Whites Aviation Ltd: Photographs

Photographs taken by Leo White and Whites Aviation Ltd, circa 1907-1988. The collection covers the following areas:

Extensive general coverage of New Zealand from air and ground

Extensive coverage of Auckland region

Antarctica

Pacific: Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands (including WW2), Bougainville, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Kermadec Islands, Norfolk Island. Mostly RNZAF 1940s, and airline publicity 1940s-1950s

Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand (airline publicity 1940s-1950s, possibly taken for Qantas)

Aviation history and portraits. Pioneers, NZPAF & RNZAF, airlines, personalities

Transport: scows, Pamir in Auckland 1948, shipping, railways

Sport: fishing, rugby, cricket, motor sport

Factories and industrial activities

Farms and rural activities.

Descriptive and dating information obtained from Whites Aviation negative registers, spreadsheet catalogue, original negative enclosures, and file prints.

Title supplied by Library.

Whites Aviation Ltd was established in 1945 by Leo White (1906-1967) to produce a series of popular illustrated publications of aviation history and aerial photography. White began to freelance as a photographer in the 1920s, and later worked for the Weekly News. He was closely involved with aviation in Auckland 1920s-1930s, and pioneered aerial photography in the region. He compiled 'Wingspread, a history of New Zealand aviation', in 1941; and served as a photographer with the RNZAF during WWII. During the early 1950s he covered New Zealand by air, taking photographs for 'Whites pictorial reference of New Zealand'.

Quantity: 34 container(s) negatives, transparencies and prints. 12 megabyte(s) (2 spreadsheets, 1 database). 10 volume(s) of negative registers.

Finding Aids: Original negative register books are online at Series-6385. A spreadsheet providing access to folders and boxes of photographic prints is online at PADL-000164. Boxes of file prints are at PAColl-10010. An incomplete listing of negative numbers, locations, subjects is online at at PADL-000198. Paper lists of aircraft and substation negatives are held in the Photographic Archive back file..

Provenance: After the death of Leo White, the company was sold to Modern Productions Ltd, and then in 1988 was purchased by Air Logistics, which later became GeoSmart (now known as Aerial Surveys Ltd). In 2007 the Library purchased from Geosmart the collection of approximately 80,000 negatives, approximately 55,000 prints, and 10 negative registers, The Library also purchased the copyright to these images.

Processing information: The negatives in this collection have been described during four different phases and show differing levels of descriptive detail depending on the resources that were available. Firstly, there are records for images which have been described following a copying order from the public; these images are described in full. Secondly, there are records created during the Library's Pictures Online project 2010-2012, where scant records were created from scans of the negatives, information on the glassine sleeves that housed the original negatives, and the original Whites Aviation negative registers. This second group makes up the majority of records in the collection, but these records do not include additional index terms e.g. for Place, Name or Subject.Thirdly, there are images described during Arrangement and Description team training of Research Services staff (2013-2014), These extend the level of description given for the second group to include, generally, Place authority information. Fourthly there are the Aviation Personal, Aviation Personalities, and Aviation Historical series which were described from the original negative enclosures and boxes, the original negatives were only sighted to establish whether the negative was film or glass.

NOTES: Panoramas that are part of the third group (WA-42400 to WA-46895 and WA-47882 to WA-55324) still generally have only scant level descriptions.

Negative registers were given additional date description in June 2019.

Rights information updated on 10 June 2019 to show CC-BY 4.0 licence for aerial photographs taken after 1945. Rights statements for remaining images to be updated following further review.