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This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025).
In 1921, James McDonald accompanied ethnologists Elsdon Best and Johannes Andersen on a three-week expedition up the Whanganui River to document Māori traditions. They filmed, photographed and made wax-cylinder sound recordings. At first they were treated with suspicion, for the notebooks that Best and Anderson used made some people think they were tax collectors. But when Te Rangihīroa joined the expedition to record weaving and eel fishing techniques, and spoke on the marae at Koriniti, fears were allayed, for he was well known as the former second-in-command of the Pioneer (Maori) Battalion and for his work in improving Māori health. Anderson wrote that they ‘received the keys of the city’ and were treated with ‘royal hospitality’ from this point on.1 In photographing weaving for Te Rangihīroa, McDonald found that he ‘got interested in kit weaving & mat making’ himself.2
1 Johannes Andersen, Lyttelton Times, 20 May 1922, quoted in Wayne Ngata et al., He Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu: Treasures for the rising generation, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2021, p.158.
2 McDonald to Dr Thomson, Dominion Museum, 29 April 1921, DM 6_1/1, Te Papa. Quoted in Ngata et al., He Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu, p.161.