Everybody’s Artist Photographer: Collaborators and creative influences in the work of Charles Peet Dawes

Abstract

When 1670 glass plate negatives taken by Kohukohu photographer Charles Peet Dawes were gifted to Auckland Libraries in 2018, it was immediately obvious from annotations on the negative envelopes that established ideas of how and when Charlie took up photography needed to be re-examined. Charlie’s notes also revealed the names of some previously unsuspected Hokianga visitors and residents who influenced and assisted him in his artistic endeavours. In addition, buried in the collection was a unique record of the 1898 Dog Tax Rebellion together with invaluable and historically important photographs of the people and communities of the Hokianga at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.