Photo Collection of Toitū: Otago Settlers Museum

Curator Seán Brosnahan has worked at the Settlers Museum for 38 years.
In the stacks, photographs are organized in archival boxes grouped by size.  (Above) The lower box includes sennotypes, a variant of ivorytypes introduced in 1864.  In the sennotype process two identical images are printed and put on top of each other; the bottom one is coloured and the top one coated with a layer of beeswax.  See: Hardwicke Knight. "The sennotype process." History of Photography, 12(2), p. 184 (2013).
The Museum has about 300 photo albums; they are an important photographic resource.  See: Jill Haley.  "The Colonial Family Album: Photography and Identity in Otago, 1848-1890."  PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2017.
Pictorial supplements of The Otago Witness are an excellent source of images from 1900-26.
The old card catalogues still have a home in the stacks.
back >