8 May 2023

Selfies from a ghost town: Jos

From Nine To Noon, 10:05 am on 8 May 2023

The story of lost gold and a ghost town kept alive by one man's photography is told in a new doco Jos - The Forgotten Photographer Who Saved A Town

Waiuta is a dot of a place on the West Coast south of Reefton.

Bringing it back to life on film started three years ago, when Dave Kwant and co-producer Robyn Janes started work on a documentary about Waiuta Whispers of Gold

But it soon became apparent who the star of the show really was.  Photographs taken in the early 1900s by Czech emigre Jos Divis had kept the town alive, despite it being abandoned in the 1950s, with billions of dollars worth of gold still left underground.

The filmmakers were amazed to find Jos Divis had been overlooked - even though he is credited as being the "inventor of the selfie".

 Jos - The Forgotten Photographer Who Saved A Town was made thanks to the Friends of Waiuta who commissioned it and helped find funding.

Kathryn speaks with Dave Kwant, geologist and biographer Simon Nathan and photographer Brian Scadden who has recreated some of Divis' photographs using early 20th C equipment.