Bradbury Glass Plate Negatives
Listen to my story
A glass plate spends its entire life in darkness. The plate begins it life in a dark box, before moving to the dark interior of a camera, being processed in a darkroom and finally ending up within a cold, dark storeroom at the museum. It is never displayed. Never looked upon with admiration, and never studied by researchers.
It’s time to bring some of our negatives in from the cold and out of the darkness by giving them an opportunity to show themselves as they are, in negative.
The Bradbury collection is made up of approximately 800 glass plate negatives that were originally on deposit for 20 years, but have been recently donated to the museum. This collection lay dormant, un-sorted or viewed, stored in the original glass plate boxes. The donor, Robyn Litchfield (nee Taylor), had moved to Britain to work but married and had a family and so settled permanently there. The donor’s great-great grandfather was Edward Bradbury, an Auckland publisher and photographer who produced the Bradbury New Zealand Guide series and is responsible for this unique collection.
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