New Zealand Photography Collected

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From the sublime to the surreal, the familiar to the forgotten and the 1850s to the present see New Zealand photography like never before in this unique visual history. New Zealand Photography Collected illuminates the history of photography in New Zealand, from the earliest nineteenth-century portraits of Mori and local `scenic views to the latest contemporary art photography. It features more than 400 photographs drawn from the national collection at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, beautifully reproduced and accompanied by richly informative descriptions. From the iconic to the previously unpublished, the selection includes outstanding photographs by James Bragge, Leslie Adkin, Spencer Digby, John Pascoe, Brian Brake, Frank Hofmann, Ans Westra, Eric Lee-Johnson, Marti Friedlander, Laurence Aberhart, Ann Shelton, Glenn Jowitt, Anne Noble, Yvonne Todd and many others. Author and curator Athol McCredie offers a fresh and compelling narrative that foregrounds photographys wide-ranging uses across portraiture, landscape, science, documentary photography and art, and contemplates the way it has been collected both privately and publicly through time. What emerges is not only an illuminating new history of the photographic medium but also a surprising and powerful portrait of Aotearoa New Zealand its landscapes, its people and its changing character as a nation.

Reviews

"New Zealand Photography Collected offers some six decades of our life, with a compelling immediacy there is a magical timelessness about photography which gives the past a vivid presence made richer here by being arranged as a lively subject and not by cold chronology. In these images we gaze at our ancestors and they gaze back; we share their landscapes and their celebrations, their tragedies and their private memorials." Hamish Keith

Author Bio

Athol McCredie is Curator Photography at Te Papa, where he has worked since 2001. Prior to that he was curator and acting director at Manawatu Art Gallery (now Te Manawa), and he has been involved with photography as researcher, curator and photographer since the 1970s. His publications include Witness to Change (co-authored with Janet Bayly, PhotoForum, 1985), Fields of Golden Daffodils (National Library, 1991) and Brian Brake: Lens on the world (Te Papa Press, 2010).