Transparencies: New Zealand from 1953 to 1974 through the slide photography of Gladys Cunningham

Abstract

Transparencies: New Zealand from 1953 to 1974 through the Slide Photography of Gladys Cunningham This thesis focuses on the amateur slide photography of Gladys Cunningham, formerly of Onehunga, Auckland. Viewed collectively, these slides provide a visual autobiography of a New Zealand woman’s life, as well as a larger social narrative. As Gladys’s granddaughter, I argue that Gladys’s 35mm colour transparencies, nostalgic fragments that memorialise a family history, are informed by the social history of European New Zealanders between the early 1950s and early 1970s. Gladys’s slides reflect stabilities and changes for the photographer herself, her family and New Zealand society. While the term “transparency” suggests that the meaning of a slide can be understood by all, in reality further contextual information is necessary to appreciate the family and public histories from which these scenes have been separated. To situate Gladys’s slides, I refer to popular magazines and tourist texts from this period, including The Weekly News, National Geographic and New Zealand Holiday, and to commercial slides, postcards and travel marketing texts. I analyse the near absence of Maori within Gladys’s slides and travel journalism, suggesting that their omissions represent a lack of dialogue between Pakeha and Maori. In New Zealand and overseas, slide photography was the popular medium for recording extraordinary family events during the 1950 and 1960s. Through an analysis of memory, leisure and photography, this study examines how Gladys’s photography documents family and community membership and celebration. I explore how aesthetically pleasing representations of family leisure also contain partly concealed clues to less positive memories and to secrets that were not unique to this family. I discuss the impact of private and public transport on Gladys’s slide photography, noting how car travel facilitated spatial and temporal freedoms, and how slide photography strengthened connections to extended family and distant communities. In contrast, Gladys and Jim’s later dependence on coach transport enhanced their ability to take slides and expanded the “family” gaze of their camera, but limited their photographic opportunities.