Alfred Henry Burton (c. 1834 – 2 February 1914) is a nineteenth-century New Zealand photographer.
Burton was born in Leicester, England. [1] His father, John Burton, was a photographer and his firm was called John Burton and Sons. Burton and his three brothers also did photography. [2] [3] His brother Walter John Burton emigrated to New Zealand first and after being inundated with work requested Alfred join him, and in 1868 he did. The business was renamed Burton Brothers. Alfred Burton travelled in New Zealand taking landscape images for the business including Fiordland, the Southern Lakes and South Westland. [2]
In 1877 the brother business partnership split up. Walter left for Europe and Alfred took over the firm. He employed other photographers such as George Moodie and Thomas Muir. A trip to the Pacific Islands in 1884 had Burton creating staged photographs of people and villages. [2]
Significant photographs of Burtons were taken during 1885 to 1886 when he went to the King Country in the western North Island of New Zealand. With little contact of photography the Māori people in the photographs didn't pose and the 150 plates he took are now considered useful ethnographic portraiture. [4]
After the destruction of the New Zealand tourist attraction the Pink and White Terraces in 1886 Burton took new photos, his 'before and after' shots were useful to researchers. Burton continued practicing with the Burton Brothers business in the 1880s but had stopped by 1889. [2] [5] [6] The business continued and prospered from a demand for postcards in the early 1900s. [2] Henry Burton the son of Burton who worked at the business as a photographer, was killed in a horse accident in 1901. [2]
After his retirement from photography Burton invested is time in theatrical and other pursuits. He helped found the Dunedin Shakespeare Club, he started writing and there was an elocution school that his daughter Oona Burton worked at for a time. [7]
Burton came ninth in the three-member City of Dunedin electorate in the 1896 election. [8] [9]
Burton died in 1914. [2]
The Pink and White Terraces, were natural wonders of New Zealand. They were reportedly the largest silica sinter deposits on earth. Until recently, they were lost and thought destroyed in the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera, while new hydrothermal features formed to the south-west i.e. Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley.
Mount Tarawera is a volcano on the North Island of New Zealand. Located 24 kilometres southeast of Rotorua, it consists of a series of rhyolitic lava domes that were fissured down the middle by an explosive basaltic eruption in 1886. This eruption was one of New Zealand's largest historical eruptions, and killed an estimated 120 people. The fissures run for about 17 kilometres northeast-southwest.
Christian Gottlieb Ferdinand Ritter von Hochstetter was a German-Austrian geologist.
Pamukkale, meaning "cotton castle" in Turkish, is a natural site in Denizli Province in southwestern Turkey. The area is famous for a carbonate mineral left by the flowing of thermal spring water. It is located in Turkey's Inner Aegean region, in the River Menderes valley, which has a temperate climate for most of the year.
Te Wairoa was a village, now a ghost town that is also known as the Buried Village, close to the shore of Lake Tarawera in New Zealand's North Island. It was a Māori and European settlement founded in 1848 by the Revd Seymour Mills Spencer where visitors would stay on their way to visit the Pink and White Terraces. The village was destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Mount Tarawera on June 10, 1886. 120 people died in the eruption, many of them in other villages closer to the volcano. The site of one of these villages (Kokotaia) was instrumental in the recent rediscovery of the Pink and White Terrace locations.
Lake Rotomahana is an 800-hectare (2,000-acre) lake in northern New Zealand, located 20 kilometres to the south-east of Rotorua. It is immediately south-west of the dormant volcano Mount Tarawera, and its geography was substantially altered by a major 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera. Along with the mountain, it lies within the Okataina caldera.
Lake Tarawera is the largest of a series of lakes which surround the volcano Mount Tarawera in the North Island of New Zealand. Like the mountain, it lies within the Okataina caldera. It is located 18 kilometres (11 mi) to the east of Rotorua, and beneath the peaks of the Tarawera massif i.e. Wahanga, Ruawahia, Tarawera and Koa. The lake's surface area is 39 square kilometres (15 sq mi).
New Zealand photography first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, and over time has become an important part of New Zealand art. A number of photography associations exist to support photographers in New Zealand.
Saturnia is a spa town in Tuscany in north-central Italy that has been inhabited since ancient times. It is a frazione of the comune of Manciano, in the province of Grosseto. Famous for the spa which gives it its name, its population is 280.
Orakei Korako is a highly active geothermal area most notable for its series of fault-stepped sinter terraces, located in a valley north of Taupō on the banks of the Waikato River in the Taupō Volcanic Zone, New Zealand. It is also known as "The Hidden Valley".
The following lists events that happened during 1886 in New Zealand.
Walter John Burton (1836–1880) was a New Zealand nineteenth-century photographer.
Burton Brothers (1866–1914) was one of New Zealand's most important nineteenth-century photographic studios and was based in Dunedin, New Zealand. It was founded by Walter John Burton (1836–1880) in 1866 as the Grand Photographic Saloon and Gallery and was situated in Princes Street, Dunedin.
Frederic Hardwicke Knight, QSO was a London-born photographer, historian and collector who emigrated to New Zealand in 1957 to take up a medical photography position in Dunedin. He lived at Broad Bay until ten months before his death at a Dunedin nursing home. His publications include New Zealand's first comprehensive photographic history, many compilations of early Dunedin and Otago photographs, biographies of several early New Zealand photographers and of British photographer William Russell Sedgfield, three books of architectural history and a seminal history of the Otago Peninsula. He was awarded a QSO in 1991. An eccentric polymath, Knight was well known for his striking appearance, his ramshackle Broad Bay cottage crammed with his collections and his self-proclaimed exploits, most notably his claim to have found timbers on Mount Ararat that might have been Noah's Ark.
George Dobson Valentine (1852–1890) was a Scottish photographer.
The region around the city of Rotorua, in New Zealand's North Island, contains several lakes. From biggest to smallest, these are Lake Rotorua, Lake Tarawera, Lake Rotoiti, Lake Rotoma, Lake Okataina, Lake Rotoehu, Lake Rotomahana, Lake Rerewhakaaitu, Lake Rotokakahi, Lake Okareka and Lake Tikitapu. There are also four smaller lakes: Lake Okaro/Ngakaro, Lake Rotokawa, Lake Rotokawau and Lake Rotongata. Most of the lakes have formed due to volcanic activity. The region is part of the Taupo Volcanic Zone, the world's most active area of explosive silicic volcanic activity in geologically recent time.
Charles Blomfield was an English-born artist who executed paintings of New Zealand landscapes, including the Pink and White Terraces, a notable natural feature that was later destroyed in the 1886 eruption of Tarawera.
Fiona Dorothy Pardington is a New Zealand artist, her principal medium being photography.
In 1886, a violent eruption occurred at Mount Tarawera, near the city of Rotorua on New Zealand's North Island. At an estimated Volcanic Explosivity Index of 5, the eruption is the largest and deadliest in New Zealand during the past 500 years, which includes the entirety of European history in New Zealand. The eruption began in the early hours of 10 June 1886 and lasted for approximately 6 hours, causing a 10-kilometre-high (6.2 mi) ash column, earthquakes, lightning, and explosions to be heard as far away as Blenheim. A 17-kilometre-long (11 mi) rift formed across the mountain and surrounding area during the eruption, starting from the Wahanga peak at the mountain's northern end and extending in a southwesterly direction, through Lake Rotomahana and forming the Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley.
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