item details
NameGeorgiana Meen
ProductionUnknown; photography studio; early 1860s; Auckland
Classificationcartes-de-visite, portraits, albumen prints, black-and-white prints
Materialsmounting board, silver, printing-out paper, albumen
Materials Summarycarte-de-visite, albumen silver print
Techniquesblack-and-white photography, photography
DimensionsImage: 57mm (width), 87mm (height)
Registration NumberO.004992
Credit linePurchased 1991
Overview
Carte de visite : young woman posing for the camera (with her left hand she is holding the pages of a book open; in her right hand she is holding a hat with a large brim).
This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025) on page 27.
Georgiana Meen rests her hand on a small album of cartes-de-visite, open to reveal a single photo on each page. Such albums were commonly used as props in nineteenth-century studio portraits — an allusion to the intended destination of the photograph being taken.