Skull of Gray's beaked whale (Mesoplodon grayi)

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

When Walter and Alfred Burton established their photographic studio in Dunedin in the 1860s, no fewer than thirty photographers operated in the city. Photography was a business, and to survive in a competitive market Burton Brothers had to diversify. Initially the studio supplemented photographic portraiture with the sale of ‘fancy goods’. By the mid-1880s they promoted their business as ‘Portrait, Landscape and Commercial Photographers’. Landscape or ‘view’ photographs were taken on tours throughout New Zealand and made Burton Brothers internationally famous, supported by their trade in portraiture and commercial photography.1

Skull of Gray’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon grayi) is an example of the studio’s output in commercial photography, yet it follows many of the conventions of portraiture. The skull is positioned unnaturally, indeed uncannily, with the beak pointing upwards, an arrangement which aided the mounting of this photograph on a portrait-shaped cabinet card. It is a ‘portrait’ of the
skull presented against a neutral background upon a covered plinth. Whoever commissioned this photograph is unknown, but specimens of Mesoplodon grayi are held in Otago Museum, and Burton Brothers often photographed related collection items such as taonga and taxidermied birds.

Christine Whybrew

1 Christine Whybrew, ‘The Burton Brothers studio: Commerce in photography and the marketing of New Zealand, 1866–98’, PhD thesis, University of Otago, Dunedin, 2010, pp. 61–2.