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Overview
View of the dolphin swimming in the waters outside the Opononi hotel. A man, at left, is photographing the event as several other people look on. Opo's fin is in sight above the water in the right foreground.
This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025).
In the summer of 1955–56, the small Hokianga Harbour town of Opononi was made briefly famous by a playful and curious bottlenose dolphin named Opo. The painter and photographer Eric Lee-Johnson, who lived in the area, often visited the sleepy harbourside settlement to photograph Opo and the people who flocked to see and play with her. The fast-moving dolphin was a challenge for even a skilled photographer like Lee-Johnson, who observed that ‘more film is being wasted at Opononi each day by visiting amateur photographers than is usually written off by double-exposing and misfocusing of an entire holiday season’. Lee-Johnson became Opo’s chief documenter, sending off prints and film daily to New Zealand newspapers, from where they were syndicated internationally. The image of a bathing-capped Mrs Goodson cradling Opo’s head in her arms became Lee-Johnson’s most published, but the series as a whole best tells the story of how New Zealanders became enchanted by a friendly dolphin.