Ans Westra : {Suite} Ponsonby

Renown for a prolific career as an iconic photographer, Ans Westra has amassed the most comprehensive visual documentation of life in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Born in 1936 in Leiden, Netherlands, Ans first arrived in Aotearoa in 1957 at the age of twenty-one. From the 1960s onwards, she spent long periods of time traveling around the country as a fulltime freelance documentary photographer, working mainly for the Department of Education and Te Ao Hou, a Māori magazine published by the Ministry of Maori Affairs.  Her images were candid and she became obsessed with documenting New Zealand life through a camera.  

This month, {Suite} is showing a selection of works by Ans Westra that were due to be exhibited at the now postponed Aotearoa Art Fair.  Photographs in the exhibition at {Suite} will include some of Westra's most notable images including scenes from 'Washday at the Pa' and as well as protest images from the 1970s.  Most of the exhibition images will also be on show at the Dutch Museum in Foxton (opening end of April) as part of a larger Westra exhibition based on 'Ans Westra: Handboek', a survey exhibition shown at, amongst other venues, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki in 2006. 

Ans' decades-long involvement with the portrayal of Aotearoa culture stands as the most significant of the second half of the twentieth century. Ans lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand and is still photographing.