Class A engine (416) and cleaning staff, Wellington

item details

NameClass A engine (416) and cleaning staff, Wellington

ProductionZak (Joseph Zachariah); photography studio; 1912; Wellington

Classificationphotographic postcards, gelatin silver prints, group portraits

Materialssilver, photographic gelatin, printing-out paper

Materials Summaryblack and white photographic postcard

Techniquesblack-and-white photography, printing-out

DimensionsImage: 130mm (width), 84mm (height)

Registration NumberPS.003333

Credit linePurchased 2013

Overview

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

Images of workers are a type of group photograph that appeared relatively early. These were instigated by commercial photographers to sell to audiences for their curiosity value rather than to the workers themselves. Early examples are an 1880s Burton Brothers photograph of about fifty men at the Pito-one Petone railway workshop in Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai Lower Hutt, and a well-known Tyree Brothers image of gold miners at their Mohua Golden Bay sluicing operation in the 1890s. In the 1910s, Pōneke Wellington photographer ‘Zak’ presented a group of cleaners standing alongside a steam locomotive. Each is spectacle, showing where the hard yards were being worked in order that others could have comfortable lives.