130 year old NZ Academy Showcases Photography

130 year old NZ Academy Showcases Photography

Celebrating its 130th anniversary this year, the NZ Academy of Fine Arts has been an institution best known for the presentation of paintings. But it is with photography that it is currently making itself known to the city. Recognising a need to showcase arts that do not always get a fair showing elsewhere, the Academy is hosting Our Far South, an exhibition of photographs by Mike Wilksinson that also imparts an important message about protecting our Antarctic region, our southernmost continent. Resplendent with soaring birds, seals, penguins and Shackleton Bear, it is delighting the children, and with rich and unexpected colours it is surprising adults.

Our Far South is more than an exhibition, it was also a journey made by a group of experts and others, brought together by local writer and commentator Gareth Morgan. The objective of the project is to raise New Zealanders’ awareness of the importance of the area between Stewart Island and the South Pole: to highlight the reasons why this area is of such value and to outline the threats it is under and the opportunities it holds. Throughout the week experts from a range of leading institutions will host lunchtime seminars on the importance of the region as well as the thorny issue of climate change.

On at the same time as Our Far South, local photographer Paul Grimwood presents Syria and Lebanon. Grimwood’s images were captured in 2005 at a time when Beirut was unsettled - the Prime Minister had been assassinated a year or so before and while in the artist was in the city a woman broadcaster lost both her legs when a bomb exploded in her car. The artist tells the story of taking the photo of the British Embassy rather quickly under the eye of one that soldiers that manned every street corner with a machine gun. His friends had warned him not to take photos of government buildings; he was likely to be arrested as a spy.

Syria, by contrast, was peaceful at the time. Many of the photographs taken now seem elegiac in the light of recent civil war, particularly those of sheltered and picturesque courtyards and glowing interiors in the beautiful city of Aleppo.

Opening July 26th, the NZ Academy of Fine Arts will host World Press Photo: the winning photographs of a national contest of photojournalists touring over forty countries worldwide. Sometimes gut-wrenching but also uplifting, this exhibition is considered a must-see by many. According to the Academy’s curator, Jodie Dalgleish, World Press Photo brings home the way in which photojournalism can spark discussion and debate and shape (for better or for worse) the way we see ourselves.

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