It’s an unlikely saga that stretches across continents; the story of how an American photography gallery became the custodian of more than a million photos that catalogue momentous events from New Zealand’s history, saving the historic cache from landfill.
The vintage images, which were taken by news and art photographers for regional newspapers over more than a century and date back to 1841, depict pivotal scenes in the establishment of modern New Zealand – including protests, disasters and national triumphs – as well as daily life, culturally significant photos of Māori and early images of cities as they grew. Some are the only known copies of those pictures; the negatives for most have been lost or destroyed.
“They should never have left New Zealand,” says Daniel Miller, the owner and director of the Los Angeles-based Duncan Miller gallery, which bought the photos from a bank after the American company that was in possession of them filed for bankruptcy. “It’s the history of a country.”
After struggling to find new owners for the full archive, Miller is selling the images online and to institutions. In December, he hand-delivered a trove of more than 5,000 historic photos of Indigenous life to the National Library of New Zealand, a collection the institution described as a “rich and moving visual history” – and which was almost lost for ever.
It all began more than a decade ago with John Rogers, an American businessman who promised news companies that he could save a century of pre-digital newspaper images and sports memorabilia. Among them was Fairfax Media – a former Australian and New Zealand news company – which sent millions of images to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2013; Rogers Photo Archive had offered to digitise the decaying images at no cost and to sell the originals for a profit.
But after photos began to show up on eBay, the FBI raided the company and Rogers was later jailed for fraud. After the company went bankrupt, the bank took the images as collateral for a loan and Miller was approached by a court-appointed receiver to buy them.
With many of the photos destined for landfill, Miller bought the archive in 2017, expecting that the national libraries of Australia and New Zealand would take the collections off his hands.
But Australia’s national library wanted only “a tiny fraction” of the photos. The need to catalogue and preserve the images – some of which were spoiled by black mould – prompted Miller to hire archivists and custom-fit a climate-controlled warehouse in a project that has now spanned four years.
“I just felt that I had some sense of responsibility because nobody else stood up to do anything about it,” he says.
Though he didn’t find an immediate home for the complete archive of Australian images, Miller has since sold photos to more than 70 Australian institutions and continues to sell images through local auction house Lawson’s.
It has also proved difficult to find owners for the New Zealand archive. But last year, Miller sold to New Zealand’s national library 5,300 images of the country’s Indigenous people – the entire contents of the archive’s Māori collection – delivering the images to Wellington in what he describes as an “emotional” homecoming.
The “depth and breadth” of the photos sourced from newspapers throughout the country over a 70-year period made them a “significant national taonga that will help us tell the stories of Aotearoa,” says Jessica Moran, a library spokesperson, using the Māori word for a treasure.
Miller is now approaching sporting bodies and other institutions in hopes of finding more homes for the photos. In the meantime, his company has established an online auction platform for the New Zealand images where photos of major news events of the 20th century – including the Wāhine ferry sinking, the bombing of the ship the Rainbow Warrior and the 1931 Napier earthquake, as well as prominent figures such as the aviator Jean Batten and mountaineer Edmund Hillary – sell for amounts between NZ$80 and the low thousands of dollars.
Such sales are likely to run for years, and Miller – who did not intend to become a curator of antipodean history – hopes that a prominent New Zealander might take over the project.
“This just belongs with New Zealand and should be managed by Kiwis,” he says. “There’s a lot of money involved in saving culture here but the archive is in better condition than ever and it’s ready for New Zealand hands.”
