Archived collection of photographically-related news from New Zealand and abroad.

Iota - 18th August until Thursday 30th August
Obituary: Robert Dick (Tom) Hutchins 1921-2007
Roland Fischer & Thomas Ruff at Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
x3= A photographic exhibition
Krzysztof Pfeiffer: Whakarewarewa
Colours of New Zealand. Photographs by Krzysztof Pfeiffer. Auckland War Memorial Museum, until 15 January 2006
NO BORDERS NO BOUNDARIES International Photo Art Workshop Auckland University of Technology, School of Art and Design, 19-21 January 2006
Auckland Festival of Photography Website
OBITUARY: Peter Nicolas Turner (1947-2005)
Gift of NZ photographs to Parisian Museum
Handboek Ans Westra Photographs
New PhotoForum Committee Elected May 2006
See new portfolios in LINKS section
Songs of Innocence - Photographs of a New Zealand Childhood
George D. Valentine A 19th Century Photographer in New Zealand
PhotoForum # 69 now out
John Miller Receives Peace Award
Documentography
Photographs of the Historic American Buildings Survey: Georgia

Iota - 18th August until Thursday 30th August
Iota
18th August until Thursday 30th August


The exhibition "Iota" introduces the "ads collective"; the trio of photographers Abby Storey, Davina and sada. Following their x3= exhibition in 2006 ads cemented their complementary and contrasting talents, ADs launch an ongoing series of exhibitions with iota. Through "Iota" they examine items of cultural and social and environmental importance and how they are treated in the modern day. Each of the photographers work in a distinctive style, challenging the boundaries of photography, art and perception.

Abby Storey's latest work 'Casualised Touchstones of Time' is a series of photographic artworks of the familiar, the sacred and the circumstances that overtake them; A knock by a child, an overzealous use of sellotape, a large plastic bag.... such are the fates of many a familiar symbol in our fast tracked reality.

Stylised as thoughts, Davina's images combine the simplicity of subject and light with the intricate delicacies of fine art archival printing to produce a conceptual perspective of issues that confront our present day. Specialising in darkroom and digital printing Davina works from her Warkworth base 'Black Barn Studios' producing film and photography based projects.

sada has continued working with debris found on the local shores, collaging visual narratives of complexity and brevity. Sada is congruently showing work in an exhibition at Satellite Gallery in Central Auckland, "Light and Dark".

"Iota" will be on show from Saturday 18th August until Thursday 30th August at the Small Dog Gallery, which adjoins the Depot Artspace in Devonport. Brick Bay Wines have partnered the event with their Cabernet Sauvignon Franc wine, perfect for enjoying on a Saturday afternoon with some fine photography.

Opening 4pm Saturday 18th August

Small Dog Gallery
28 Clarence Street
Devonport
www.depotartspace.co.nz
    Date added: 16/8/2007

Obituary: Robert Dick (Tom) Hutchins 1921-2007
The death of the pioneer New Zealand photojournalist and art teacher, Robert Dick (Tom) Hutchins (85) occurred on 15 March, at his home in Auckland, where he was recuperating from a heart operation.

Tom Hutchins is best known as an internationally respected photojournalist and teacher of film and photography. But many others will know him as a social activist deeply involved in medical and local body lobbying.

Tom Hutchins initially trained as a primary teacher and taught for one year. But, inspired by documentary films, and the photojournalism of Picture Post and Life, he joined the New Zealand Herald as a cadet photographer at the end of 1941, and subsequently enrolled for a Diploma in Journalism at the University of Auckland. He was a committed socialist, and rather than breach his pacifist beliefs during World War II, he accepted detention as a conscientious objector. He married Florence Woodward on 23 December 1946, with whom he recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

His first big break as a photojournalist came while he was working for the Christchurch photographers Green & Hahn, when his dramatic bird's eye view of the tragic fire that destroyed Ballantyne's department store in Christchurch on 18 November 1947 was published by Life.

After a stint on the New Zealand Herald, he worked for the Auckland Star in its heyday as the most advanced New Zealand newspaper for featuring its photographer’s work. He became their Chief Photographer in 1952. He covered the Royal Tour of 1953-54 in New Zealand and the Pacific, and in 1955 his controversial photo essay on substandard housing for Maories in central Auckland caused heated debate in Parliament and editorial pressure to back off such sensitive subjects. During this period he joined the New York based Black Star picture agency.

Long interested in Chinese history and the revolutionary changes taking place there, his opportunity to photograph in China came in 1956, at the cost of his job at the Auckland Star. With the New Zealand government discouraging contact with the People’s Republic of China, and U.S. photographers forbidden by their own Government to enter China, he became one of the first Western photojournalists to work there after the civil war. His visit coincided with what is considered a peak of enthusiasm and success for the revolution, before Mao Zedong’s 100 Flowers Campaign of liberalisation was reversed and the flawed Great Leap Forward and disastrous Cultural Revolution took place.

Hutchins’ China essay, of which a book and exhibition organised by John B. Turner, his University of Auckland colleague and Editor of PhotoForum, is in preparation, was the most comprehensive and significant of his career. In four months he covered east China from Canton (now Guanzhou), and Shanghai in the south, to Peking (Beijing), Shenyang, Anshan, and Changchun in the north. He also traveled northwest from Sian (Xian) to Wuhan, and across the Gobi desert to far west Urumchi. The majority of his work was done in black & white, but of his most striking colour work is his documentation of the ancient cave art works of remote Tunhuang (Dunhuang), including a famous 32 metres high Buddha. Other Western photographers, like the New Zealand born photographer, Brian Brake, and his Magnum colleagues had to wait a year before they could enter China. Life magazine published 23 of Hutchins’ photographs in a ten-page spread, titled ‘Red China on the March,’ in January 1957.

Hutchins’ China work is significant not only for its quality and scope, John Turner says, but because it reflects the influence of the Russians in China before Sino-Russian relations soured, and captures a short period of intense optimism among the people. In Beijing during the 8th People’s Congress of June 1956, Hutchins photographed Mao Tse Tung, Chou En-lai, Liu Shao-chi, and Soong Ching-ling (madame Sun Yat Sen) among prominent participants.

Always a critical and enquiring observer, Hutchins was hastened out of China by the authorities, two months before his visa expired. He, apparently, had asked too many questions about the huge influx of people moving to the north-west, which some observers link to Mao’s nuclear ambitions of the time and the perceived need to build armaments and industry away from the vulnerable east coast.

As Life’s South Pacific stringer, he also covering the Melbourne Olympics and other stories for Time, and Sports Illustrated. From 1960 to 1964 he lived in New South Wales with his young family, studied social anthropology at Sydney University and freelanced as a photographer. While tutoring in sociology at the University of New England in Armidale, he encouraged Professor Paul Beadle, head of the Elam School of Art, Auckland University, to add Photography as an independent discipline to the School’s curriculum. Consequently, Hutchins was appointed in 1965 as the first full-time University lecturer in photography and film in the British Commonwealth. Among his most prominent film students were Rodney Charters, Leon Narbey, David Blyth and Shareen Maloney. His notable photography students include Clive Bartleet, Clive Stone, Gael Newton, Fiona Clark, Ian Macdonald, Janet Bayly, Bruce Foster, and Megan Jenkinson, who lectures at Elam. Another student, Anne Noble, who teaches at Massey University, Wellington, was appointed New Zealand’s first Professor in Photography in 2006. Gael Newton, now Curator of Photography at the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, is an eminent historian of photography.

Hutchins was a liberal teacher who emphasised the experiential nature of art as personal expression and encouraged social awareness without dogma. Committed to promoting his student’s own concerns, he virtually never showed them his own photography, which is much less known than it deserves.

His work in films included being a cameraman with Rodney Charters for Room 2 (1968), and was the sole cameraman for A Film of Real Time: A Light Environment (1970). Both films were directed by Leon Narbey. In 1974 he both filmed and photographed medical facilities in Tonga and Western Samoa for the World Health Organisation. Throughout his career he occasionally worked as a radio broadcaster on art, health, and neglected social issues. He was, for example, a researcher for the Grenada Television series, ‘World in Action’ on subjects including the Mt Erebus air disaster (1979), and the bombing of Greenpeace’s ‘Rainbow Warrior’ in Auckland by the French secret service. (1985).

A prominent writer and critic on photography and film, Tom Hutchins was a founding member of PhotoForum Inc and onetime President. He was aselector for, and wrote the catalogue introduction to The Active Eye: Contemporary New Zealand Photography survey exhibition of 1975. He was picture editor of By Batons and Barbed Wire, the record of the 1981 protest against the tour of the Apartheid South African rugby team, written by Tom Newnham and instigated by Ian Macdonald of Real Pictures Gallery. Tom Hutchins also wrote the introduction to the late Terry O’Connor’s All Good Children: Life in a New Zealand Children’s Health Camp (1983) published by PhotoForum.

When the Auckland City Art Gallery closed down ‘The Active Eye’ exhibition, due to objections raised against sexually explicit words written on prints by transvestites photographed by Fiona Clark, Hutchins organised a public forum on censorship and freedom of speech, to discuss the issues.

Tom Hutchins retired from the University of Auckland in 1981. He continuing to do occasional assignments for Black Star, and became more intensely involved in lobbying for improved preventative care and medical and developmental facilities for people with cerebral palsy and other disabilities, like his twin sons, Barrie and Matthew.

As William Main and John B. Turner concluded in their anthology, New Zealand Photography from the 1840s to the Present (PhotoForum Inc., 1993), ‘While Hutchins' own photography and film-making is little-known today, due largely to his own reticence, his influence as a teacher (1965-80) and critic has been profound.

Robert Hutchins, known as "Tom" since boyhood, was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1921 and came to Auckland with his parents in 1923. He was the first son of waterside worker and political activist, Alma George Hutchins and Mary (neé Dick). He was educated at Auckland Grammar School. Tom Hutchins is survived by his wife Florence, three sons, a daughter, and three grandchildren.

[photo caption:]
R.D. (Tom) Hutchins: Working on the Sinkiang Railway in the Gobi Desert, China 1956.
    Date added: 20/3/2007

Roland Fischer & Thomas Ruff at Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

Thomas Ruff: Portrait (C. Pilar), 1988, 210 x 165 cm.

This exhibition which includes three large photographs by Roland Fischer and two by Thomas Ruff, runs from 7 June to 1 July 2006.
Their prints are for sale at $NZ55,000 and $US85,000 (plus GST) respectively. A good oportunity to see the work of these prominent German photographers.
    Date added: 10/6/2006

x3= A photographic exhibition
X3=
Abby Storey, Davina and sada

A new gallery aimed at providing an exhibition venue to practicing artists outside of the boundaries of the high art culture will host the work of three photographers who are exhibiting their eclectic yet cohesive new bodies of work together.

An exhibition of new work from each of these artists communicates an expression of their social concerns. Abby Storey, Davina and sada exhibit images that, from each of their individual perspectives, examine the mechanics of a society. All three will exhibit new works that express a process; a creative route born of perspective, differing issues that occupy their attention and a need for address in an
artistic sense.

Abby Storey's work looks at the direct products of individuals' influence upon the environment; the anonymous expressions in the public surroundings that are a strong portrayal of distinctive ideas.

Abby's work takes a stencil on an urban journey. Subverting the notion of a fixed subject captured by the photographer, Abby has projected her own image into the subject, marking each chosen location with a stencil of her own profile, bending over her Rolleiflex waist level camera. By projecting herself as a subject, Abby implicates herself as a cultural jammer, one who challenges the futile ideal of the immaculate urban space.

Documenting social history, Davina's observations provide a platform from which to view issues of identity within a 'post-colonised' nation. From a bi-cultural perspective her new works record the integration of peoples and the subsequent impact on the whenua/land as we continuously form the history of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Davina has photographed five Pou Whenua, recently erected in the affluent coastal subdivision of Omaha, to represent the era we now cohabitate in, a relatively new mix on a world history scale. Omaha combines modern architecture and contemporary Maori carving, portraying a cultural blend unique to "New Zealanders". This body of work celebrates our differences, differences that augment the whole.

Expressing her consciousness of the myriad issues influencing people and our complex society, sada photographs her contemporaries in a style that dissects the notion of the photograph as a static representation. Crossing the boundaries of time and multiplicity, sada's images embody the fluidity of the process of construction (and evolution) of self-identity.

The exhibition will open on the 4th of July and run until the 15th at Satellite Gallery* in St Benedicts Street, Auckland.
    Date added: 8/6/2006

Colours of New Zealand. Photographs by Krzysztof Pfeiffer. Auckland War Memorial Museum, until 15 January 2006

Krzysztof Pfeiffer, the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s photographer, is best known for his exemplary ‘object’ photography seen in magnificent books such as 150 Treasures, and Pacific Jewellery. This small and all too briefly shown exhibition proves that the Polish-born photographer is also an outstanding landscape photographer. Working with familiar subject matter, Lake Manapouri, Whakarewarewa, etc., like Brian Brake and Craig Potton before him, he has made his own outstanding interpretations of these iconic New Zealand tourist spots.
Aptly, these photographs were made for a travelling exhibition in his native Poland to promote New Zealand, and a selection of his work is on display at the New Zealand embassy in Warsaw.
    Date added: 4/1/2006

Images: Krzysztof Pfeiffer: Whakarewarewa; Tarawera Waterfall

 Date added: 4/1/2006

NO BORDERS NO BOUNDARIES International Photo Art Workshop Auckland University of Technology, School of Art and Design, 19-21 January 2006


For practicing camera artists, senior level photography students, and teachers to gain first hand insight into international currents in the art and project-based photography world.
Three internationally known photographers, referencing their own work and the work of major international artists, will discuss and illustrate trends and movements in current camera based art practice. This workshop will also present the opportunity for you to have your own work reviewed.

Antoine d'Agata, Peter Bialobbrzeski and Harvey Benge are experienced international artists who come from a background of documentary based photo works. In addition to exhibiting in venues world wide, their work has been frequently published and circulated internationally.
Antoine d'Agata is a member of the Magnum Agency, Paris. Peter Bialobrzeski is a professor of photography at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany, and Harvey Benge, based in Auckland and Paris has extensive experience in photo book making and publishing.

Workshop and Public Lecture
The workshop runs over 3 full days with a maximum of 15 participants. During these workshops Antoine, Peter and Harvey will offer a current "world view" of the medium, an overview of their own practices and where they fit internationally. A public lecture will be presented to a wider audience as a separate event.

Registration Fee
The registration fee for No Borders No Boundaries is $550 with a $50 discount for registration and payment made prior to November 30th, 2005. Your place on the workshop will be confirmed in writing following receipt of payment.
As demand for places is already high (max 15 participants), confirmed places on the workshop will be secured on a payment received basis.

For more information and pre-registration for "No Borders No Boundaries" please email
neil.cameron@aut.ac.nz

    Date added: 22/11/2005

Auckland Festival of Photography Website
(Click on the above heading to go to theAUCKLAND FESTIVAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY SITE)



    Date added: 22/11/2005

OBITUARY: Peter Nicolas Turner (1947-2005)
In Peter Turner we have lost one of photography's greatest advocates. He spent 14 years as editor of "Creative Camera", at first together with Colin Osman and, in later years, also becoming the magazine's publisher. Besides this he curated many important exhibitions in London, the USA and in New Zealand.
His relocation here in 1991 was due to his New Zealand born partner Heather Forbes,
whom he had met in London. Sadly he was diagnosed with M.S. shortly after his arrival here, but he managed to continue to promote an understanding of photography mainly through his writings.
His great collection of photographic books and print was an inspiration to all those lucky enough to have visited their home in Wellington. As a friend and mentor he has been supportive to all who crossed his path.
Pete died in Wellington on 1 August 2005.
Ans Westra
    Date added: 20/8/2005

Gift of NZ photographs to Parisian Museum
New Zealand will make a gift of contemporary art to Musee du quai Branly, a major new museum under construction on the banks of the Seine in Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel,
and scheduled for completion in early 2006.
The museum will focus on the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.
The N.Z. work will consist two series of photographs, one by Michael Parekowhai and one by
Fiona Pardington.
(Item courtesy of McNamara Gallery Photography, Wanganui. www.mcnamara.co.nz)
    Date added: 3/3/2005

Handboek Ans Westra Photographs

This major retrospective of Ans Westra's photographs is now on at the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui. (23 February to 13 May 2007.)
http://www.sarjeant.org.nz/index.html

A substantial book of the same name accompanies this exhibition which is on a New Zealand-wide tour, and will be shown in the Netherlands.
'Handboek Ans Westra Photographs'is also published as PhotoForum Nos.71 & 72.
    Date added: 18/9/2004

New PhotoForum Committee Elected May 2006
A New PhotoForum executive and committee for 2006/2007 was elected at the Society's 32nd AGM in Auckland on 27 May 2006. The new committee consists of: Mark Adams, Karen Krisp, Tim Mackrell, Ann Orman, Bruce Ross (Secretary & Treasurer), Haruhiko Sameshima (Joint Managing Editor), Howard Scott, Stuart Sontier (Web Manager, John B. Turner (Director & Joint Managing Editor) and Julian Ward (Wellington representative).
Members have the opportunity to exhibit their work in a special Member's Gallery. There is a growing Resource section with items about a wide range of issues of relevance to New Zealand photographers. A site-wide search facility enables one to locate specific work or items by over 200 New Zealand photographers who have been exhibited and/or published by PhotoForum.
The Membership Subscription of PhotoForum for the current year (2006/2007) is $65 (Students and Concession rate $45.)
    Date added: 23/7/2004

See new portfolios in LINKS section
Photographers included in our Links section include Morrie Camhi, Fiona Clark, Ralph Gibson, Peter Peryer, Craig Potton, Philip Jones Griffiths, James Nachtwey and many others.
    Date added: 9/6/2004

Songs of Innocence - Photographs of a New Zealand Childhood
Curated by Janet Bayly for the Mahara Gallery, Kapiti Coast, 2003.

image: John Pascoe: Rabbit & Alice, Spring 1946. Sara and Anna Pascoe. John Pascoe Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, N.Z.

Itinerary:
Auckland War Museum, 2 April to 27 June 2004.
Wellington Museum of City and Sea, 24 July to 9 October 2004.
Aratoi, Masterton, 5 November 2004 to 31 January 2005.

Janet Bayly, the curator of this delightful and revealing exhibition, writes that: John Pascoe (1908-1972) is best known for his documentary photographs of ordinary New Zealanders on the home front during the Second World War for the Department of Internal Affairs. Transcending simple record, the images define this era, and Pascoe as its leading photographic interpreter.
Songs of Innocence reveals a new view of Pascoe through his photographs of his daughters: Anna, Sara, Martha and Jane, made over twenty years.
Taking its cue from a postcard of William Blake's poem Infant Joy, which Pascoe had pasted into the Pascoe Babies album, Songs of Innocence charts a family's experience from the birth of their first child in 1942, through to the adventurous holidays undertaken by John, Dorothy and their four daughters during the 1950s. The latter images signal a recurring motif in Pascoe's life of ‘a traveller who reports with a camera'.

For further information contact: Gerald Barnett, Director, Mahara Gallery, Kapiti's District Gallery, Mahara Place, Waikanae. Ph 04 902 6242; Fax 04 902 6243; gerald@maharagallery.org.nz

    Date added: 13/4/2004

George D. Valentine A 19th Century Photographer in New Zealand
NOW ON AT AUCKLAND MUSEUM TE PAPA WHAKAHIKU

An travelling exhibition of work by this outstanding pioneer photographer, curated for the Christchurch Art Gallery by Ken Hall, the author of the recently released book of the same name.











George D. Valentine: Coffee Cups, White Terrace, 1885.

    Date added: 12/4/2004

PhotoForum # 69 now out
PhotoForum # 69, December 2003 is now out.
Send $16 (includes post and packing) to PhotoForum Inc., P.O. Box 5657, Wellesley Street, Auckland 1, for your copy while stocks last.


Features include:
John Miller: Media Peace Award recipient 2003.
Exhibition reviews of ‘The Altered Landscape'; ‘Frank Denton: Photographer, in time of transition'; ‘Dead Ringer'; and John Pilger's ‘Reporting the World'; and Bruce Connew's ‘Press Escape to Cancel' exhibition.
Book reviews of work by Laurence Aberhart, Tai Mulitalo, and Anne Noble.
Paul Gilmour on David Hurn (Magnum) lecture.
Sales Watch, notes on recent auction and dealer prices of NZ photographs.
Obituaries: David Moore, Larence N. Shustak, and Cole Weston.

    Date added: 22/12/2003

John Miller Receives Peace Award
John Miller, who is featured in the forthcoming issue 69 of 'PhotoForum' has just been awarded the Media Peace Awards 20th Anniversary Special Achievement Award, from the Peace Foundation, for ‘his significant contribution to fostering peace and understanding through the medium of photography.' This is a well-deserved recognition for one of our most prolific and politically and historically astute photographers.

Previous Media Peace Award recipients include photographers Gil Hanly and Kapil Arn.
    Date added: 21/11/2003

Documentography
Over the past one-hundred and fifty years, groups of photographers have formed collectives to promote their work and, at times, to advocate on behalf of certain social causes. The photographers that comprise the Documentography group work to achieve both goals and have developed this site to showcase some of their own work, along with the works of other independent photo-journalists. From the main page, visitors can look at intriguing work of some of these up and coming international photographers, including Anna Kari, Eduardo Martino, and Guilhem Alandry. Visitors can also browse the entire contents of the group's Web-based photo magazine, _Issue_.
In the most recent edition, visitors can view photo essays dealing with the relocation of indigenous people of Canada and the mission of an evangelical church in the heart of Amsterdam's red-light district. [KMG]

>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003.
http://scout.wisc.edu/
    Date added: 27/5/2003

Photographs of the Historic American Buildings Survey: Georgia
In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the federal government developed a host of programs designed to alleviate unemployment and put people back to work. Out of these efforts came the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and a host of programs that utilized the talents of those persons who were still
unemployed. These included the Federal Art Project, the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Writers Project. One of the most under-appreciated programs was the Historic American Buildings Survey that was designed to record the structures and buildings of historical and cultural importance around the US. The staff of Georgia Tech's library has created and placed online this fine archive of photographs from the Buildings survey done around the state in the middle of the 1930s. Containing close to one hundred images, the archive can be viewed in a scrapbook format or by browsing through a list of the buildings covered in the survey. The site is rounded out by an introductory essay written by Grace Agnew that traces the role of the WPA in documenting American culture and history during the 1930s.

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003.
http://scout.wisc.edu/
    Date added: 22/5/2003