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Back to the future as ‘News’ goes live
Friday, October 19, 2012
WEDDINGS, 21st birthdays, even “the opening of a fridge” . . . the social history of the region was for more than two decades documented in the Gisborne Photo News and now the News has gone “live”.

About 200 people last night were at Lawson Field Theatre to mark the launch of the Gisborne Photo News Digitisation Project.

The $50,000 project takes the pages of the Photo News magazine and puts it online, meaning users can search for any of the thousands of people who featured in the News during its 1954-1975 run.

It is not the first such project. Another of founder Bob Logan’s publications, the Nelson Photo News, went live in July.

But according to Wellington cultural digitisor Jason Darwin, who carried out the work, it was the largest digitisation project undertaken by a regional New Zealand community.

Bob Logan’s eldest son John ran the News during its later years and he recalled how his father had dreamed of creating a record of social life in Gisborne.

It started small — a darkroom in his Aberdeen Road home — but at its height, Logan Publishing was printing Photo News editions for nine regions around New Zealand – a total of 60,000 copies a month, nearly three-quarters of a million every year.

“We’re all so very proud of Bob. What he created was a publishing phenomenon the like of which had never been seen before,” John Logan said at last night’s launch.

“Changing times meant that, in 1975, the era of Photo News had come to an end . . . or so we thought. Back then we had no inkling of the digital revolution that was to come, and that it would take Photo News into the future.”

The project was initiated by Gisborne District Council district librarian Pene Walsh who — in the way many Gisborne deals are done — simply asked John Logan if he would gift the copyright, to which he readily agreed.

“Bob (Logan) said he had wanted to create ‘a fascinating record of life in Gisborne’ and that is exactly what he did,” she said.

“Now, thanks to the generosity of the Logan family, we will always have access to the stories in this amazing resource.”

MORE ON THE PROJECT IN TOMORROW’S HERALD
THOSE WERE THE DAYS: Their own family life was documented — girls (most notably John’s wife Diane Logan), cars (Geoff), “best dressed teen” (Geoff again) — along with those of the tens of thousands of other people who featured in the Gisborne Photo News. Now the magazine founded by Sally Dunford (absent) and Geoff (left) and John (right) Logan’s father Bob has been digitised to form a fascinating online archive officially launched last night. Picture by Paul Rickard
Comments
Jenny Jackson
10:13 a.m. Monday, Oct 22, 2012
Bring back the Gisborne Photo News . . . fantastic read and kept our community connected . . . also a fantastic record of our past.
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