Grocery delivery trucks

item details

NameGrocery delivery trucks

ProductionGordon H. Burt Ltd.; photography studio; 1941-1946; Wellington

Classificationgelatin silver negatives, black-and-white negatives

Materialsphotographic gelatin, silver, black-and-white film, cut film, cellulose acetate

Materials Summaryblack and white negative, thought to be cellulose acetate base

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

Registration NumberB.026664

Overview

Three loaded trucks with their drivers standing by. The truck doors are emblazoned with the words - Foodstuffs (Wtgn) Limited Wholesale Merchants.

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

The Gordon H Burt studio in Wellington specialised in advertising and industrial photography from the 1920s to the 1960s. This promotional photograph for Foodstuffs grocery wholesalers shows off a group of trucks laden with sacks and boxes of produce ready for delivery. In the early 1940s, a fleet of powerful trucks that could carry such loads from a central distribution warehouse would have signalled the height of efficiency and modernity. For the final advertisement, the studio would probably have cut the trucks from their surroundings. But the composition’s pleasing, if unintended, use of repetition — three houses, three trucks, three men — captures the eye today.