Heritage et AL

Whites Aviation produced hand coloured photographs of New Zealand for around fifty years. When they began in 1945 colour photography wasn’t accessible as it was only in its infancy so the hand coloured photographs they sold were very popular. These now iconic images can be found in cafés like Replete i n Taup ō  o r Vudu in Queenstown. This very large photograph that was recently donated to the library is 1100 x 2520 millimetres and formerly hung in the Auckland Star building. Ref: Whites Aviation, Auckland, c1965, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1411-1.

There is an immediately accessible quality about hand coloured or tinted photographs, which brings the past alive in a way that is perhaps more intimate than black and white photographs. Ref: Photographer and colourist unknown, hand coloured photograph of David Clark driving the Northcote Borough Council's dray, c. 1910, North Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries, N0101008 Converting images of varying shades of grey i.e. black and white photographs, into coloured images literally involved the application of colour onto the photographic image. There were two methods by which this could be done. Hand colouring or tinting involved painting very lightly onto the surface, so that the photograph underneath was still visible. The more clumsy method of the two was over painting, whereby a heavier pigment was applied, often completely obscuring the original photograph. Prior to the start of either process, a layer of varnish was usually applied to ensure that the absorption of...