Rare chance to see old images of New England family life

March 15, 2007

Visitors to the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM) over the next month will have a rare opportunity to see photographic images of New England family life a century ago.

The photographs have been developed from fragile glass plate negatives in the University of New England and Regional Archives. They form an exhibition titled Mum's the Word, which is on display at NERAM from this week until Sunday 15 April.

The Curator of the UNE Heritage Centre (which houses the Archives), Dr Nicole McLennan, said the images had been selected from the Archives' collection of about 6,000 glass plate negatives dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "They form a unique visual record of family life on the Northern Tablelands during that period," Dr McLennan said.

"As the glass plates have to be kept and handled with care," she added, "the public doesn't often get a chance to see these images. The photographs on display capture not only the images themselves, but the passage of time - up to 100 years - over the photographic plates."

"The photographs are a mixture of portraits, family groups, staged images, and more relaxed shots of family members at play and at work," Dr McLennan explained. "They include an image of a merry-go-round set up in a paddock (displayed here), boys who've harnessed a sheep in their homemade cart, a girl being carried in a kerosene tin by her father, and a beautiful portrait of a seated girl with her doll.

"Most of the photographs were taken by Les Young, a dedicated amateur from Uralla, although there are also examples of images from the Saumarez Collection of negatives and photographs taken by William T. Anderson and Roy Dufty, who carried out professional photography in and around Armidale."

Mum's the Word is being presented in conjunction with the Armidale Group of the Australian Breastfeeding Association, which will host a function at NERAM at 6 pm on Friday 23 March to celebrate the mounting of the exhibition. "It was this Group that first suggested the exhibition," Dr McLennan said, "as it wanted – in the lead-up to Mother's Day – to highlight the important role of mothers and families in nurturing future generations."

Entry to the function on 23 March (including finger food and a glass of champagne) will be $7, and all profits will go towards the work of the Group.

Dr McLennan said she was hoping that visitors to the exhibition might be able to identify some of the people and places in the images on display. "They were lacking all such identification when they entered the Archives," she explained.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at March 15, 2007 04:56 PM