Category Archives: Photography

one foot on the bottom

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one foot on the bottom
Mary Macpherson

one foot on the bottom is about childhood or the space that childhood once occupied. Using family Kodachrome slides from the 1950s and ’60s taken by her late mother Evelyn, and her contemporary photographs, Mary Macpherson creates a portrait of family holidays by the beach, lake and river. The book is poetic and unexpected and placing the past with the present, so time folds in on itself. The result is an evocative representation of childhood, the power of photographs and our love of spending time by water throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book includes a lyrical essay by Mary.

Artist/writer Gregory O’Brien recently wrote about one foot on the bottom:

‘A kind of child-like intensity and wonder characterises much of the best photography, as it does poetry. Yet there is also a sense of care, nurture and an understated delight in one foot on the bottom which could be described as ‘parental’. Mary Macpherson and her mother Evelyn survey their subjects carefully, thoughtfully and tenderly.  Family is the coastline along which their camera travels, looking towards or away from the ever-recurring sea. 

Evelyn Macpherson’s photographs anticipate her daughter’s – a whispered conversation in the brightness and clarity of a shared world. At the same time, Mary’s photographs carry her mother’s inside them–not as reflections, precisely, but as a lingering music. Where did summer go? How did that summer end? As if a shadow that fell on a wall fifty years earlier might still be found on that wall. For all time. ‘

Mary Macpherson is a photographer and poet from Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. Engaging with concepts of identity, place and change, her practice responds to emotional and social transformation. She has exhibited nationally across the country, published limited edition photobooks and her work is in many public collections including Te Papa, the Dowse Art Museum, Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery and others.

2026

ISBN: 978-1-0670943-0-0

112 pages
54 photographs
Softcover with flaps
Section sewn, layflat binding
Design Mary Macpherson and Katrina Duncan
Editing Peter Black and Mary Macpherson

Edition of 100
RRP $80.00

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Subject Failure

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Subject Failure
Shaun Waugh
with essays by Emma Ng, Marcus Moore, and Matt Plummer
& Alice Tappenden.

Shaun Waugh is a New Zealand-based artist who lives and works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. His work centres on the material culture of photographic history, critically
examining the complex relationship between images and the realities they aim to depict.
Waugh highlights how photography can deceive, reduce, and seduce, to question the authenticity of photographic representations.

Working primarily with the complexities of colour control in photographic printing processes, Waugh explores and expands the artistic and technical potentials of the medium.
Avoiding arbitrary definitions in favour of interdisciplinary tendencies, his practice exploits the tension between image and object-making — pitching his chromatically driven work into an uncertain terrain between photography, painting, and sculpture.
In this first monograph on Waugh’s work, Subject Failure is constructed chromatically, arranging elements from a variety of projects spanning the last 15 years. The essence of photographic colour — red, green, blue, greyscale, yellow —
become the building blocks of the book.

“When a child wriggles or a leaf moves in the wind and the camera does not manage to still the blur, photographers call it ‘subject failure.’” Waugh has co-opted this term as the title of this artist book to ask one of photography’s deepest questions: Can we trust the medium to capture what we see, and what does this reveal about our relationship with reality? Not just a photographer, Waugh is a historian, philosopher, and trickster — inviting viewers to ponder the past, present, and future of the technologies we use to reproduce our world.

Richly illustrated with over 80 images arranged to emphasise Waugh’s reflexive use of colour, Subject Failure features new essays by Emma Ng, Marcus Moore, and Matt Plummer & Alice Tappenden, who each offer insights into Waugh’s
engaging conceptual practice.

May 2025

ISBN: 978-1-99-116525-1

Designed by Anna Brown
Hard cover with exposed quarter cloth spine | 144 pages
325 x 240 x 14mm | colour illustrations
RRP $60.00

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Golden Enterprise:New Zealand Chinese Merchants 1860s-1970s

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Golden Enterprise:New Zealand Chinese Merchants 1860s-1970s
by Phoebe H. Li
Published by Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust.

Commissioned by the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust, Golden Enterprise offers a compelling re-examination of New Zealand Chinese history from the 1860s to the 1970s, focusing on the pivotal role of Cantonese merchants.

These early entrepreneurs not only facilitated Chinese immigration but also shaped the identity of Chinese New Zealanders within the broader context of New Zealand’s shifting relationships with China, Britain, and the wider world. Drawing on extensive archival research in both Chinese and English sources, Phoebe H. Li illuminates the merchants’ transnational business and social networks, providing fresh perspectives on Chinese migration to the South Pacific.

This richly illustrated volume combines in-depth historical analysis with vivid human stories, complemented by a stunning collection of paintings and photographs. With its accessible style, Golden Enterprise appeals to both academic readers and those with a general interest in New Zealand and Chinese diaspora histories.

Phoebe H. Li holds a PhD from the University of Auckland and was a research fellow at Tsinghua University in Beijing. She is currently an independent historian. Her prior publications include A Virtual Chinatown: The Diasporic Mediasphere of Chinese Migrants in New Zealand (Brill, 2013), Recollections of a Distant Shore: New Zealand Chinese in Historical Images (co-authored with John B. Turner, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2017) and some journal articles and book chapters. She was the principal curator of the acclaimed photographic exhibition Being Chinese in Aotearoa, hosted by the Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Waitangi Treaty Ground Museum, and the New Zealand Portrait Gallery (2017-2020).

Designed by Rim Books, Golden Enterprise features full-colour illustrations, encased in a quarter cloth-bound hardcover, offering both a visual and intellectual feast.

Longlisted for 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Illustrated Non Fiction category.

Published by Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust
September 2024

RRP $75
Hardcover | 232 pages
240 x 290 x 20 mm
ISBN 978-0-473-69998-7

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Uprooted: a handbook of levitating flowers and other fashionable nonsense

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Uprooted: a handbook of levitating flowers and other fashionable nonsense
by Fiona Lascelles

What if… the internet was soil, what flowers would grow?

A speculative piece of fiction that is part photography, is definitely sci-fi, could be used as a handbook, recants the ordeals of a 1950s plant breeder who grows species given to her from travellers to outer space (found on Wikicommons), performs acts of flower propagation via the active nourishment of words and contains magician’s coding.

Uprooted is a ramble across multiple worlds both real and imagined. At its core a reframing of plant taxonomy from a poetic perspective, entertaining the notion that a poetic understanding of the world is as viable a convention as one of argument and reason.

A process condensing research and readings, visual exploration, observation, curation and creating connections, play and critique; Ursula le Gruin refers to this as composting, a fitting analogy for the creative process. In the end the work became more than poetic fancy, rather a handbook of provocation.

Uprooted is a reflection on what philosopher Donna Harraway would see as a statement on the blurring of species identity politics. The accompanying texts and quotes throughout the book affirm the problem of the hierarchy of being: machine over plant, human over machine. Here, the plant speaks back.

Concept, design, production // Fiona Lascelles

Photography // Fiona Lascelles
AI images created using personal photographs in midjourney and re-edited/composed in Photoshop.
Coding created in codepal.ai and edited.
AI plant names initially generated in fantasynamegenerators.com and re-edited.

Winner of Gold in Print / Books IDA Design Awards 2024.

170 x 240mm
94 pages
Text // Eco 100% recycled 115gsm
Cover // Screen printed one colour Colorplan Bitter Chocolate 270gsm
End Papers // Eco 100% Recycled 135gsm
Printing // Crucial Colour, Auckland, New Zealand
Perfect bound (handbound) // The Binding Studio, Auckland

Published // back_space_books
Edition of 50

ISBN 978-0-473-73488-6

RRP $80

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an invisible hand

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an invisible hand
Stephen Roucher

An Invisible Hand is Stephen Roucher’s first artist’s book, from his street photographs made between 2012 and 2022.

In an era where modern technology offers precise navigation and ubiquitous ‘street-view’ convenience, locations are catalogued and made explicit through GPS coordinates and addresses. Commerce and progress drive these technologies, shaping our environment and perceptions of it.

Roucher invites us to consider a machine-driven perspective from another era with his black-and-white photographs made using a view camera, a cutting-edge technology of the 19th century that radically reshaped our perceptions of the world. He captures the urban landscape not with the precision of contemporary tools but with an eye for the timeless and the unseen. The photographs delve into the nuances of public spaces, the rejuvenation of forgotten corners, and the artifacts of once-daily technologies now obsolete. Roucher juxtaposes the meticulously catalogued present with a more ambiguous, reflective view. The book brings to life locations vaguely referenced, ideas repurposed, and the subtle transformations of environments in constant flux. These photographs serve as a testament to the invisible hand guiding our perceptions and interactions with the world.

Stephen Roucher is an independent photographer, based in Wellington Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Since graduating from Elam School of Fine Arts in 1995, he has accumulated an archive of conceptually focused series of photographs, depicting the urban and rural environments. His practical experience in the process of photography, both analogue and digital, informs his approach to making his art. He had solo exhibition ‘Stands’ (series of stands mostly from rural sports fields) at Whangarei Art Museum in 2011 and McNamara Gallery, Whanganui in 2012, ‘Void’, an installation in the iconic TestStrip gallery in Auckland in 1995. His photographs were featured in many group shows – including in Now & Then: Enduring and developing themes in contemporary New Zealand photography, Te Manawa, Palmerston North, in 2012.     

June 2024

ISBN: 978-1-99-116527-5

Pages: 108pp, with offset duotone
Format: card jacket, section sewn
Dimensions: 245 x 240 x 11mm
RRP $75.00 (limited hand-bound edition of 150)

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in some smothering dreams

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in some smothering dreams
Camus Wyatt
with an essay by Deidra Sullivan

What can photographs say about the unimaginable? in some smothering dreams takes our gaze to the First World War, where official photographer Henry Armytage Sanders created the most extensive visual record of New Zealanders on the Western Front. But rather than being an archive of slaughter, Sanders’ photographs often depict the faces of men behind the lines and the landscapes left in the war’s wake.

Using details from the original glass plate negatives, Camus Wyatt reimagines these photographs as places of strange beauty, capturing both a profound quiet and a looming sense of dread. With an essay by Deidra Sullivan on the history of the Sanders collection and the possible meanings of their reimagining, in some smothering dreams is a moving contemplation of the pathways between image, archive, the lives of others, and the limits of our understanding.

“(Sanders’) photographs are deeply evocative of New Zealand’s involvement in this global conflict and of the experience of those who served. The significance of the collection is illustrated by its inclusion on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register. Public engagement with these photographs has always been strong, but by revisiting the original negatives and drawing attention to the quiet detail captured within them, this publication will present a reinterpretation that is sure to deepen both personal and collective connections with these images.”

—Natalie Marshall, former Curator of Photographs at the Alexander Turnbull Library

Camus Wyatt is an independent photographer and doctoral student in art history based in Wellington Te Whanganui-a-Tara. His practice often examines the connections between thought and place, perception and form. He is drawn to the possibilities of change and chance, unplanned moments and the materiality of analogue photography. He has had five previous solo exhibitions. His most recent work was Time is the longest distance, a public art installation for Wellington City Council of sixteen large-scale lightbox images exploring the relationship between photography, memory and place. 

Deidra Sullivan teaches on the Creative Technologies programmes at the Wellington Institute of Technology and has also taught at Massey University and Victoria University, tutoring in the Art History Departments. She has an enduring interest in photographic history and processes, and during 2020-2021 took time out from teaching to take the position of Curator, Photographic Archive, at the Alexander Turnbull Library. Her MFA considered the connections we make between historical knowledge, personal and cultural memory, and imagination when exploring collections of photographs. Her photographic practice engages with cameraless and lens-less photography.

June 2024

ISBN: 978-1-99-116523-7

Pages: 120pp, with offset duotone
Format: hardcover wrapped cloth, section sewn
Dimensions: 257 x 207 x 17mm
RRP $50.00

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THREAD BETWEEN DARKNESS & LIGHT

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Thread Between Darkness & Light
Stella Brennan
Essays by Susan Ballard, Kirsty Baker, Lissa Mitchell and Ross Galbreath.
Designed by Alice Bonifant.

Thread Between Darkness and Light, a new photo book by artist Stella Brennan, began with the gift of a painting: a depiction of Rangitoto with a mysterious ruin in the foreground. Investigating its painter led Brennan to an 1897 photograph of her great-great-aunt Louise Laurent with her female classmates – students at the same art school Brennan attended a century later. Struck by this uncanny affinity with her previously unknown ancestor, Brennan embarked on a journey of research and revelation.

Cold-calling long-lost relatives, she unearthed an archive of Edwardian glass plate negatives, which a cousin had carefully preserved since Louise’s death in the 1960s. Despite being cracked and marred by mould and dirt, Brennan meticulously scanned the 300 fragile plates. Her first realisation of Louise Laurent and her husband William Winn’s 100 year-old archive was an immersive installation of 36 translucent silk banners, displayed in 2023 at Te Whare Toi, City Gallery Wellington.

This book delves deeper into these historical images, juxtaposing the passage of time with startlingly contemporary framings and content. There is even a string-assisted selfie of Louise and William together. On the other hand, the extreme damage sustained by some of the negatives, the cracked glass, peeling emulsion and blooms of mould speak to the time between then and now.  It is this tension that animates the project – this superimposition of time and place. An evocative collaborative essay enlarges the historical and material context. Susan Ballard, Professor of Art History at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Kirsty Baker, Curator at Te Whare Toi, and Lissa Mitchell, Curator of Historical Photography at Te Papa, bring their unique perspectives to a text that breathes life into these spectral images.

Brennan’s documentation of her discovery process is complemented by historian Ross Galbreath’s riveting account of Louise’s adventurous mother Lucie, tracing her journey from birth in a London workhouse, to the 1871 Siege of Paris, to her arrival with her three daughters in 19th-century Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Thread Between Darkness and Light is not just a photobook; it’s a poignant bridge across generations, a tapestry woven from the traces of the past into the light of the present.


June 2024

ISBN: 978-1-99-116524-4

Pages: 120pp, with colour reproduction
Format: hardcover wrapped printed cloth, section sewn
Dimensions: 268 x 207 x 15mm
RRP $50.00

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Legacy – Portraits of the Greats

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Legacy – Portraits of the Greats by Jon Carapiet
AI photographs of contemporary and historical figures

This book comprises still images captured from AI reanimation of pictures of the living and dead.

It includes iconic contemporary portraits of today’s most rich and powerful people which were first exhibited as large-scale prints and now, as pop up on-line.

Also included are classical portraits of historical figures long dead.

These anti-AI photographs represent the eternal moment and serve as memento mori in a new age.

Whether you like it or not, the age of AI is here. 

In his latest exhibition Legacy, photographer Jon Carapiet uses AI technology to reanimate current well known and powerful figures, creating the sense of a time machine. 

“AI has often been used to bring back to life images of the deceased, but Legacy takes this concept to propel audiences to a hypothetical future; encouraging contemplation and meditation on the current state of the world, as if it were the past.” From Culture 101, RNZ, 12:45 pm on 26 November 2023.

Listen to the interview here

Publication date: March, 2024
Softcover | 203 x 277 x 4mm | 32 pages |
ISBN  978-0-473-70755-2

RRP $40 

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VIEWSHAFT

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Viewshaft
Allan MacDonald and essay by Rangihiroa Panoho. Designed by Jonty Valentine

Viewshaft is a geo-linquistic drift, from north to south, through the volcanic fields of Tāmaki Makaurau. It shows mountains still to be seen, and others that are not. Except sometimes through the photographs or words of those who felt a need to describe them at the time. Those words and images come into play here, through the writings of geologists Firth, Searle and Hayward, and also through the influence of two small but notable publications, Auckland’s Unique Heritage: 63 Wonderful Volcanic Cones and Craters. An Appeal to Save Them (1928) and Auckland Volcanic Cones: A Report on Their Condition and a Plea for Their Preservation (1957). Both were attempts to preserve Auckland’s volcanic features at a time when they were being rapidly consumed by twentieth century demands. Viewshaft is accompanied by an essay by Dr. Rangihiroa Panoho, ‘Āku Maunga Haere’ (my travelling mountains).

“Viewshaft is testimony to his continuing gaze at the volcanic maunga that have an iconic presence in Tāmaki Makaurau. Aucklanders live on and in the shadow of these maunga and the recent public debates about how their tihi ‘their sacred high points’ are planted and the replacement of exotic with natives shows just how much passion these natural forms generate. Tāmaki Makaurau is indeed still a land ‘desired by hundreds of lovers'”. Dr. Rangihiroa Panoho

Read the full reflection on the book and exhibition by Dr. Rangihiroa Panoho

2024

ISBN: 978-1-99-116526-8

Pages: 46pp, with colour reproduction
Format: Soft cover saddle-stitched
Limited edition 200: signed and numbered
Dimensions: 298mm x 210mm
RRP $60.00

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worm, root, wort… & bane

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worm, root, wort… & bane
by Ann Shelton
Published by Alice Austen House Press (US)

Artist Ann Shelton’s latest book, worm, root, wort… & bane delves into the rich history of plant-centric belief systems and their suppression. Part artist scrapbook, part photo book, part quotography, and part exhibition catalogue, this publication explores the medicinal, magical, and spiritual uses of plant materials, once deeply intertwined with the lives of European forest, nomadic, and ancient peoples.

worm, root, wort… & bane re-assembles fragments of historical knowledge alongside the first 19 artworks from Shelton’s photographic series, i am an old phenomenon (2022-ongoing). The plant sculptures photographed are constructed by the artist, who has worked with plants since childhood and long been interested in the history of floral art and its expansive gendered resonances.

Overflowing with 300+ images and quotations, this book traces the loss of plant knowledge held wise women, witches, and wortcunners in post-feudal Europe, as Christianity spread and capitalism emerged. The book follows our changing relationships with plants, through the Victorian era to the present — offering cause to reflect on the consequences of the ongoing estrangement between humans and the natural world.

worm, root, wort… & bane features a multiplicity of voices, reflecting the assorted and sometimes conflicting beliefs that are held about plants, gender, and sexuality. Adopting an intersectional approach, the book quotes historical accounts, herbal advice, folk knowledge, and artist research, and draws from art, literature, film, and television.

The book also features new essays by photographic curator Susan Bright and Victoria Munro, Executive Director of Alice Austen House, as well as The Three Fates, a short story by New Zealand writer Pip Adam, written in response to Ann Shelton’s research.


Ann Shelton, Pākehā/Italian (b. 1967, Aotearoa New Zealand) received her MFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, New Zealand and exhibits internationally. Her most recent museum survey, Dark Matter, curated by Zara Stanhope (Director, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand), was hosted by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2016 and toured to Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in 2017. Shelton’s award-winning work has been extensively written about and reviewed in publications including Artforum, Hyperallergic, Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, artnet news, The Art Newspaper, and the Evergreen Review. Her works are included in public and private collections throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and in the United States.

Shelton is Honorary Research Fellow in Photography at Whiti o Rehua, School of Art, Massey University, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa.

Shelton works with Over and Under Fine Art in New York, and Two Rooms in Aotearoa.

Publication date: March, 2024
Flexicover | 132 x 210 x 25mm | 312 pages |
ISBN 979-8-9888148-0-1

RRP $79

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