Author(s): Lara Strongman

Fine Art

Contemporary New Zealand Photographers is the first major survey of recent New Zealand art photography to be published in 30 years. It focuses on 20 significant artists, ranging from senior practitioners including Marti Friedlander, Anne Noble, Laurence Aberhart and Peter Peryer, mid-career photographers such as Gavin Hipkins and Fiona Pardington, through to young and emerging artists such as Ben Cauchi, Yvonne Todd and Edith Amituanai. The construction of this book has involved a close working relationship with the contributing photographers, who have had substantial input into selecting images, and in commissioning different writers to talk about their work, all of whom are well known figures in the literary and art worlds. The result is a book of considerable significance, an important collection of images, supported by texts and interviews that are accessible, argumentative, informative, and even contradictory, and which reflect the diversity of approach to the medium that is a crucial aspect of current photographic practice. Today art photography in New Zealand is widely taught, collected, exhibited and discussed, and, at its cutting edge, makes a strong contribution to New Zealand's active engagement with the international art world. Describing a medium in 'a state of immensely productive crisis', Gregory O'Brien's introductory essay charts a course through the past decade of art photography in New Zealand. Contemporary New Zealand Photographers is an essential book for anyone interested in this country's visual arts.