Thomas Edward Price - early NZ Photographer

03/10/2025

When we first visited Tauranga in April, Jonny knew he wanted to do something to fix up Thomas’ grave. Today, as we complete our trip and come full circle, we’ve added a grave marker and done a tidy-up of the old surround and filled it in with limestone chips. Looking much better 👌

We also met with Brett, a historian in Tauranga, who has a special interest in Annie and her role in the photography studio doing touchups and hand-colouring. He has given our Annie photo a good cleanup and taken a great photo to potentially use in a book he is writing.

We also found Annie’s brother Robert, another photographer, freemason and friend and BIL to Thomas, resting only a few meters away.

29/09/2025

We completed the set of the full range of sizes today, with the teeny wee “Merry Christmas“ postcard from 1883, at the Wairarapa Archive in Masterton. The pencil writing on the back says “Photos of Natives, full blooded and half castes”.

Lovely to meet with Gareth and Mark there, and also Louise at the Alexander Turnbull National Library who showed us a collection of TE Price photos, and some fun extras.

28/09/2025

Today it was our privilege to spend a couple of hours with Suni Brown at Rangitāne o Wairarapa, and hand over this print of the Te Ore Ore compilation for use in their exhibition they are holding next year at Aratoi in Masterton. Sam was the one who originally reached out to us, and connected us with Suni, so we also met with him and had a good kōrero as well. We hope we have made a great first step today, in reconnecting this taonga to its rightful home.

Suni then took us out to Te Ore Ore, which was a great honour to be in this place and learn more about the meanings of the carvings.

Ngā mihi nui ki a korua!

26/09/2025

We finally made it to Te Papa! The lady we were supposed to meet unexpectedly couldn’t make it today, so another lady filled in for her to show us their TE Price collection. There was about 47 CDV’s (the tiny photos) to view, and a Te Ore Ore print. It is the same size as ours, but a much sharper black and white image (compared to our sepia), and theirs has no wrinkles or tears and had the collage inside the frame the right way up. Their equipment was able to take a really clear high-res photo, which we have now been able to access the digital file (with permission from Rangitāne o Wairarapa) to make an enlargement to the scale of what the original montage would have been in the frame (27x35”).

We found out that their CDV collection came from two sources, one from a private donor in 1966 (that we have a name to look into to see if/how they are connected to us); and one they purchased in 2014 after the Negative Kept exhibition at the Gow Langsford gallery in Auckland in 2012. https://gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz/exhibitions/369-negative-kept-group-exhibition/

The location of the original montage remains a mystery.

We got a bonus peek at Richard Seddon’s jacket that he wore for official engagements as well (prime minister of NZ 1893-1906). He was a friend of Price’s, which the lady didn’t know when she showed it to us.

22/09/2025

Today Jonny and I began our research-roadtrip, which will take us from Auckland to the Wairarapa and Wellington, and home again via Tauranga. We’ve got a few exciting appointments lined up over the next couple of weeks, starting with the Auckland Museum this morning with our niece Shakayla and her partner Nate.

There we viewed the carved wooden frame again, and this time we took an almost-to-scale print of the Te Ore Ore artwork, which we placed underneath it. We still don’t know where the original montage is, but it was neat to see the frame reunited briefly with its original occupants and start the conversation with Auckland Museum about doing a collab with Te Papa. They had also located the enlargement of Ngātuere for us this time, which was being held in a different department.

Next stop was the Hautapu cemetery in Cambridge to visit Annie Meers resting place (Thomas Price’ wife, Jonny’s great-grandmother). She died in 1928 and has no headstone, so we took her a grave-marker with her name on it.

We’re in Taupō for a couple of nights now, and then will be making our way down to Wellington for our next hui on Friday.

30/06/2025

This morning I was able to view the carved Māori frame that Jonny’s nanna donated to Auckland Museum in 1989. It was such a privilege to see this incredible taonga in person.

It has been in safe storage all this time, and they did not have any information about it, so I was able to give them a date (~1883) and a connection to Ngāti Kahungunu and Kingi Ngātuere. They photocopied all of my photos, articles and letters that I took along, and were glad to collect some provenance for this item.

The frame was much larger than I was expecting, and has been separated from its photographs along its journey. We are still following up on this; and have an appointment booked with Te Papa as well to see what they have. Their website still looks to hold the clearest and most detailed image of the Te Ore Ore montage inside the frame. Interestingly, I can now see that in my printed version of the montage, the frame is upside-down!!

It would be amazing to be able to reconnect the montage with the frame one day.

18/05/2025

Today I want to talk about the Te Ore Ore montage, which is a collection of portraits of Wairarapa Māori that was created in approx 1883. This collage was put together by Thomas Edward Price from photos we believe were all taken by him, and was sold among other things, as a Christmas postcard that had orders of 1100 copies. There may also have been a printed series to commerate the turn of the century.

We are fortunate to hold an 8 1/2 x11” print that is labelled Original C041, that we have inherited from Thomas’ daughter, Leila Campbell (nee Price) who was Jonny’s nanna.

We know that there are copies of this image at Auckland Museum and Te Papa, and we have heard that it was once also hanging at the Te Ore Ore marae, though we don’t know if it is still there. It is also currently on display at the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington, as part of A Different Light exhibition, and has been printed in a book by the same name (which I have ordered and am excited to see when it arrives). https://www.adamartgallery.nz/exhibitions/current/a-different-light-first-photographs-of-aotearoa

I recognise two pictures each of Ngātuere and the Māori King of the time, the rest I unfortunately don’t have names for but would love to one day identify. I have found some of these photos, all attributed to Price, on the Early NZ Photography blog about Thomas Price. https://canterburyphotography.blogspot.com/2012/01/price-t-e.html?m=1

Here I have found the images of King Tawhaio, though these have been credited to Denman Wilton, who we know purchased all of Prices negatives when he sold his Masterton business and moved to Tauranga (these are the negatives that are now known to be buried under a house in Masterton).
https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/collection/object/1033905

In each version of the montage (and if you look closely, there are differences concerning the centre-bottom image of King Tawhaio) the photo is inside the carved frame, gifted to Price by Ngātuere, that I talked about in my last post.

I’d love to know who else appears in these pictures.

Update: I’ve just noticed some more portraits that appear here from Te Papa’s digital collection, I’ll work through these now! https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/agent/6507 and The National Library here https://natlib.govt.nz/photos?text=Thomas+Edward+price

07/05/2025

This is Ngātuere Tāwhirimātea Tāwhao of Wairarapa, chief of Ngāti Kahungunu.

I was recently contacted by a descendant of his, who was searching for photos of his tangi (https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WDT18901204.2.15) which we were unfortunately not able to help with, the entire collection of glass plates having all been buried under the concrete foundation of a house in Masterton.

However, I now had a name and story to match with the photo of the unknown Māori chief, whose picture Leila (Jonny’s nanna) had donated to Auckland Museum in 1989, inside a carved wooden frame. A letter she wrote in 1977 states that the picture and frame were a prized possession of her father’s, and that the frame was carved by the chief carver of the tribe as a gift for her father, and there was none other like it in NZ.

Now that I had a name for the chief, I found several photos of him online taken by Thomas Price over the span of a couple of decades, indicating that they may have had a friendship of sorts.

In 1989 the frame was deposited with Auckland Museum by Leila, and their acknowledgment letter/photos indicate that the photo has been replaced with Price‘s “Te Ore Ore montage of Wairarapa Māori” (more on that later). I have submitted a query with Auckland Museum to find out if they still have the frame and photos, but I suspect they have been sold to Te Papa - in which case, I hope they are still on display and able to be viewed! I will update this when I find out more.

Yesterday I found a couple of articles on Papers Past, one story saying that the picture of a Māori chief in a carved frame was displayed in Price’s photography studio in 1891; and the other saying that he had entered a carved frame and walking stick in the 1888 Wairarapa Exhibition. One can only assume that this is the same item! I don’t have a story for the walking stick, but I do have a ~1895 photo of Thomas and Annie Price with it.

Amazing!

07/05/2025

Kia Ora, it’s been a couple of years since we posted anything on this page, but over the last couple of weeks we’ve made some new connections and discoveries that we thought we’d share.

First up, Gareth Winter, who is an archivist with a special interest in the Wairarapa, has shared with me some of his knowledge of Thomas and Annie’s time in Masterton (1879 - 1897). This new information helped me search in Papers Past and find this fabulous write-up about Thomas’ “Modern Photography” establishment, published in the Wairarapa Times in December 1891:

18/04/2022