Overview
In 1943 the Dominion Museum purchased the Burton Brothers collection of photographs, postcards, and negatives for one hundred pounds from the Dunedin firm of Coulls, Somerville and Wilkie Ltd. While the collection is extensive, it is not complete. For example, there are no portraits by Walter Burton or by Thomas Muir who was employed by the Burton Brothers’ and later took over the firm in partnership with George Moodie.
The collection includes works by the Burton Brothers, their employees, and also negative plates the firm had purchased from other photographers. Foremost among these are a series of portraits of Māori taken in Auckland in the 1850s by John McGarrigle.
The Burton Brothers collection consists mainly of negatives, which, in the early days of photography, were glass plates with an emulsion containing the image on the underside of the plate. Before coming to the Museum, these glass plate negatives had begun to show signs of deterioration. At the edges of the plates the emulsion had separated from the glass base in a process is known as delamination.
Small strips of delamination had occurred on parts of other negatives – which could have easily resulted in the loss of the entire image. To make matters worse, a fire some time between 1914 and 1918 had caused smoke damage to some of the negatives, and heat from the fire had melted the protective shellac varnish covering the images, into the image itself.
During the 1960s John Turner, then photographer for the Dominion Museum, raised his concerns about the deterioration of the Burton Brothers collection. The ongoing use of the fragile glass plates for making prints was damaging the negatives, and handling increased the risk of breakage.
At that time, professional advice about how to care for photographic images was hard to find, but using contacts in America, Turner and later photographers were able to develop a conservation programme for the collection.
In 1982 the conservation programme was inadvertantly given a boost by a film called Pictures. This fictionalised version of Alfred Burton’s life and work concluded with the assertion that the negatives of the Burton Brothers collection were deteriorating in the custody of the Dominion Museum. Questions were asked in Parliament, to which the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Highet, replied that the Museum had proposed a four-step plan for the Burton Brothers collection that included conservation of the original negatives, and their duplication, so that the original negatives could be retired.
In 1986 a six-year programme costing $330,000 was approved. Work began on cleaning the negatives and storing them in acid-free archival envelopes. A database was established and trials undertaken to determine the best way to duplicate negatives that would produce images with the same tonal range as the originals.
Once duplication was successfully underway, work began on conserving and repairing the damaged negatives. The plates suffering from delamination were re-stabilized using a reversible synthetic adhesive.
Major international advances in photographic conservation which occurred during the programme were of great benefit. And from 1995 advances in digital imaging technology meant that images taken from a broken or cracked glass negative could be rejoined.
The conservation programme also brought other advantages. Standards of care were upgraded to ensure collections in the Museum at Buckle Street were available for use in Te Papa. High-density metal storage cabinets were imported to provide the best storage for all negatives, including those from the Burton Brothers collection.
In 1996 the Museum began to install separate climate control facilities for both film and glass negatives. These met international standards, specifying the exact temperature and humidity at which photographic collections should be stored to ensure their long-term survival.
The negatives of the Burton Brothers collection are now housed in a computer-controlled coolstore at a temperature of 12 degrees C. and 35 per cent relative humidity. Because the negatives have been duplicated they are now retired from use, although conservation work continues on individual plates from time to time.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (1998).