Moments in history.

I am interested in all aspects of our history; Natural history, Maori Culture, European explorers, meetings and encounters they had. From the Early 1800's there are paintings and drawings of all kinds of aspects of early New Zealand. The invention of the camera which Europeans brought with them means we can see photographic evidence of the kind of things that were going on from the mid 1800's on.

I have recently been looking through books and archives of photographs and paintings in the Hocken Library. I have seen many old Dunedin and Northland images which fascinate me as I try to think about how it was. These are my homes 100's of years ago, and possibly my distant relatives trying to establish life in a new country.

I thought I would get copies of these paintings and photos and try to reproduce them in the present day to see what changes we see.

Here's the first attempt, not an amazing photo but still an interesting comparison. Drawing is by David Henderson, 1863.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License.

google maps view of same site

I am going to continue this study and have many other photos drawings and paintings to look at.