For many years, the Ashburton Museum has been looking after a vast collection of Ashburton Guardian photographic negatives, and now a curated selection of these images are now on display for the first time ever.

Caught in the Moment: Guardian photographs of 1974 is a special showcase of photographs that were taken by Guardian photographers around the town and district fifty years ago. The exhibition includes a combination of photos that went to print and ones that were never published in the newspaper. The exhibition is open to the public at the Ashburton Museum from today until July 21.

The vast assortment of Guardian negatives stored at the museum represent an important social history resource for the district. Dating from 1973 to 1999, they take up nearly three full shelving units in the museum’s photograph store room, and are accompanied by the photographers’ diaries for the period. The diaries include captions that correspond to what is written on many of the negative envelopes, which makes it easier for us as staff to find any photograph we could want from the collection.

An extensive process

Today, we think nothing of printing photographs at home or in the workplace. With the click of a button on the computer, data is sent from your machine to the printer, and within seconds you have a near-perfect printed image ready to use however you like. By contrast, photo processing, reproduction, enlargement, and printing were all a much more complicated process before the age of digital printing technology.

The traditional method of print photo reproduction involved a camera, dark-room, and etching baths, by which an image is transferred onto a sensitised sheet of zinc, and then etched in acids to produce a half-tone block. Photomechanical engraving machines appeared around the 1950s, which greatly sped up the process, and could engrave onto plastic, zinc, aluminium, or magnesium sheets. In the realm of newspaper publishing, the introduction of electronic photo engraving machines such as the Klischograph K155, introduced in the early 1970s, was a game-changer.

The K155 was a major upgrade from its 1950s predecessor, the K151, which could only produce a printer’s block no larger than 8 by 6 inches, and no re-sizing of images was possible. The Guardian installed a K155 machine in late 1971, becoming the fifth newspaper in New Zealand to acquire one of these units. The machine could reproduce images down to half-size, or up to nearly double the size of an original image.

Engraving escapades

Before the Guardian acquired the K155 machine, the work involved to get a photo in the newspaper was hurried and complicated. Gordon Binsted, a local photographer with his own studio, often took photographs for the Guardian in the early 1970s. On 10 December 1971, the Guardianpublished a story about what the frantic photo engraving process was like, starting from the point in time that Gordon would snap a photograph.

After a photo was taken by Gordon, he would take it to his studio dark-room and develop, print, and enlarge it to approximately 8 by 6 inches. The photo was then dried, placed in an envelope, and left at a depot for collection by the south-bound Press van. By that point, it was well after midnight.

At 3.15am., the van would arrive and take the photo down to Timaru. At 8:30 a.m., a firm of photo engravers would collect the photo and process it. Detailed instructions were provided to the engraving team by telephone. The image would be transferred to a sensitised sheet of zinc, and then etched in acid to produce a half-tone plate. Processing usually finished between 10.30 and 11am. The plate would then be taken to the Road Services depot at Timaru to catch the north-bound bus departing at 11.15am. and arriving in Ashburton just before 1pm. The plate would then be collected by Guardian staff, secured to a wooden mount, and then placed in position on the appropriate page in time for printing to commence at 2.50 – 3pm.

As you can imagine, this complicated operation did not always work as planned. Quite often engravings were overcarried on the bus and Guardian staff sometimes had to chase down their photographs as far as Dunsandel. Other times, if engravings temporarily “vanished”, then an urgent order for duplicate engravings was placed and once completed, a Guardian employee would drive south and meet one of the engraving team half-way to collect the plates. To publish photos on the same day as they were taken, on occasions such as Princess Anne and Prince Charles’ visit to Ashburton, a special trip to Timaru was necessary.

The K155 machine acquired by the Guardian made this stressful rigamarole completely obsolete, enabling the staff to prepare engravings in-house within minutes. So, the next time you come across an old newspaper or printed engraving in a book or a magazine, take a moment to reflect and think about how much effort must have gone into the reproduction of just one photograph back in the day.

By Connor Lysaght