Fears historic collection of original NZ rugby photos could be lost

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify it is the physical original prints that could be lost. A digital collection is still available. 

There are fears New Zealand's largest collection of original historic rugby photos could be lost forever.

An archive featuring thousands of vintage photos of Māori, Pasifika, and New Zealand rugby players 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 2500 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 were part of a wider archive of 1.4 million photographs from 20th century New Zealand, owned by Australian media company Fairfax and taken by photographers from regional papers such as The Dominion Post and The Press, which until 2020 were owned by Fairfax.

The photos were sent to the United States to be digitised in 2013, but taken as collateral by a bank when the digitisation company went under, and became destined for the landfill.

They were saved by the Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles, which got a call at the final hour in a last-ditch effort to find the photos a home.

Thousands of photos of Māori life from the early 20th century in the collection were brought back into New Zealand hands by the National Library.

The collection contained 5300 images of tangata whenua and was independently valued at $340,000, but Daniel Miller, of Duncan Miller Gallery, said the National Library got it for less than that.

However, the original rugby photos are still up for grabs.

They will be sold as one lot through an online auction platform by 19 September.

Miller said the 41,000 images had no reserve and a starting price of $1.

AUT history professor Dr Paul Moon said the auction for the rugby images was 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."

However, at this point, with no buyer such as the National Library lined up, Moon fears the collection, which he described as taonga and a national treasure, could ultimately be lost.

Moon was worried that whoever bought the collection would sell them on individually or in small groups.

"So the real risk is this will be a fragmented collection, that individuals will buy one or two or three photographs and they'll put them in their private collections and they'll disappear into bookshelves and never be united.

"This is something of national importance, if we don't secure it now it will never be secure. In an ideal world, with an unlimited amount of money, a major library or the government or New Zealand Rugby would step in and buy the whole collection. But that seems highly unlikely."

However, Stuff Group (formerly Fairfax) who owns the Fairfax Archive digital collection said the images remain as an intact digital collection in the possession of Stuff.

It said the images will not vanish as claimed and can still be accessed via Stuff's digital collection.

In a statement, New Zealand Rugby said it hoped the archive was preserved, but confirmed the organisation wouldn't be purchasing the physical images.

"New Zealand Rugby understands the Fairfax vintage photography archive is being auctioned and includes more than 25,000 rugby images from 1910 - 2000.

"We acknowledge the importance of the history of rugby in Aotearoa, and while it would be great to see the archive be purchased and return to New Zealand shores. It is not something NZR as an organisation can do but hopefully, they're purchased and preserved for years to come."

Part of our national identity

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

"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.

"Maori 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."

Daniel Miller said the rugby collection, valued at several hundred thousand dollars, was a visual cache capturing New Zealand's pivotal rugby moments from the 20th century.

It was 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 hoped an organisation or private collector supportive of New Zealand rugby would purchase this part of the archive, to help ensure it was 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."

Miller said in addition to the rugby collection the archive contained thousands more images depicting aspects of Aotearoa's history and key moments.

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