Group show
Apparitions: the photograph and its image
curated by Geoffrey Batchen and his Honours students
13 October – 17 December 2017
Apparitions examined the dissemination of photographic images during photography’s earliest decades. The show drew on both private and public collections (including Te Papa, the Turnbull Library and the Auckland Museum). Apparitions displayed rare daguerreotypes from England, France, Germany, and the United States, calotypes by photography’s English inventor William Henry Fox Talbot, and lithographs, wood engravings, steel engravings and other illustrations based on early photographs. The focus was on the reproducibility and mobility of the photographic image.
The publication in association with this exhibition is available for purchase in the gallery as well as our online shop here.
Apparitions was supported by the Ronald Woolf Memorial Endowment.
This exhibition was staged concurrently with What Remains, The Karori Commission, Future Islands: The New Zealand Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, and From the College Collection.
Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
![Leveillé (France), Taha-Tahala + Heroua: Natif de Otago, ile Tavai-Pounamu, N[ouve]lle Zelande (Polynesie). Lith par Leveille d'apres les bustes moules sur nature photographie par Bisson d'apres la direction de Mr le Dr Doumoulier. [Paris, 1842-1847], from Dumont d'Urville, Voyage au pole sud et dans l'Oceanie. Paris, Gide, 1842-1847. Atlas. Anthropologie. Plate 13, ink on paper lithograph taken from daguerreotypes by Bisson of plaster casts of life masks made during Dumont d’Urville’s visit to Otago in 1840, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/h84sqrxf/production/f49cda7da000022d39d1917ba325912ee061d9c7-10232x6582.jpg?w=3840&q=75&fit=clip&auto=format)
Leveillé (France), Taha-Tahala + Heroua: Natif de Otago, ile Tavai-Pounamu, N[ouve]lle Zelande (Polynesie). Lith par Leveille d'apres les bustes moules sur nature photographie par Bisson d'apres la direction de Mr le Dr Doumoulier. [Paris, 1842-1847], from Dumont d'Urville, Voyage au pole sud et dans l'Oceanie. Paris, Gide, 1842-1847. Atlas. Anthropologie. Plate 13, ink on paper lithograph taken from daguerreotypes by Bisson of plaster casts of life masks made during Dumont d’Urville’s visit to Otago in 1840, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa
Josiah Wedgwood & sons (England), Copy of the Portland Vase, 19th century, white on blue jasper-ware ceramic, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
Augustin François Lemaître (engraver), after Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (France), Chaplle des Feuillants, 1827, ink-on-paper etching and engraving after Daguerre’s painting, Chapelle des Feuillants (1814), published by Augustin Liébert in Galerie du Luxembourg, des Musées, Palais et Châteaux Royaux de France (1828); and Weber (France) after Charles-Marie Bouton (France), Thermes de Julien, c. 1840, ink-on-paper lithograph, issued by Bonnemaison, Private Collection. Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
J.-B. Léveillé (France), Poukalem, Natif de Otago, Ile Tavaï-Pounamu + Matoua-Tawai: Natif de Korora-Reka, Ile Ika-na-Mawi, Nlle Zélande (Polynésie). Lithé par Léveillé d’après les bustes moulés sur nature photographié par Bisson sous la Direction de Mr le Dr Dumoutier, from Voyage au pôle sud et dans l’Océanie … sous le commandement de M. J. Dumont d’Urville; Atlas: Anthropologie (Paris: Gide, 1842–47), plate 14, ink on paper lithograph taken from daguerreotypes by Bisson of plaster casts of life masks made during Dumont d’Urville’s visit to New Zealand in 1840, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
Photographer unknown (United States), Daguerreotype of a pencil drawing of a mother with two children, c. 1855, daguerreotype in gilt wood frame. Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews
Installation view, Apparitions: the photograph and its image, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Photo: Shaun Matthews