Welcome to our collection of over 4 million heritage photographs dating from the 1840s to the present day. Discover a wealth of images with a specific focus on Auckland, New Zealand and the Pacific.
He whakaahua Photographs
Albert Park and the University of Auckland, 1924. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W0491.
View photograph collections
Many of our photographs have been digitised and can be viewed online. For additional collections and items not yet digitised, please contact our heritage experts.
Heritage photograph formats
Our collections contain a range of photograph formats from daguerreotypes and ambrotypes of the 1840s and 1850s to born-digital photographs taken just a couple of years ago.
Featured collections
Winkelmann Collection
Queen Street and Civic Square, Auckland, 1927. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W0819-PAN (cropped).
The Winkelmann Collection consists of around 2,000 glass plate negatives of Auckland streetscapes taken by Henry Winkelmann (1860-1931) between 1900 and 1928. Over 150 of his panoramas have been recreated digitally and can be seen online.
Schmidt Collection
Nurse Nobbs and Niuean soldiers at the Auckland Trained Nurses Club in Mountain Road, Epsom, 1916. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 31-WP8025.
The Schmidt Collection of 27,000 glass plate negatives was rescued from the attic of Herman Schmidt’s old studio at 270 Queen Street when the block was demolished in 1969.
Herman was born in Auckland in 1872 and, despite the Germanic name, Schmidt Studios was the go-to place for soldiers departing for the front lines throughout World War I. The collection includes around 4,500 soldier portraits, some of which are the only known photographs of these men.
Richardson Collection
Waka taua (war canoe) of Paora Tuhaere, Orakei. Originally photographed mid-1880s by the Pulman Photographic Studio, it was later copied by James D Richardson. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 4-1597.
The Richardson Collection totals around 8,000 negatives. James Douglas Richardson (1878-1942) was an Auckland bank manager and amateur photographer recruited by Chief Librarian John Barr around 1915 to create a photographic survey of Auckland. But Richardson did not limit himself to street scenes. He photographed old books, maps, documents and even photographs so that some of the Library’s earliest Auckland views exist only as Richardson copies.
C.P. Dawes Collection
Police guarding the arrested Māori leaders at Rawene during the 'Dog Tax War', 1898. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1572-0425.
The C.P. Dawes Collection comprises over 2,200 glass plate negatives from the final years of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, largely from the Hokianga. It includes a unique series of 60 photographs of the ‘Dog Tax War’ of 1898. The collection was inscribed on the New Zealand register of the UNESCO Memory of the World in 2019.
J. T. Diamond Collection
Diamond family and stray dog watching the surf at The Gap, Piha, 1953. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections JTD-04E-00037-2.
The J. T. Diamond Collection represents 70 years of research on the Western Districts by the late amateur historian and archaeologist John (Jack) Thomas Diamond (1912-2001). His curiosity for the changing world around him led to a lifelong passion for documenting the people, landscape, and extractive industries of West Auckland. This collection was inscribed on the New Zealand register of the UNESCO Memory of the World in 2017.
These photograph collections, and many more, are available for viewing online and by discussion with our heritage experts at the Central City Library. Contact heritage experts
Want to donate to the collections?
We welcome discussions about potential donations to our collections. Find out what kinds of material we accept, how to contact us and what to expect from the process.
