Slice of history: How NZ golfers got their photos back

Historic photographs sent overseas, lost, and then destined for the landfill are filling gaps in not just our cultural history, but our sporting history as well.

Golf New Zealand is one of the buyers of a portion of the 1.4 million photos taken by Fairfax news photographers throughout the 20th century, and then sent to the United States to be digitised by Rogers Photo Archive in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2013.

However, they were taken as collateral on a multi million-dollar loan when Rogers went bust, and then destined to be destroyed.

The Duncan Miller Gallery bought the entire collection from a bank, in the hope of restoring the rapidly degenerating photographs and finding buyers for them back in Aotearoa.

Daniel Miller from the gallery said they had been having trouble finding buyers, despite approaching a range of organisations with photos relating to their histories.

But Golf New Zealand decided the price was worth it, buying some five boxes of photographs from the Fairfax Archive, saying it was money well spent.

Handicapping and golf services manager Phil Aickin said the Duncan Miller Gallery got in touch with Golf NZ by email a couple of years ago, and the offer struck a chord.

"I'd spent a good number of years working on a book that we put out a couple of years ago called The History of Golf in New Zealand," Aickin said. "It was an update of a book produced in the seventies.

"The hardest part of putting that book together was finding images, so when Daniel said he was passing through and he was happy to bring some samples, I gave him some names and we sat down and probably had 20 or 30 photos, and I was highly impressed with what he had."

Miller told him there were about 10,000 photos relating to golf among the collection back in the US.

Aickin said it made up an important part of the sport's history, and while the women's game had been dedicated with record-keeping, the men's game had been less so.

"I didn't want to let the opportunity go, wanting to preserve our history and knowing that there would be some gold nuggets amongst them and then, you know, hopefully a lot of good photos, even shots of our [about 400 nationwide] golf clubs for their history."

Famous golfers' visits had been captured, along with some famous tournaments. "Tiger Woods, of course, 20 odd years ago, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, all of the greats in the game have been here, and it's nice to be able to recognise that in the way of images."

Cost was almost a sticking point. Aickin said the board "thought long and hard about it", and the negotiations with the gallery went back and forth, but ultimately the decision was made to go ahead.

"We would like to at some stage to update our history book and whether that be a book or images online, we've now got an abundance of photos that we will be able to draw upon.

The photos have now been digitised, with the hard copies stored for safekeeping.

Miller previously told RNZ he would like nothing better than to return all the photos to New Zealand hands, saying his happiest day would be to sell them all in one go to one buyer.

He had recently ramped up efforts to find new homes for different parts of the collection, approaching sports teams, cultural organisations, libraries and museums.

He said he was disappointed they hadn't been met with more enthusiasm, but staff would keep trying.