Henry Winkelmann

Henry Winkelmann (26 September 1860 – 5 July 1931) was a New Zealand photographer. Winkelmann's photographs covered a wide range of topics, but he is best known for his yachting photographs.

Henry Winkelmann was born at 8 Melbourne Place, Bradford, Yorkshire, England on 26 September 1860, one of eight children of Peter Winkelmann, a stuff and yarn merchant, and Louise Schüller, German immigrants to the United Kingdom. He grew up at Follingworth House in Gomersal, where his family moved to in 1865. He may have attended school in Doncaster and Neuwied, Germany. A musical child, Winkelmann learnt how to play the piano, organ and the zither.

His older brother, Charles, immigrated to New Zealand in 1875, where he first became a schoolteacher, then a chemist and later a photographer. After Charles had emigrated, Henry took over many family responsibilities. The family moved twice during this period, first to Carlton Hall in Bramley then to Selbourne Grove in Manningham, where Winkelmann's father died in 1877.

In July 1878, Henry left England aboard the Calypso, following his brother to New Zealand, arriving at Port Chalmers in Dunedin in October. His mother, Louise, and five sisters followed him to New Zealand in the mid-1880s.

By 1881 after travelling the country, Winkelmann was living in a boarding house in Hobson Street, Auckland. He and fellow boarder Harold Willey Hudson, were hired by businessman Thomas Henderson to claim uninhabited Jarvis Island, a location valued for its guano, attempting to secure the island for a period of at least three months. Leaving on the schooner Sunbeam in June 1881, arriving in August, the pair spent a total of eight months stranded and isolated on the island, during which Winkelmann began sketching as a hobby.

In November 1882, Winkelmann joined the Bank of New Zealand. He began work at the Wellington branch, before moving to the Levuka, Fiji branch from November 1883, returning to New Zealand in July 1886, after which he worked at the Queen Street branch. While in Fiji, Winkelmann's mother and sisters migrated to New Zealand. Winkelmann was based in Christchurch from April 1887 to July 1888, and at Sydney from late 1889 to April 1891, and Wellington from November 1894.

Winkelmann first purchased property on Great Barrier Island in the early 1880s. In November 1888, he purchased 200 acres (81 ha) of land near Medlands Beach, which he called Ti Tree Flat, and established an orchard at the location. In January 1895, Winkelmann and his colleague Richard Cecil Moorsom Harrington resigned from the ban, purchasing 952 acres (385 ha) of land at Rosalie Bay, which they called the Rosalie Bay Estate. Later that year, Winkelmann decided to leave Great Barrier Island due to the financial disaster of the farming enterprise, with Harrington remaining to continue farming. Winkelmann asked to be reinstated at the bank, and was placed in Blenheim, where he worked until 1897, returning to Auckland after hearing of his mother's death.

Winkelmann supplemented his income by teaching the zither and performing in concerts; with Mrs. Buckland of Highwic being among his clients. Winkelmann also began making money from photography, after purchasing a Lancaster Instantograph camera in April 1892. He likely set up a darkroom in his mother's house called Claremont at 14 Dock Street (now Huia Street), Devonport, where the family moved to in 1892. In 1895, Winkelmann won a second prize in the New Zealand Graphic photographic competition, for a photograph Winkelmann took of Rosalie Bay. His interests in yachting began in 1893 after meeting the Horton brothers, who owned the yacht Tawera. Winkelmann would accompany the family on their cruises, and began taking photographs of watercraft during this period.