Mrs John Addison (WAAF)

item details

NameMrs John Addison (WAAF)

ProductionSpencer Digby Studios; photography studio; 21 February 1944; Wellington

Classificationgelatin silver negatives, black-and-white negatives

Materialssilver, photographic gelatin, black-and-white film, cut film

Materials Summaryblack and white negative

DimensionsSupport: 120mm (height), 160mm (length)

Registration NumberB.057959

Credit lineSpencer Digby / Ronald D Woolf Collection. Gift of Ronald Woolf, 1975

Overview

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

Wartime was a busy period for portrait studios. Service personnel lined up to have photographs taken for those they would leave behind when they went overseas. Demand for photographs of loved ones to carry with them would equally have stimulated business. Military personnel who did not serve overseas, like the woman in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, may have simply wished to picture themselves in their new, uniformed role. And for Sergeant Dietrich, one of many thousands of United States Marines stationed in New Zealand, there may have been a novelty in sending his relatives a photograph taken while he was on active service far from home. The Spencer Digby studio offered a money-saving opportunity of two poses on the same negative. Most people, perhaps at the photographer’s suggestion, adopted one serious and one smiling pose. Others chose a left and right profile.