Every photograph is a window into the past- and sometimes what you see surprises you. Children singing a waiata about being kind to animals seems like a modern day school lesson, but the writing on this slide is from 1924! In the 1920s only a few private schools taught the grammer of Te Reo. Tragically, all the other schools saw speaking Te Reo as a caning offence. Was this slide of one of the private schools- or a smaller group or club? We just don't know.

Or maybe these children were located at Waiata Shores, near Auckland (although even then, few schools used Te Reo names for locations back in the 1920s).

Art historian Walter Benjamin coined a term called 'optical unconsciousness' and part of that is seeing a photograph in hindsight. The people in it do not know the future, but we do. Whatever this photograph depicted it seems like it belongs in our present than in it's past.

But the past is full of surprises!

His mother Dora (Theodora McCutcheon) on her wedding day.

An unidentified man is leaning against door frame in this oval photograph. The building into which the doorway is made of weatherboard. The man is wearing trousers and a vest over a shirt with a bow tie. He has his hands in his pants pockets.

1 B&W postcard

Any use of this image must be accompanied by the credit “Horowhenua Historical Society Inc.”

Printed on mounting board below photo - J. Bragge Photographer, Wellington, N.Z.

Printed on back - Portrait and Landscape Photographer James Bragge Wellington, New Zealand. Copies and enlargements to any size may always be had from this negative No. ......

Unidentified middle-aged man

Any use of this image must be accompanied by the credit “Horowhenua Historical Society Inc.”