New Zealand’s Largest Rugby Image Collection Enters Open Market

A taonga archive featuring thousands of images of Māori, Pasifika, and NZ European rugby greats from the early 20th century is available for auction.

The Fairfax Archives rugby collection is the largest cache of NZ rugby photographs to enter the open market, with historically significant images of the 1925 Invincibles Tour and more than 2,500 individual players featured in 41,000 photographs.

Rugby greats such as George Nepia, Waka Nathan, Sid Going, Taine Randell, Buck Shelford, Brian Lochore, Alex Wyllie and Frank Bunce are all featured in the collection, alongside images of matches, team and club photos.

The rugby photographs have been held in foreign ownership for over a decade after Fairfax Media sent more than 1.4 million news images to the United States to be digitised in 2013. The archive was in danger of being destroyed when the Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles purchased it.

Professor of History at AUT Dr Paul Moon says the auction provides a valuable opportunity for an important part of our history to be returned.

“As far as I know there is no other archive of this scale covering an entire century, focused on rugby in the country’s history. It is difficult to imagine a collection that is more significant to sport in Aotearoa.

“Without this collection of images, it would be impossible to piece together a detailed visual record of the history of rugby in New Zealand to anywhere near the same extent. These photographs are a crucial part of the documentary record of the sport and are of international significance.

Dr Moon says that traditionally rugby has been regarded in various ways as a contributing part of our national identity.

“It has fortified stereotypes about masculinity, served as a focal point for social gatherings, particularly in rural communities, and has been associated with New Zealand sporting success internationally in a way that no other sport has.

“The 1981 Springbok tour revealed the extent to which rugby played a central role in society and politics. It also showed the international repercussions of the game.”

“Māori have played a crucial role in the development of rugby in New Zealand, not only through the substantial contribution of very successful players for more than a century but also culturally – most notably with the performance of the haka before major rugby games. This has become an internationally recognisable aspect of New Zealand rugby.

“A photographic collection such as this is always going to be about more than just the immediate subject – in this case rugby. It is a form of visual documentary history, and contains traces of major social changes in the country over the century, it provides a means of reflecting on the nature of New Zealand society in that period,” says Dr Moon.

Daniel Miller of Duncan Miller Gallery says the rugby collection, valued at several hundred thousand dollars, is a visual cache capturing New Zealand’s pivotal rugby moments from the 20th century.

It is part of a larger collection of images initially featured in news stories taken by photographers for regional and national newspapers under the Fairfax banner.

Miller says it is his hope an organisation or private collector supportive of New Zealand rugby will purchase this part of the archive, to help ensure it is returned intact to local ownership.

“This is certainly the largest collection of New Zealand rugby photographs ever made available on the open market. It contains subject matter on everything rugby from the early 1900s for an entire century. Many of the photographs are the only remaining visual artefacts of these moments, with long-lost negatives.

”Earlier this year the National Library of New Zealand purchased another taonga archive with thousands of images illustrating Māori life from the early 20th century.

Miller says in addition to the rugby collection the archive contains thousands more images depicting aspects of Aotearoa’s history and key moments.

“We also have images of anti-nuclear protests, the 1931 Hawkes Bay earthquake, and pre-WWII military training camps for high school students.

“The rugby collection is being auctioned as one full set to a private citizen, group, or an institution through the online auction platform accessible through rugbygreats.co.nz this month,” he says.

Miller says the 41,000 images in the auction have no reserve and a starting price of $1.

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