Islands in time — a photographer records Palmerston Atoll in 1960
- Date: Wednesday, 21 March, 2018
- Time:
12.00 to 12.30pm
- Cost:
Free — booking is not required
- Location:
Turnbull Room, Ground Floor of the National Library, corner Molesworth and Aitken Streets
- Contact Details:
Come and celebrate Race Relations Day with us at the newly opened Islands in Time exhibition. The exhibition features photographs from the Alexander Turnbull Library, taken on Palmerston Atoll in the Cook Islands in 1960 by John Colles Burland. Enjoy a tour with National Library Exhibitions Specialist and curator Peter Ireland.
Photographs from Palmerston Atoll
The exhibition features photographs from the Alexander Turnbull Library, taken on Palmerston Atoll in the Cook Islands in 1960 by John Colles Burland
In 1992 the Turnbull Library acquired 700 colour transparencies recording John Colles Burland’s four-month stay on Palmerston Atoll in the Cook Islands in 1960, together with his unpublished manuscript describing this time.
Capturing a time of transition
The ‘close-knit community of sturdy character’ that Burland found on Palmerston, descended from Englishman William Marsters who, in the mid-19th century, with a number of Cook Islands wives, created the three main families of the atoll.
The exhibition captures Palmerston at a particular moment: a time of transition between a largely independent existence and one that tied the atoll more closely to the Cook Islands administration, while exposing the population of the atoll to the opportunities of a wider world.
