Opens 23 February

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts exhibition

Exhibition developed in partnership with Te Papa with the support of Imagelab.

An extraordinary and unique installation of 74 photographs of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga taken in 1884. Alfred Burton, of the noted Dunedin photography firm Burton Bros, was a passenger on the SS Wairarapa for the Union Steam Ship Company's first winter tourist excursion into the Pacific. This highly charged and emotional exhibition will take the viewer back to a time when New Zealand had an expansionist eye on the Pacific. Scrutinised by some of today's leading Pacific writers these striking images have never before been shown in New Zealand.

'Nothing can picture strange scenes so faithfully and effectively as the camera€' Otago Daily Times, 1884

The Museum received funding support from The Lion Foundation for the exhibition

Public Programmes
In association with the Museum the NZ Film Archive is showing Pictures, the 1981 film on the life of the Burton brothers.

Wednesday 1 March at 6.30pm in the NZ Film Archive Mediatheatre cnr Ghuznee & Taranaki Streets.