Mrs Goodson and Opo

item details

NameMrs Goodson and Opo

ProductionEric Lee-Johnson; photographer; February 1956; Northland

Classificationgelatin silver prints, black-and-white prints, photographic prints

Materialssilver, photographic gelatin, photographic paper

Materials SummaryBlack and white photograph, gelatin silver print

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

DimensionsImage: 292mm (width), 240mm (height)

Registration NumberO.006623/06

Credit linePurchased 1997 with New Zealand Lottery Grants Board funds

Overview

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.’(1) 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 it is the series as a whole that best tells the story of how New Zealanders became enchanted by a friendly dolphin.

1. ‘Smile on the face of the dolphin’, New Zealand Herald, 7 February 1956, cited in John B Turner, Eric Lee-Johnson: Artist with a camera, PhotoForum, Auckland, 1999, p. 72.

- From New Zealand Photography Collected by Athol McCredie, Te Papa Press, 2015.