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Photobook/NZ 2022

Photobook/NZ 2022

19 and 20 August at Te Papa, Wellington. All events free

  • Opening and launch of Worlds within exhibition – Friday 19 August, 6.30 – 7.45pm, Te Papa, L4. Register here (by 7 August )

  • Fiona Clark – the Peter Turner lecture – Friday 19 August, 8pm - 9.30pm , Soundings Theatre, Te Papa. Register here

  • Book Fair, The Wedge, L4 at Te Papa, Saturday 20 August 10am - 3pm.

  • Talk: Nicola Legat – Publisher of Massey University and Te Papa presses. Saturday 20 August, 4 – 4.45pm, Soundings Theatre. Register here (by 12 August)

  • Talk: Hoda Afshar in conversation with Daniel Boetker-Smith, Saturday 20 August, 5 – 5.45pm, Soundings Theatre. Register here (by 12 August)

The term ‘photobook’ first appeared in the early 2000s. There had always been books with photographs in them but the photobook is more than just a compilation of individual images in a book format. It is a creative work in itself; an integrated whole that greater than the sum of its parts.

Digital technologies are behind the boom in photobooks over the last 20 years, enabling photographers to design, publish and distribute their own books. With photographers rather than publishers in control, an entire new field of both photographic expression and book publishing has emerged.

This exhibition lifts the lid on the photobook phenomenon. It shows examples of books that the publishing industry would once have termed illustrated books but which we can now understand as works of personal expression, as photobooks (even though the term didn’t exist when they were made). These include John Pascoe’s 1950 classic, The Mountains, the Bush & the Sea and Les Cleveland’s 1966 photo/text essay, The Silent Land.

It also represents contemporary self-published photobooks like Bruce Connew’s tiny I Saw You, of surveillance-like images, and Saynab Muse’s 2019 Imaanshaha on her Somalian refugee family living in Auckland.

The above group of twenty-one books will be under glass and shown either as covers or opened page spreads. The other half of the exhibition will contain up to ten contemporary photobooks for the public to handle, enabling visitors to browse the sort of recent productions they won’t find in bookstores.

Athol McCredie, Curator of Photography, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa


Satellite events:

It’s Personal: The Howard Greive and Gabrielle McKone Photography Collection
Webbs Wellington
Robert Leonard talks with Howard Grieve about collecting photography, Sunday 21 August 11am.

Mā Wai Rā: New Māori Photobooks
Photospace Gallery
18 August – 3 September 2022
Artist talk and afternoon tea: Sunday 21 August, 2 - 4pm

Peter Hannken, Observation on the frailty of existence
The Window at Bowen Galleries, 39 Ghuznee St
18 - 22 August 2022

Joyce Campbell, The Sunken City
Bartley & Company Art
4 - 27 August 2022


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