an invisible hand

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

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

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

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

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

worm, root, wort… & bane
by Ann Shelton

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
New shipment arriving mid November 2024 – order now!

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There Is Nowhere to Go, There Is Nothing to Do

There Is Nowhere to Go, There Is Nothing to Do
Greta Anderson with essays by Hanna Scott and David Eggleton

“In Greta’s images ordinary things radiate mystery, haloed by an ecstatic glow. Her pictures traverse eerie latitudes; they are brushed by the phantasmagoric; they pulse with a visceral brightness.”
At the Edge of a Dark Forest, David Eggleton

This book brings together a selection of photographs produced between 1997 and 2022 by Tāmaki Makaurau based artist Greta Anderson, a prolific photographer, film maker and musician. For over a quarter century, Anderson has been capturing dramatic scenes in films and photographs that quietly reference intensely personal narratives. There Is Nowhere to Go, There Is Nothing to Do presents Anderson’s works, covering genres as wide as portraits, still life, wild and domesticated landscape and suburban tableau. The book is curated and designed by New Public, offering a fresh juxtapositions of images from a wide range of series and one-off artist books Greta made over the decades, from the classic Stand-ins (2001), Uncomfortable Conversations (2005), Optimistic Tragedy (2008), to more recent No Hording (2021) and The Transcenders (2021).

The book features two newly commissioned essays by long-time friend and supporter of Greta’s work, Hanna Scott, and esteemed poet laureate David Eggleton.

Listen to Greta Anderson’s strange, psychically charged images of the ordinary Culture 101, RNZ – fun-facts-filled interview with Greta Anderson by Mark Amery.

Greta Anderson is an Aotearoa New Zealand musician, photographer and teacher. She exhibits regularly at Two Rooms Gallery in Tāmaki Makarau Auckland. Her work has been shown at many venues for international contemporary art and photography including The Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), The Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego), The Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, Florida) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney).

David Eggleton is a writer based in Ōtepoti Dunedin. He was the Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate 2019 -2022. He has won a number of awards for his writing, including the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2016. His books include Towards Aotearoa: A Short History of Twentieth Century New Zealand Art; and Into the Light: a History of New Zealand Photography; and Ready to Fly: the Story of New Zealand Rock Music; and Seasons: Four Essays on the New Zealand Year. He is a regular art reviewer for a variety of publishing platforms.

Hanna Scott met Greta Anderson as the newly-minted Interim Director at Artspace on Karangahape Road in 2002. She has written about Greta’s work four times over two decades. Twice for the NZ Journal of Photography, for Landfall and for Art New Zealand. Hanna is an experienced contemporary art curator, programme manager and researcher, based in Tāmaki Makaurau since 2002. Her writing is published in broadsheets, magazines and books in Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, New Zealand and the USA.

New Public is a design and publishing project based in Tāmaki Makaurau. It collaborates with artists and institutions to exhibit research devoted to the discussion of contemporary visual and material culture. Titles include On the Last Afternoon: Disrupted Ecologies in the work of Joyce Campbell, Sternberg Press, Berlin, and Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, 2020; Qianye Lin and Qianhe ‘AL’ Li,Thus the Blast Carried It, Into the World 它便随着爆破, 冲向了世界, Coastal Signs and New Public, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2021; The Dialogics of Contemporary Art: Painting Politics, Kerber, Bielefeld and Berlin, 2022.


2023

ISBN: 978-1-99-116522-0

Pages: 128pp, with colour reproduction
Format: Hardback
Dimensions: 288mm x 220mm
RRP $50.00

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A garden is a long time

A garden is a long time
Annemarie Hope-Cross and Jenny Bornholdt

The photographs in A garden is a long time take us beyond the perimeter of the Central Otago garden where they were created. Incorporating processes and materials from the darker, more mysterious corners of early photographic history, the images offer an account of the life and sensibility of a remarkable artist, Annemarie Hope-Cross (1968–2022). With Jenny Bornholdt’s poetry and prose treading deftly around the edges of Annemarie’s life and photographic work, A garden is a long time is a meditation on time, light and the spaces we all inhabit.

For Annemarie Hope-Cross, photography was, at once, a science and a miracle; the camera was an echo chamber and each photograph was a place where past and present met, where the living communed with those lost along the way, and where the most ordinary plants and objects were rendered mysterious, at times radiant. These photographic exposures, and the words that accompany them, are the heartfelt measure of an hour, a day, a season, a lifetime.

Published by Te Herenga Waka Press in association with Rim Books.

Annemarie Hope-Cross was born in Upper Hutt in 1968, obtained a Diploma of Photographic Arts from Whitecliffe Art School in 1989, and in 2011 and 2013 studied photogenic drawing, wet and dry plate collodion and the daguerreotype technique at the Fox Talbot Museum in the United Kingdom. Between 2010 and 2021, she held 13 solo exhibitions at public and private galleries in the Otago region, and her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in New Zealand and internationally. She held an artist’s residency at the Fox Talbot Museum in 2013), and her series of ‘Still’ photographs is in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. With Eric Schusser, she produced two photo-books, Still Intrusion (2019) and Dissolving Margins (2020).

Jenny Bornholdt has published over a dozen books of poems, most recently Lost and Somewhere Else (2019). She has edited a number of anthologies, including Short Poems of New Zealand (2018), and has worked on numerous book and art projects with artists including Pip Culbert, Mary McFarlane, Noel McKenna, Mari Mahr, Brendan O’Brien and Gregory O’Brien. In 2018 she was the co-recipient, with Gregory O’Brien, of the Henderson Arts Trust Residency and spent 12 months in Alexandra, Central Otago, during which time she met Annemarie Hope-Cross.

ISBN: 9781776920839

Pages: 152pp, with 90 colour photos
Format: Hardback
Dimensions: 250mm x 200mm
RRP $50.00

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Dad, Pete, Opa. Tim Veling, XYZ books (Lisbon) edition.

Further views on link with the cover.

Dad, Pete, Opa.
Tim J. Veling
XYZ book (Lisbon) edition

“I have been admitted to hospital. Please don’t worry, but call me when you can. Lots of love, D,P,O.”

It was always how he signed off; shorthand for Dad, Pete, Opa. Tim J. Veling would soon learn his father had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer with an estimated three months to live. The rug was suddenly pulled out from under his feet.

D,P,O is a record of those last, precious months. The photographs are testament to not only the grief that father and son worked through together, but more importantly the love and admiration they shared; an account of the inevitable slowing of one life set to a backdrop of a new life and relationships thriving. Intensely moving in its unflinching intimacy and honesty, D,P,O reminds us that while death comes to us all, we must live in the present and treasure deeply the company of people we hold dear. For within those that remain, love and life endure. Tim J. Veling, Dad, Pete, Opa.

Original project outline in website Place in Time: The Christchurch Documentary Project.

Review by Hamish Petersen in Contemporaryhum.com

Photographs: Tim J. Veling

Editing and Sequencing: Tim J. Veling

Design: Joana Durães

Prepress: Pedro Guimarães

Production: Tiago Casanova and Pedro Guimarães

Printing: Gráfica Maiadouro

2022

XYZ Books

144 pages

21,5 x 26 cm

Offset Print
First edition

ISBN: 978-989-53182-8-5

RRP $85 shipped from Aotearoa

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Return to Monte Cassino

Return to Monte Cassino: The 2nd NZEF War Veterans Remember Italy
Maree Frewen-Wilks, with an introduction by Peter Arnett and an essay by Matthew Wright

This book was conceived and produced by a Southland photojournalist Maree Frewyn-Wilks when she accompanied the New Zealand veterans attending the official functions in Italy in 2004 during the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino. Her photographic essay features as a diary of the travel, visits to cemeteries, social and official events.

What makes this book a unique contribution to New Zealand war histories is the inclusion of veterans’ personal accounts, together with their thoughts and poems about Cassino and accompanied by portraits and profiles. These are complemented by previously unpublished photographs of Monte Cassino and surrounds, from their albums 1943–1945.

 

“These wonderful images depict the soldiers’ life with civilians, during battle and barren scenery spotlighting bomb craters, ammunition identifying tons of rubble. The images provide proof that life away from home was in fact – War.”

Maree Frewyn-Wilks

 

Weaved through the New Zealand veterans’ stories from 1944 and 2004 are:

 

Matthew Wright, one of New Zealand’s most published historians, has written a chapter on the battle of Monte Cassino, which provides a wider context of the New Zealand involvement, the battle and the bravery of all soldiers including the Germans and our own 28th Maori Battalion.

 

A German Paratrooper Bob Frettlohr has written his memories of the Battle of Monte Cassino and his thoughts about Cassino now. Hans Fredrick Meyer tells how the next generations see the Commemorations of the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino.

 

The New Zealand burials in Cassino Commonwealth Cemetery are documented, with the list of the Soldier’s rank, army number, family, age, date of death and from what town in New Zealand he came. The members of the Southland contingent found fellow Southland soldiers who became casualties during the Battle of Cassino. The ode was recited, a poppy was placed and a Spirit of Southland Flag was placed on the headstone. Some of the graves visited are at the rear of the book.

 

The photographs in this book were compiled as Monte Cassino Exhibition, and Maree was the guest artist for the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino in 2014. The exhibition was displayed at the Cassino Military Museum and was donated to the people of Cassino. Record of these events appears towards the rear of the book.

 

Hard-cover, section-sewn | 336 pages  300mm x 265mm landscape B&W reproduction
ISBN 978-0-473-36878-4
Self published: 2017

RRP $70  (NB. Over 2 kg and shipped from Invercargill)

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