The Auckland Festival of Photography is delighted to present, from the Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, a selection of music-themed images from the John Rykenberg collection.
John Rykenberg (1927-2014) was a Dutch immigrant who started out taking photographs of patrons in Auckland clubs and restaurants in the late 1950s. Before long he’d opened a studio in the basement of a car wrecker’s in Ponsonby, eventually moving ‘Rykenberg Photography’ to more accessible premises in Albert Street. His business swiftly grew to include weddings, social and professional functions and, inevitably, nightlife and the music scene.
His negatives, comprising more than one million frames, were donated to Auckland Libraries in 2014.
