Maori Congress, Komiti

item details

NameMaori Congress, Komiti

ProductionWilliam Henry Thomas Partington; photographer; 1900 - 1904; North Island
Brett Printing and Publishing Company Ltd.; printer; 1919; Auckland

Classificationphotographic prints, gelatin silver prints, black-and-white prints, portraits

Materialssilver, photographic gelatin, photographic paper, mounting board

Materials Summaryphotograph, gelatin silver print

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

Dimensions150, 198

Registration NumberO.018089

Credit linePurchased 1919

Overview

Portrait image of ten men (six of whom are standing) in studio surroundings - five of men are holding spears.

This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025) on page 136.

New Zealand was, and is, full of committees, boards, working groups and the like to organise, manage, advise and lobby. The group of mostly Māori men could be a committee of the Whanganui City Council, or of some other organising group in the town. Newspaper references to Māori committees at the time include one involved with the Whanganui Agricultural Show, another with a patriotic carnival to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, and one other, also photographed by Partington, that was assisting with the ‘More men’ campaign of 1900 to send troops to South Africa.