Born in 1912, Augustis spent the first 20 years of his life in Novosibirsk, Siberia, where his ancestors had been deported after the 1863 January Uprising against the Russian Empire. He received his initial training in photography there.
After moving to Białystok in 1932, he worked as an apprentice in a photographic studio before opening his own business. In 1939, he was arrested by the Soviet NKVD secret police and deported to Siberia.
He later joined the Anders Army and, after World War II, lived briefly in Britain before settling in New Zealand. There, he gave up professional photography and made his living running a construction company. He never returned to Poland and died in 1995.
Interest in his work was revived in 2004, when two boys discovered a collection of his photographs and negatives in an abandoned shed. The find, numbering some 12,000 items, has been described by experts as one of the most important visual records of Białystok in the 1935-1938 period.
Over the last two decades, selections of Augustis' work have been exhibited in Poland and abroad, including in Italy, Germany and France, and published in album form.
The Auckland exhibition has been put together by the Białystok-based Widok Association for Cultural Education. Its representative Urszula Dąbrowska told Poland's PAP news agency that support from Augustis' family in New Zealand was crucial.
"We were given access to a photo album documenting Augustis' service in the Anders Army, as well as a selection of photos featuring family events and those of the local Polish community," she said.
The Auckland Festival of Photography wrote on its website that Augustis' work offers a unique link between Poland and New Zealand, documenting both prewar life in Białystok and the postwar Polish diaspora in Auckland.
(mk/gs)