Living in the 20th Century

Introduction

Living in the Twentieth Century: New Zealand History in Photographs, 1900–1980 explores everyday life in New Zealand from 1900 to the mid-1980s. Captioned photographs and short essays show where people lived, how they communicated with each other, what they ate and wore, how they worked and played and shared some of the significant public events of the century. The changing rhythms of daily life for Maori and Pakeha, town and country, men and women, young and old are the subject of this book. A small selection of images from each of the chapters is on display in this exhibition.

Archives New Zealand holds the records of most government agencies, and its photographic collection of approximately a million items charts the activity of the state from the 1860s to the early 1990s. It is much more than simply an official government record of New Zealand. As well as photographs taken by official photographers employed by government departments or the government's own photographic branch, there are snapshots taken by private individuals, such as this photograph of the staff of the Public Trust Office at their annual picnic in the 1920s.