Memorial

To view a recording of the memorial service for Ans Westra held on 3 March 2023 scroll down.

 

Anna Jacoba (Ans) Westra CNZM was a pioneer of documentary photography, and one of the first women to work in this area in Aotearoa New Zealand. Born 26 April 1936 in Leiden, Netherlands, Ans immigrated to New Zealand in 1957 at the age of 21, eventually basing herself in Wellington. 


Self-taught, Ans spent long periods of time traveling around the country as a full-time freelance documentary photographer committed to observing and candidly documenting New Zealand life and culture. In 1998 Westra was awarded the Companion of the Order of New Zealand Merit for services to photography. 


A major exhibition of her work, Handboek: Ans Westra photographs, opened at the National Library Gallery in 2004 with an accompanying book and film, the exhibition was also shown at major centres around the country before travelling to the Museum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden.

In 2006 a documentary was made about the artist called Ans Westra: Private journeys/public thoughts, and in 2007 she was made an Arts Foundation Icon, an honour bestowed to a living circle of 20 New Zealand artists for their extraordinary lifetime achievements. In 2015 she received an honorary doctorate from Massey University in recognition of her long-standing contribution to New Zealand's visual culture.

 

  • ‘Ans had a genuineness about her photography, she could read faces and the inscrutable features of the Māori kuia.  She was able to capture it and it would speak to the people.  That’s what enabled her to have the confidence of the people around her. She checked and asked questions about the marae itself, she took on board the tapu nature, the sacredness of the marae and she never intruded upon space and got too close.’

    Bill Nathan, Former President and Life Member of Ngāti Poneke Young Māori Club, 2 March 2023
  • {Suite} Director David Alsop had a long-standing relationship with Ans after meeting in her birth city of Leiden, the Netherlands,...

    {Suite} Director David Alsop had a long-standing relationship with Ans after meeting in her birth city of Leiden, the Netherlands, in 2006. An ongoing project between {Suite} and the National Library of New Zealand began in 2015 to digitise Ans' archive - an unparalleled collection comprising more than 300,000 images. Ans’ photos are catalogued by location and date with additional information about events, activities and people in the images noted where known. Unlimited online access to Ans’ image archive is available via the National Library website, providing a rich resource for anyone interested in social history and photography. The library welcomes any additional information about the images.

     

    Ans has left a remarkable legacy of photographs documenting New Zealand’s most remote areas to street scenes, stock saleyards, rugby games and the Porirua Mongrel Mob. She also photographed around the world including Tonga, Fiji, the Netherlands, the Philippines and New York. Her contribution to debates about how New Zealanders view themselves and each other is exemplary, and has had a marked and lasting effect on our visual culture.

     

    Ans died peacefully at her home in Tirohanga, Wellington, on 26 February 2023.  She is survived by her half-sister, three children and six grandchildren.

     

     

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