item details
Overview
In this portrait of an unknown woman and girl taken by the Berry & Co studio, we see an example of commercial studio photography in the early twentieth century. Berry's simple lighting and straightforward compositions, usually full length, provide a record of ordinary people - how they dressed, aspects of their personal appearance, and what individuals expected from a formal studio portrait.
An allegory of time
While this is firstly a portrait of real people, and is intended to document them for private, domestic use, the photograph embodies other meanings. Youth and old age is the implicit subject. Bathed in a soft light from the right of the image, the girl looks out of the picture towards the light, which contrasts with the old woman in the centre of the frame, her eyes and head slightly downcast. Youth is sheltered by wisdom, which as the walking stick suggests, has become fragile.
A commercial photographer in Wellington
Berry & Co was owned by William Berry, who had previously worked at the New Zealand photographic Company in Cuba Street, Wellington, and before that with Taranaki photographer James McAllister. Berry & Co. worked out of a purpose-built studio at 147 Cuba Street, which opened in 1900. This photograph is one of approximately 3000 images that were discovered by chance in the early 1990s, when a tenant in the building found them in a cupboard and offered them to Te Papa.