The recovery of seventeen glass plate negatives from a well in Invercargill offered a rare opportunity to study them as artefacts, within the context of a late nineteenth and early twentieth century photography studio. They were able to be analysed as both objects and as documentary sources through the identification of the glass support, the chemical photographic method, and the images depicted in the negatives. The analysis uncovered that they are gelatin dry plate negatives and most of the fashion seen in the images dates to the 1890s. The identification of these aspects helped to establish the terminus ante quem and terminus post quem for the glass plate negatives, and a likely date of creation in the 1890s. The identification of the furniture, with the support of the rest of the analysis and the historical research, also enabled the identification of the photographer as Charles Campbell. These artefacts demonstrated how the latest global trends in glass plate negative photography and fashion were observed in Invercargill, in the 1890s.
Madison Paige Gamble (Thu,) studied this question.