This article examines the development of Te Papa’s historical photography collection, from its origins in the Colonial Museum to the present. In so doing, it outlines the collection’s contents and shows that the present-day shape of the collection bears the imprint of changing museology and evolving ideas about the role of photography in a museum. It covers the relatively passive collecting by founding director James Hector in the nineteenth century; the concerted effort to build a collection of ethnographic photographs under his successor, Augustus Hamilton; photographic activity by Museum staff during the twentieth century; and the acquisition of major collections from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Such collections include works by photographers like the Burton Brothers, Thomas Andrew, Leslie Adkin, Gordon H. Burt, Spencer Digby, Eric Lee-Johnson and Brian Brake, as well as those assembled by photo historians Hardwicke Knight and William Main.

Colonial Museum, Dominion Museum, National Museum, Te Papa, photograph, collection, collecting, ethnographic, New Zealand, history, James Hector, Burton Brothers.