Athol McCredie is Curator Photography at Te Papa, where he has worked since 2001. He has been involved with photography as a researcher, curator and photographer since the 1970s. His publications include Brian Brake: Lens on the world (editor, 2010), New Zealand Photography Collected (2015) and The New Photography: New Zealand’s first generation of documentary photographers (2019). Athol talks to NZ Booklovers.
As a curator of photography, what draws you to these images?
Their charm. 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.
Then of course, at the core of Adkin’s photography is a love story focussed on his wife Maud. I’m not the first person to have vicariously fallen in love with Maud through Adkin’s photographs.
He was so keen, and none of it was easy. Taking images of the family with his big bulky camera was one thing, but it must have been quite another to go on arduous tramps with all that gear?
Yes. He was using glass plates up until about 1930. They were inserted into the camera within double-sided wooden plate holders. All that glass and wood was both heavy and bulky and he only got twelve shots from his six plate holders before he had to reload them in a darkroom. On his 1911 crossing of the Tararua Range his camera gear weighed over seven kilograms. He shot a total of twenty-two photographs on this trip, so he obviously took along extra plates that he reloaded in a light-proof bag or under a blanket at night.
What do you think makes his glorious series of images of his wife Maud so arresting?
I think he always photographed her with love, and the way she looks back shows her reciprocated feelings. She was clearly endlessly patient with his desire to photograph her, given how time-consuming setting each shot up was. And also so willing: you could argue that these hundreds of photographs were collaborative efforts, made by Maud as well as Leslie.
Favourite image?
I started out loving the frequently published shot of Winnie Walker posed on ice plants in her bathing suit. It is interesting that my Te Papa art curator colleagues, who are far less familiar with Adkin’s work, were as excited as I was by my recent finds of Gilbert with the giant cauliflower, the Chairoplane carousel and, most of all, with the women lying on the sand (Sleeping beauties).
All images by Leslie Adkin:
Carousel‘Chairoplane’ at the Levin A&P Show, 25 January 1927
Gelatin glass negative, quarter plate, A.008555
Winnie Walker at Paekākāriki, 26 December 1924
Gelatin glass negative, quarter plate, A.006545
Bathing beauties on sand dunes, 1 January 1927
Ōtaki Beach.
Gelatin glass negative, quarter plate, A.008559
Te Papa Press
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