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Overview
This colour photograph was taken by Steve Rumsey as part of his advertising work for Photo Associates Limited, a company he established in 1965. The photograph was taken for the cover of Craig Vine, a proposed client magazine published by J J Craig, a building supply company in Auckland. The subject is the construction of what was then called the Intercontinental Hotel on Princess Street, Auckland, for which J J Craig were the major suppliers. The photograph was intended to wrap around the magazine, covering both the front and back cover.
Technical innovations
The photograph has been significantly altered by Rumsey in the developing process. The striking final image is the result of a number of technical processes. First, Rumsey made colour separations using high-contrast panchromatic film. One of these colour separations was solarised, a darkroom technique where the negative is partly developed and then exposed to light. The result is an image with prominent black outlines. Finally, one of the colour separations was printed in Venetian red, and the other in yellow, which recreated J J Craig's livery of Venetian red and ochre.
A life in advertising
Rumsey first worked as an advertising photographer in 1954, after leaving his career as a scientific and wildlife photographer to work first for Barry McKay Photography, and then Sparrow Industrial Pictures, the major photographic agency in Auckland in the 1950s. He then returned to scientific photography at the Mt Albert Plant Research Station before opening his own business in 1965. Te Papa owns a number of advertising photographs by Rumsey, which range from consumer products to images of the construction industry.