Weetbix for breakfast : a snapshot of Thelma Kent

Abstract

This article considers a series of images by Themla Kent from several private collections to uncover and analyse in more detail information about Kent's life and her work: "[these images] have the potential to provide visual confirmation of what we already know about the photographer and her lifestyle from firsthand accounts. She was an outgoing person who put great store in the bonds of friendship and family. Her abiding passion was throughout her life was to be in the great outdoors, recording what she saw with her camera and in so doing, it could be argued, she continued in the spirit of her early New Zealand predecessors as an explorer-photographer... Thompson's carefully annotated album is an important resource for the present discussion on the life and times of Thelma Kent since it covers the years from the mid 1920s until the mid 1930s - the period when Kent was developing her skills as a photographer and a personal vision in her chosen art form. To support and expand the discussion, selected images from the collections of Naare Hooper, Lucy Fullwood, Malcolm Thompson and Erica Stewart have also been included".