Two New Hebrides Mission Photograph Albums

Abstract

This paper focuses on two photograph albums held at the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand archives in Dunedin, New Zealand, that relate to the Church's New Hebrides (Vanuatu) mission field. While it is acknowledged that photographs are valuable sources for the historian, photograph albums have not received the same level of critical attention. Taking the lead from the material turn in anthropology, this paper presents the object-story of the two New Hebrides albums, which means the albums themselves are placed under closer historical scrutiny within the context of both the Presbyterian mission in the New Hebrides and its imaging and propagation on New Zealand's shores. By approaching these albums as both collections of images and objects that traversed different social and physical spaces, their importance as part of the material and visual culture of the mission becomes clear.