A different light : first photographs of Aotearoa / edited by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction -- Photography and settler colonialism / Angela Wanhalla -- Mīhini mīharo = Practical magic -- Chasing wonder: photography in the Auckland Province / Shaun Higgins -- He pono rānei? = False witness -- Once were traders: reading images of Māori in the 'Urquhart Album' / Paul Diamond -- Tūrangawaewae = In the studio -- The give and take of photographs: early views of Dunedin and Otago / Anna Peterson -- He waitara nui = The great outdoors -- Camera fiends and sharpshooters: early amateur photography in Aotearoa / Natalie Marshall -- Māu he kāmera! Māu he kāmera! Mā tātou he kāmera! = Open access.

"From horses laden with mammoth photographic plates in the 1870s to the arrival of the Kodak in the late 1880s, New Zealand's first photographs reveal Kīngi and governors, geysers and slums, battles and parties. They freeze faces in formal studio portraits and stumble into the intimacy of backyards, gardens and homes. A Different Light brings together the extraordinary and extensive photographic collections of three major research libraries - Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, Alexander Turnbull Library and Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena - to coincide with a touring exhibition of some of the earliest known photographs of Aotearoa"--Publisher information.