Dr Cockayne, botanist, inspecting native florae. From the album: [1907 Sub-Antarctic Expedition]; circa 1908; North, W.

item details

NameDr Cockayne, botanist, inspecting native florae. From the album: [1907 Sub-Antarctic Expedition]; circa 1908; North, W.

ProductionSamuel Page; photographer; November 1907; Auckland Islands

Classificationgelatin silver prints, black-and-white photographs

Materialssilver, photographic gelatin, paper

Materials Summarygelatin silver print

Techniquesblack-and-white photography, nature photography

DimensionsImage: 110mm (height), 139mm (length)

Registration NumberO.007045

Overview

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

Leonard Cockayne was New Zealand’s most renowned botanist. He was an early ecologist and emphasised observing plants in their natural habitats over the museum practice of collecting specimens. Here he appears in his own natural habitat, dwarfed by a large tussock Poa litorosa during the 1907 expedition to the Subantarctic Islands. The image appeared as the frontispiece to his classic 1910 book, New Zealand Plants and their Story . The expedition’s photographer, Samuel Page, must have relished the opportunities the extended southern days gave him for capturing the Subantarctic Islands’ botanical diversity. The Auckland Star commented that he ‘was busy during all the long daylight, and took a very large series of photographs, both scientific and generally interesting’. The report also reinforced Cockayne’s ecological approach, saying ‘[Mr Page] has for the first time put on record the aspect, as they grow, of many Auckland Island plants.’1

1 ‘The sub-Antarctic expedition: The return of the scientific expedition’, Auckland Star, 3 December 1907, p.3.