A very early Māori photographic portrait by Robert Garry Law

Garry Law, Auckland (2007)

The daguerreotype process was a very early photographic one, taking considerable pains to master. The resulting portraits are on glass with a characteristic mirror appearance when held with the light at a particular angle. They are not common in New Zealand. Auckland Museum for instance has only a handful taken here.

Working from some later photographic portraits of family members we narrowed down two of the pictures to being Alice Porter and William Porter born in Liverpool respectively in 1824 and 1830. Their apparent ages in the portraits were consistent with the pictures being taken in the early 1850s. This was about the zenith of the use of the daguerreotype process. A little research identified that Lieutenant Governor Edward John Eyre was a practitioner of this form of photography while he was resident here. Eyre was the Wellington based deputy to Governor Grey in Grey’s first term here.

In 1907 William Porter wrote some recollections of his early life. The family had travelled first to South Australia on his father, Captain Porter’s brig Porter, leaving Liverpool in 1838, settling first at Port Lincoln in South Australia and moving on to Auckland in 1841. They initially lived in Fore St (later Fort St) and by the mid 1840s moved to Kohimarama Bay where they had a farm. There they were on good terms with the residents of nearby St John’s College, sharing boat trips to town and reciprocal invitations to social events. William Porter attended school there for one year.

The recollections also mention transporting Eyre across the Spencer Gulf on Porter on one of Eyre’s famous Australian exploring trips and the family attending his wedding at St Johns College Tāmaki when he married Adelaide Fanny Ormond, after a tempestuous courtship. Eyre did not have a happy time in New Zealand being marginalised by Governor George Grey and left with little to do. He seems to have been temperamentally unsuited to the role and never established a working relationship with Grey.

The third daguerreotype portrait was of a Māori man. William’s will dated 1910 kept in the family papers, mentions a Māori portrait, but gives no other information, even of the form it took. William is Miranda’s great grandfather so the onwards transmission of a portrait is no surprise. There the matter sat until opening my copy of Cowan’s New Zealand Wars and seeing a photograph of Henare Taratoa taken in 1860 or thereabouts - clearly the same man.

Eyre’s 1850 wedding, performed by Bishop Selwyn was a double one. The other celebrants were Henare Wiremu Taratoa then the college cook and sometime student, who married Emily Te Rua. (For more see Elizabeth T Jackson, 1976: Delving into the Past of Auckland’s Eastern Suburbs, Section 3, Meadowbank – St Johns). A reasonable supposition then seems to be that Eyre took portraits of his fellow bridegroom and the two offspring of his friend, most probably at the time of the wedding. The daguerreotype process yields only one picture – a copying process did not exist – so why the Porters ended up with the copy is not known. After St Johns Taratoa was an Anglican lay reader, a missionary in the Loyalty Islands and for a period lived at Ōtaki as a mission teacher.

Taratoa was killed at the battle of Te Ranga in 1864 in his home territory of Tauranga. Tauranga Māori had drawn up rules of engagement derived from Christian teachings prior to the fighting. Taratoa had helped draft these rules which had been transmitted to the British prior to the earlier Gate Pā engagement. A copy was found on his body, to which he had added "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink" (Romans 12:20). Māori had put their Christian principles into effect at the earlier Gate Pā battle where they had given water to the injured of the colonial forces. Taratoa is sometimes credited with this act but it appears he was not responsible, rather a courageous and principled woman Heni Te Kiri Karamu. Taratoa has an entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, as has Heni.

Other painted pictures of Taratoa, by H G Robley and in Gilbert Mair’s The Story of Gate Pā are clearly derived from the 1860’s photograph reproduced by Cowan. The newly identified Taratoa portrait is now in the collection of Auckland War Memorial Musuem. It is certainly one of the earliest Māori photographic portraits known.

William Porter’s recollections have recently been published: Recollections of a Voyage to South Australia and New Zealand Commenced in 1838. Recorded at Huntly 1907, by William Porter. Edited by Miranda Field Law and myself, Robert Garry Law, 2007. Maruiwi Press, Auckland. The two other family daguerreotypes may be seen illustrated there.