Maori life in New Zealand captured by renowned photographer Ans Westra – Picture Essay | Photography
adifference Maori Also a documentary photographer, I often look for images of our people in the past. I ask myself: what was captured? When I read that Dutch photographer Ansu Vestra died Sunday at the age of 86, I was reminded of Vestra’s book I bought at a used bookstore a few years ago. I couldn’t believe it when I found it.
The Maori book was published in 1967, ten years after Westra moved to Aotearoa. new zealandand she became one of the most famous photographers in the country. It is an amazing collection of images of the Maori people, with chapters such as Childhood, New Family, Hui, Tangi and Te Atatu Hou (New Dawn).
It would have been published not long after the publication of her then and still controversial work, Washday at the Pa, which was printed by New Zealand’s Ministry of Education in 1967 and distributed to schools. The book, which depicts her day in the life of a rural Maori family with eight children, is still Westra’s most famous work.
Critics, including the Māori Women’s Welfare Federation, scathingly criticized Westra’s image, feeling that it reinforces the stereotype that Māori live primitively happy and poor in the countryside. At the time, Māori faced widespread racism and discrimination in employment and public life, and attempts to erase her language and culture were beginning to suffer.
Westra was also a white expat looking for a culture that was not his own. it was done).
Westra spent time and had access to her subjects. She lived in rural Maori for five months before publishing Washday at the Pa. She was able to capture images that not only told her story but also had a deep feeling and connection. Her portrayal of a poor family also raised questions about the quality of Māori housing. Things were improving, but there were still whanaus (families) living in substandard conditions.
Some of the Māori images, a book I found, let me see a world that was in a state of flux for Māori. Many still lived in the traditional countryside, but when Westra’s book was published, they were moving to cities, fascinated by the idea of work and a “better life.” That move would change everything. Over time, traditional ties to the land were severed, and knowledge of tikangas and sacred rituals was lost.
If Westra’s photo was taken in the mid-1960s, some of the elders in it may have been born just a few generations away from pre-contact Māori and cholero tuk iho. I thought. That’s why I’m intrigued by his Westra work. It depicts our old man living in times of change, an image that can be seen and felt in those times.
In the chapter called Tangi, Westra’s camera is trained to the rituals of an old Māori funeral. It is a candid image of a queer (older woman) chatting with a marae, kete, or flax bag in her hand, catching up and deep into conversation. Another shows the tupapak or deceased body lying on the marae mahau (porch), a sacred meeting place for the Maori. The imagery is ported to another era, but reminds the Maori of tikanga (the correct way of doing things). Tikanga is a constant learning and inheritance from the past to the present day.
Where do Westra’s thousands of images belong? The National Library of New Zealand has digitized over 150,000 of her negatives, and by all accounts, it’s still a work in progress. The task is huge, and doubts will undoubtedly arise. What should the people photographed say about all this? Do Westra’s images belong to their marae?
In present-day Aotearoa, the question of whose lens portrays the Maori and how our stories are constructed and told is widely debated. It’s hard to imagine a book like Westra’s being published now, especially by a government agency, and it undoubtedly caused mixed feelings about her work.
What Westra did was spend time, and she had access. That access translates into thousands of Maori photos, stories, moments captured by her shutter her clicks. To me they are treasures and images to contemplate.
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Cornell Tukiri (Ngaati Hikairo, Ngaati Whaawhaakia, Kāi Tahu) is a photojournalist and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/02/new-zealand-maori-life-captured-by-famed-photographer-ans-westra-picture-essay Maori life in New Zealand captured by renowned photographer Ans Westra – Picture Essay | Photography