Russell Duncan: Re-tracing history

Abstract

This article considers the construction and meaning of time in Russell Duncan’s photographs. A hobbyist photographer and passionate historian, Duncan extensively photographed
sites associated with early European explorers and colonial history in New Zealand, focussing primarily on those associated with Captain Cook. This article analyses, for the first time, Duncan’s use of the sequential format of photographic albums to manipulate timelines in order to visually reconstruct historical narratives. By analysing Duncan’s photographs of sites associated with Captain Cook in detail, this article investigates how Duncan’s photographs, read both individually and in a sequence, fuse past and present in their re-tracing of history.