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In Book Takes, authors share three things that readers will gain from their books as well as an insight into what they learnt during the researching and writing. This week, Athol McCredie, who has worked as a researcher, curator and photographer since the 1970s, shares insights from his book Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer.
Born in 1888, Leslie Adkin was a farmer who lived near Levin for most of his 76 years. He was also an amateur geologist, ethnologist and early explorer and mapmaker of the northern Tararua Range. An obsessive recorder, Adkin used photography as a recording tool for his scholarly pursuits and explorations.
But he also used it to document his family and the world in general around him in delightful and engaging personal images that capture life in the early-20th century. This is what makes Adkin’s work unique, says Athol McCredie, curator photography at Te Papa.
McCredie says he’s never encountered such an impressive body of work by any other amateur New Zealand photographer. McCredie says their charm attracted his attention.
“I love their humour, the enjoyment his subjects seem to have of life, and the consistent cast of family and friends over time. The images depict an idyllic lifestyle of a large, fairly well-off family having fun at picnics, beach outings, travel and entertainments at home.”
Here, McCredie shares three things readers will discover about Adkin and his world in the new book Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer.
A love story
Adkin’s wife Maud lies at the heart of his photography. She was his ever-willing subject from when they met in 1909 until his death in 1964. Their courtship was difficult and drawn out. For several years, Adkin was unable to express his feelings to Maud, confessing to his diary, “I love her with all my heart, & feel sure that she now loves me – even me. …Oh! When can I tell her all?” As a simple farmhand, Leslie wasn’t able to tell the well-bred Maud that he wished to marry her, as he had no means of supporting a wife.
And then, one night in 1913, on a drive back from a concert in the buggy, he “could not hold out any longer + Maud + I exchanged our first kisses – it’s an amazing, wonderful thing that she should love me.” Soon after, Adkin’s father granted him a block of land of his own to farm. But just when everything was looking up, a thunderbolt arrived: Maud’s family were shifting to Hastings for better farming opportunities.
Bursting with love for Maud, devastated by her departure, and frustrated by his parents’ injunction to wait until he could support her, Adkin was galvanised into creating his finest photographic effort. It was a series depicting the story of himself and Maud through the photographs he had taken. And where he didn’t have an image of a significant occasion, he went and photographed the location without Maud. He then pasted the photos into albums, captioned and sequenced to tell their love story.
The Tararua trailblazer
The Tararua Range lay at the back of Adkin’s farm, tempting him into becoming an early explorer of its rugged peaks and valleys. In 1909, he and Ernest Lancaster made the first crossing by Europeans from Levin in the west to Eketāhuna in Wairarapa. There were no maps, no huts and the only tracks were ones formed by wild cattle. Their gear was basic: they wore impractical tweed suits (complete with neckties) and carried everything wrapped in bedrolls slung uncomfortably across their bodies. The tent was a simple canvas fly and their bedding woollen blankets. And Adkin carried the awkward extra load of a solid leather case containing his wooden camera and heavy glass plates.
Strong wind and dense cloud – typical Tararua weather – forced them off the ridges down into the Waingawa River, described by Adkin as “a mountain torrent packed with huge boulders…Both [of us] slipped in above our waists & once my swag came undone & fell in & was nearly lost.” They had the foresight to send fresh clothing on ahead to Masterton, and after telegraphing their arrival back to Levin, took a train home to a heroes’ welcome.
Adkin’s expertise helped enable the Mangahao hydro scheme
Adkin made an unexpected contribution to the Mangahao hydro-electric scheme built behind Shannon. When it opened in 1924, it was the largest and most complex hydro scheme in the country. Adkin was fascinated by its construction and took hundreds of photographs. He was a self-taught geologist and when he tried to explain to the engineers why they couldn’t find solid rock to support one of the dams they refused to listen to him.
This galvanised him into presenting a paper on the matter at a scientific congress, where it was well received. Visiting the site soon after, he was amused to find the contractor asking who this Adkin person was, “as he had been unable to trace him in the government service or on the university professional staffs”. The engineers, it turned out, were now inclined to his explanation. From this point on he became an honorary member of the construction team and always welcome in the cookhouse.
One insight I gained: Why are Adkin’s photographs are so engaging?
I have known and loved Adkin’s photographs for almost 50 years, but until I wrote this book, I never thought too much about why they are so charming. It begins with his technique. Adkin typically set up his camera on a tripod. He focused under a black cloth and set the shutter speed and lens aperture manually. And then had to load a single glass plate negative before taking each shot. So not a spontaneous affair at all. Yet each photo looks like an informal slice of life. How was this so?
Adkin was a detail man, a perfectionist, so he wouldn’t have been satisfied with Kodak Brownie snapshots. Nor with formal line-ups of people posing for the camera. Instead, he stage-managed friends and family to look like they were snapped in a spontaneous moment. He even re-enacted his own marriage proposal to Maud, showing him slipping the ring on her finger. Adkin was something of an autocrat and family stories abound of how painful it was to pose for his narrative dramas, but they went along with it. I think the charm of the photographs comes from understanding Adkin’s desire to delight us with his story-telling images.
