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Taranaki families invited to share lives behind the photographs of returned service personnel

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PUBLISHED: 22 APR 2025
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As the country looks ahead to ANZAC Day, NPDC’s Puke Ariki is inviting the Taranaki community to explore their family histories and help identify hundreds of returned service personnel whose stories remain untold in their photographic collections.

“Each photograph in the collection is someone’s loved one – someone who contributed to our community,” says Louise Pease, Taranaki Research Centre Librarian.

“Through doing this, we are adding to our understanding of Taranaki’s past and capturing stories that helped form who we are today.”

Together with the team at the Taranaki Research Centre, Louise is working through the Swainson Woods studio collection, which contains over 111,000 negatives spanning 1923-1997, and includes men and women who served during the Second World War.

While around 500 personnel have been identified, and now more than 70 individual lives have been researched, more than 300 photographs remain with only a surname attached – waiting for families to reconnect with them.

They are presented online in a special section of Te Rangi Aoao Nunui – Puke Ariki’s collection of Taranaki historic and cultural stories, and follows on from the touching "We'll Meet Again" touchscreen display in the library, which will be incorporated into the Te Rangi Aoao Nunui servicepeople’s section over the next year.

“We are hoping that similar images exist in family albums and on mantlepieces and we can connect the images in our archives with the stories of the people captured,” says Louise.

"Even snippets of their lives are valuable – we can cross link to other stories, collection records, old newspapers and relevant external sources like the Auckland War Memorial Museum Online Cenotaph records and Ancestry to extend and deepen the story.”
“These human details transform a formal portrait into a window into someone's world."

In the coming weeks, visitors can view historical photographs on the big screen in the Museum foyer—perhaps spotting a familiar smile that brings a family story back to life.

By sharing your whānau history, you ensure the stories of Taranaki's people continue to be remembered for generations to come.

How to contribute:

• Visit Service Members: Tell Us About Them and see if you can spot an ancestor who fought in World War Two.
• Share their details via ‘Public comments’, or by visiting the Taranaki Research Centre at Puke Ariki, part of New Plymouth District Council’s Cultural Experiences group.
• Visit Te Rangi Aoao Nunui to find out about other Taranaki men and women who served.

 

Photo: Collage of some of the images of service men and women featured in a special section of Te Rangi Aoao Nunui at Puke Ariki.  Images from the Swainson/Woods Collection, Puke Ariki and District Libraries.

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Page last updated: 04:40pm Tue 22 April 2025

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