UNESCO Memory of the World

Olaf Petersen (1915-1994) is Aotearoa New Zealand’s pre-eminent 20th century nature photographer. Patient and exacting, Petersen said capturing nature was being in the right place at the right time.

His desire to make pictures began as a young boy on the Swanson farm where he grew up. He photographed the landscape around him for 50 years, from when he got his first camera in 1933 until well into the 1980s, in a career as a freelance photographer and camera artist that yielded over 50,000 images. They evidence the changes that have taken place over the past 70 years and as such are significant historic documentation. The images connect with global concerns around climate change and fragile ecosystems that will register strongly with current and future generations of New Zealanders.

The intensity and duration of his photography of Auckland’s west coast beaches and birdlife in particular represents an unprecedented visual record of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most iconic coastal regions. Petersen’s archive demonstrates the vital role that artists can have in bearing witness and supporting the environmental movement.

Petersen’s photography also acknowledges the interaction of people and nature – from children among sand dunes to tyre tracks on the beach – and both celebrates and critiques its occupation.

From 1956 his involvement with the Auckland University Field Club took him to sites that were chosen because of their distinctive native flora and fauna, in the company of botanists, zoologists, geologists, ecologists, and archaeologists, creating an extraordinary illustrative scientific record.

View on Aotearoa New Zealand register.

 

Shaun Higgins (Curator Pictorial) offers the Olaf Petersen Collection for inscription to the UNESCO Memory of the World.

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In 2015 we celebrated the bi-centenary of the publication of the first printed book in Māori, A korao no New Zealand, which was composed as lessons for Māori.

Written by Thomas Kendall and printed in Sydney in 1815 by George Howe after Kendall sent it to Samuel Marsden, Anglican Chaplain based at Parramatta.

Thomas Kendall was one of the first lay missionaries settled in New Zealand by the Church Missionary Society in 1814. He was hired primarily as a school master and one of his first tasks was to set about systematically recording the Māori language and English translations for instruction of his pupils.

The copy held by Auckland War Memorial Museum is a notable publication because it is the only known extant copy from the 200 copies printed.

View on Aotearoa New Zealand register.

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Through his writings Charles Baker describes and records a rapidly changing world through moments of cross-cultural interaction and exchange between Māori and the growing European population, beginning in the late 1820s.

Baker’s first journal opens on 2 January 1827 as he is about to embark on his journey to New Zealand as a missionary with the Anglican Church Missionary Society. He writes:

“I certainly expect many trials and difficulties in the Missionary field, therefore I feel that it is needful to beseech God to give me an increase of faith, so that I may stand steadfast.”

After a short stay in Australia, Baker arrived in Paihia, Bay of Islands, in 1828. His journals chronicle the next 39 years of his life and work in Aotearoa, charting a time of immense cultural and societal change.

View on Aotearoa New Zealand register.

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