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Robin Morrison Collection

Pictorial Collections 

The 1500 images available on the pictorial database are from a group of transparencies chosen by Robin Morrison when donating his collection to the museum. Out of 100,000 transparencies and negatives, Morrison selected those images he felt to be the best and most representative of his work.

For Morrison, the publication of his work was paramount – books such as The South Island of New Zealand from the Road  and At Home and Abroad  represent his selections, and his artistic choice, in both image and sequence.

There are certain themes which recur in his photographs, such as his interest in people in their domestic environments – living rooms, backyards, porches – sometimes it is their character that is the key to the shot, or the uniqueness of their dwellings, such as Fred Flutey's paua shell living room. His landscape views often show places that have been altered, which show a human presence, such as the motif of the road in the Road to Middlemarch image. His use of colour is also notable, choosing brightly tinted baches, art-deco buildings or colourful crowds.

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"What Robin has achieved is to preserve the appearances, the manners, the idiosyncrasies and the attitudes of a lost age. It is all there in the stance of a farmer beside a river, the glance of a woman as she turns away, the way a road rises and falls with the breathing of the land…He caught the exact dimension of his time before it lengthened into shadow then dissolved into the dark."

Kevin Ireland, The Robin Morrison Collection,
Auckland Museum, 1997.

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Photographer: Morrison, Robin, 1944-1993
Collection: Robin Morrison Collection
ID Number: P2241
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Photographer: Morrison, Robin, 1944-1993
Collection: Robin Morrison Collection
ID Number: P2588
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Photographer: Morrison, Robin, 1944-1993
Collection: Robin Morrison Collection
ID Number: P1986
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Photographer: Morrison, Robin, 1944-1993
Collection: Robin Morrison Collection
ID Number: P2512
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Photographer: Morrison, Robin, 1944-1993
Collection: Robin Morrison Collection
ID Number: P5049

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