Leo Lemuel White
New Zealand photographer, photojournalist, aviator, publisher and writer (1906-1967)
Leo Lemuel White (1906–1967) was a New Zealand photographer and aviator, best known for his aerial photography company, Whites Aviation.
Leo White was born in Auckland, New Zealand on 4 July 1906 to May Rae and Albert Edward White, a carter. He went to school in Ellerslie and Remuera and then became a telegraph messenger. He soon took up photography, working at the New Zealand Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic Review, being freelance and later working for the New Zealand Herald. He became known for aerial photography from about 1921 and, in February 1942 joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a photographer in New Zealand and the Pacific.
Whites Aviation
In 1945 Whites Aviation Limited was started in Auckland, publishing books and magazines, including several editions of an air directory, and also being a travel agent, from at least 1949 to 1955. During the 1950s Whites Aviation had a team of about 8 artists, who worked on producing popular hand-coloured photographs using oil paints.
In 2007 the Alexander Turnbull Library purchased the Whites Aviation collection—as well as the copyright to the images—and has 79,549 of its items on its website. The building occupied by Whites Aviation remains on the corner of Darby and Elliott Streets, close to Auckland's Queen Street.
Personal life
On 5 June 1934 he married Irene Elizabeth Blakey at the Pitt Street Church, Auckland.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Leo Lemuel White” is new Zealand photographer, photojournalist, aviator, publisher and writer (1906-1967). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lemuel, White and Zealand, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6523985. VIAF identifies the subject as 93128506. The Library of Congress control number is no2006047771. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1967, 1921 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leo Lemuel White” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.