Description:

Leslie Adkin (1888–1964) was a Taitoko Levin farmer, photographer, geologist, ethnologist and explorer who used photography to document his scholarly interests, farming activities and family life from around 1900 until his death in 1964. Adkin’s beautiful photographs are one of the highlights of Te Papa’s historical photography collection; while some images are well known and loved, the collection is only known in piecemeal fashion.

This book brings his best images together in a considered and coherent way for a wider public and to establish his reputation more clearly within the development of photography in New Zealand. The book focuses on the period from 1905 to 1930, when Adkin took many informal photographs of family and friends as well as on tramps, in Wellington, of a Māori family near Kuku and a dam building project.

Adkin’s personal photographs are charming and engaging and speak of family values while also having much to say about New Zealand life from the 1910s to the 1930s – especially for rural and small-town Pākehā.