The Victorian Album: Part 4 of in camera

The Victorian Album, the Feminine and the Personal

Adam Art Gallery
Victoria University of Wellington
8 October–13 November 2011
Curated by Sandy Callister

At first glance the image of a Victorian mother piggybacking her child seems a little unusual. However the precedent for this kind of pose was well established. In fact, Mrs. Amphlett was something of a copy cat.

In September 1868, Princess Alexandra had adopted exactly this pose—the carte-de-visite of her piggybacking her young daughter, was intended to demonstrate that she had fully recovered from a bout of rheumatic fever in the late winter, early spring of 1867. The royal mother piggybacking her daughter proved to be the most popular carte-de-visite of its day. Such huge quantities of photographs, priced to be accessible to a broad public, helped democratize and familiarize royal figures, but they also allowed something else to happen. Mrs. Amphlett and her friends could now play at being princesses in front of the camera.

In Sandy Callister’s forthcoming exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery opening on Saturday 8 October—The Victorian Album, the Feminine and the Personal as part of in camera: a project series around and about collecting
she challenges our preconceptions for the way in which we view our female ancestors. Posing for the camera enabled these women to flirt with their own understanding of self, people, photographs and their meaning.

The very different, but equally charming images of Miss. M. Poto and a woman identified only as “Jane” remind us of the ‘theatricality and performance of photographic poses’. These images anticipate our own obsession with the social spectacle of recording ourselves via photographic means today.

Social mores, tastes and technologies might have changed, but we still enjoy flirting with meaning across images, as well as the tactile value of collections of photographs. In some ways the Victorians were the predecessors of our “Facebook” world and obsession with self, celebrity and spectacle. 

Uniting 19 marvellous albums in the care of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and portraits from two outstanding negative collections in the Alexander Turnbull Library, this exhibition endeavours to broaden our understanding  of both nineteenth-century photography and Victorian feminine culture, presenting work that has rarely—and in many cases never—been displayed or reproduced.

Opening event
Friday 7 October 2011, 6pm
Exhibition curator and Stout Research Fellow Sandy Callister will give a short floor talk accompanied by refreshments.

Sandy Callister is Director of the marketing strategy firm The Providence Report and is a trustee for the Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington, the Wigram Foundation and World Vision New Zealand.

Sandy has previously worked for TVNZ, Saatchi and Saatchi in New York, Unilever in London, and was Managing Director of Colmar Brunton in Wellington. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Auckland, and has studied women and leadership at the Harvard Business School. Her book The Face of War: New Zealand’s Great War Photography was published by Auckland University Press in May 2008. Sandy curated the exhibition Hidden Faces, Gus Fisher Gallery, University of Auckland, to coincide with her book launch. This exhibition explored previously unseen medical photography from World War One. She is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Stout Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, researching a book on New Zealand’s Victorian family albums.

Alongside Behind Closed Doors the Adam Art Gallery is staging a changing programme of projects titled: in camera: a project series around and about collecting. Located in one room of the Adam Art Gallery, the Kirk Gallery, this series illuminates other personal acts of collecting.

Part 4 of in camera
8 October–13 November 2011
The Victorian Album, the Feminine and the Personal
Curated by Sandy Callister