar to locals in the modern day.
Rotorua Museum art and photography collection curator Natascha Hartzuiker says it can be seen in the works of Edward Payton, an English artist and photographer who captured images of what was then regularly referred to as the Hot Lakes district.
One image will be particularly recognisable to locals - a Payton photograph taken from the lakefront, facing south down a dirt-track version of Fenton St. Payton stood near where most locals now access the redeveloped lakefront - the war memorial car park.
A figure can be seen on Fenton St using what appears to be a horse and cart.
Fenton St looking south from the war memorial car park at the Rotorua lakefront. Photo / Ben Fraser
“He photographed lots of places around that time [for example] the end of Fenton St, looking up Fenton St, in pre-1900,” Hartzuiker said.
Payton, who had earlier depicted the Pink and White Terraces, also visited Tarawera two days after its 1886 eruption, and painted a scene of what he saw.
'General View of the Whole Eruption', June 12, 1886, Edward W Payton (English, b.1859, d.1944). Photo / Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa
Also in the collection is a Whites Aviation image showing a similarly recognisable scene to Payton’s image of early Fenton St, albeit from the southern end.
White’s Aviation was established in 1945 by Leo White and, combining his love of photography and aviation, caught aerial images of New Zealand. The company continued until 1988, after White died in 1967.
A Whites Aviation image of Rotorua's Fenton St, viewed from the south. Photo / Andrew Warner
Hartzuiker said landmarks in photos - things like the famous Kusabs house in Whakarewarewa in the White’s Aviation photo - helped date images when their era was unclear.
She said she loved how changes to the city had been documented, collected and protected in the museum.
“We live in a society where things just move so fast. It was just so much slower back then, and the ability to take photos back in those days was just such a niche thing ... such a technical skill to have.”
She said she had noticed there was a “massive gap” of contemporary photography in the museum’s collection, perhaps because photos were more often digital creations than physical ones.
“It’s not so easy to collect.”
She said photography was also important for historical research, because photographs provided information about sites at certain times, and she sometimes received oddly specific requests from researchers.
Rotorua Museum art and photography collection curator Natascha Hartzuiker. Photo / Andrew Warner
“Say for example, how long was the jetty when it was back in duh-duh-duh. So then I go and hunt through lots of photos.”
Hartzuiker said the museum’s first curator, the late Don Stafford, was integral to the museum’s photography collection, and had a “significant impact” on it, seeing the value in the glimpse into the past.
She said she believed Stafford had noticed “prominent places” that people were drawn to photograph in Rotorua, such as the top of Pukeroa Hill.
“Don Stafford started a photography project with the Camera Club - RECT [now called the Rotorua Trust] sponsors it - every five years the Camera Club goes around and photographs the same places, so we have a history of the changes from the same place.
“My job is trying to put them all together because they’re described differently.
“I love that sort of stuff, and I think [other] people do too.”
Don Stafford saw that, and carried it on, she said.
“Now I want to carry that on.”
Local Democracy Reporting is public interest journalism funded by NZ On Air.
