Date/Time
Date(s) - Sat 20 April
10:00 - 11:30
Location
Te Ahumairangi (ground floor), National Library, corner Molesworth and Aitken Streets
Join a tour of the ‘Cast in light: Life in a mining town’ exhibition with curator Simon Nathan, watch photographer Brian Scadden demonstrate the glass plate photography technique and watch short films about Joseph Divis and Waiuta.
Behind the scenes of ‘Cast in light’
Hear curator Simon Nathan talk about the Joseph Divis’s photographs in our current exhibition Cast in light: Life in a mining town. Afterwards, view reproductions of Divis’s images through a stereoscope and hear from Brian Scadden about how the photographs were taken.
Short film viewing
View a reel of footage of the Waiuta gold mine in action, courtesy of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, and watch the short film JOS on the life and photography of Joseph Divis.
About the ‘Cast in light’ exhibition
Joseph Divis (1885–1967) photographed life in New Zealand mining towns in the first part of the twentieth century. He worked underground as a gold miner, which gave him access to the mines.
His images, including flash photographs, provide a unique record of mining and life in mining communities, especially the now-abandoned town of Waiuta, on the West Coast of the South Island, where he settled.
In 2009 the Alexander Turnbull Library acquired most of the surviving photographs Divis took. This exhibition features some of those images, illuminating rare insights into work inside the mines and the drama of life above ground in once-thriving Waiuta.