Kakahi Fall near Tawhata - Wanganui [sic] River

Into the wilderness

From the 1870s and 1880s, intrepid photographers such as Alfred Burton, Frederick Muir, and George Moodie travelled to New Zealand’s ‘most difficult and interesting places’ to capture their scenic wonders. Photography at the time was expensive and technically difficult, and few tourists took their own photographs. Instead, they purchased professional prints like these as reminders of their experiences.

By the early 1900s, with tourism burgeoning, postcards had appeared on the scene. They were immediately popular – a cheaper and far more convenient souvenir.

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This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025).

Images of waterfalls catered to a Victorian taste for the Romantic sublime: from the small cascades in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s Waitākere Ranges to the towering Sutherland Falls near Piopiotahi Milford Sound. Of all these, Alfred Burton’s photograph of the now-diminished Kakahi Fall on the Whanganui River is seen in period albums most commonly. Its popularity reflects the Burton Brothers’ market dominance of nineteenth-century scenic photography, but could also be due to the way the waterfall’s tidy, symmetrical shape both fills the frame and leaves room around the edges. Other falls may have been more spectacular in person, but the Kakahi made a better photograph.