I made a quick return to Wellington just after my walking Wellington trip to take part in Photobook-NZ book fair that was organized by Photoforum in association with Photography stream of the College of Creative Arts at Massey University and Te Papa. I didn’t participate in the masterclass for creating and publishing photobooks, nor did I submit a photobook for the New Zealand Photobook of the Year Awards. I missed the talks by Bryan Schutmaat, Carolle Bénitah and Athol McCredie at Te Papa on the Saturday as I had to mind my little stall in the book fair at Te Papa. The books on my stall included Edgelands, Abstract Photography and Mallee Routes: Photographing the Mallee 2018. Surprisingly, the book of mine that people were the most interested in was the Abstract Photography book.
I attended the opening on Friday night at Te Papa, heard the Peter Turner Memorial Lecture given by Jem Southam on the Saturday night, spend the Sunday at Massey University listening to the talks and panel discussions, reconnected with Sally Jackman (an old friend who I hadn’t seen since my time in Melbourne in the 1970s) on the Sunday night, and photographed around Newton on Monday. I flew back to Adelaide on Tuesday. All in all it was a wonderful and fruitful weekend.

Whakatane, New Zealand
The highlight of the Sunday session at Massey University for me was the talk by Katrin Koenning, a German photographer now based in Melbourne. The talk centred around the ongoing Indefinitely project, which is about the space created by her family’s migration. The notion underpinning this is that this space is not a vacuum or a void, but rather the creator of new narratives. This grew out of an earlier project Near, which was about Koenning’s migratory experience. What I found interesting in this body of work in her talk was the emphasis on emotionality, darkness, and strong contrasts between darkness and light in her pictures. Continue Reading…