In an art world context, photography has evolved significantly over the years pushing boundaries in both technique and concept.
No longer the poor cousin of painting, but still much more affordable thanks to photographs being sold in numbered editions, an art photograph doesn’t merely capture a moment—artists use the medium to explore new perspectives and sometimes to experiment.
A ubiquitous part of the institutional art world, photography has recently made significant strides in the commercial art market, often holding its value better during recent downturns – and with the Aotearoa Art Fair opening on May 1, galleries from New Zealand and Australia will feature a wide range of photographic art.
Photography has been on collectors’ minds since late January when Creative New Zealand announced that Fiona Pardington MNZM (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Ngāti Kahungunu), will exhibit in our national pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in 2026.
Then, Mark Adams: A Survey | He Kohinga Whakaahua followed in March, opening at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. It’s the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work spanning his 50-year career, a show that will run until mid-August.
With 45 galleries from 11 regions and over 150 artists from New Zealand and beyond, this is the biggest Art Fair yet, with important works that speak to New Zealand’s great photographic tradition and look to the future.
Suite Gallery is recreating Ans Westra’s studio for the weekend, complete with the late photographer’s cameras. The Dutch-born New Zealand photographer documented life in Aotearoa for more than six decades.
Milford Galleries of Dunedin/Queenstown will show new work by Yuki Kihara. Kihara’s major project Paradise Camp featured at the 2022 Venice Biennale and has toured from Venice, to Australia, and back to Europe where it is currently being exhibited at The Sainsbury Centre in Norwich.
“Other than being intellectually challenging, utterly unique and visually mesmerising, the provenance of Kihara’s work is impressive,” says Vanessa Eve Cook, the gallery’s Senior Art Consultant.
“A selection of works has recently been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which first started collecting her work after her solo exhibition ‘Living Photographs’ in 2008.”
The works at the Art Fair are part of a small series of four lenticular pieces titled Presence in Absence from the exhibition currently showing in Milford’s Dunedin gallery. Lenticular prints use a technique where the image appears to move and alter, giving an illusion of depth.
“There are five editions available of each lenticular and the lenticulars have progressive pricing. This essentially means that as the edition becomes scarcer, the price increases,” says Cook.
Milford Galleries will also show Vincent Ward’s photographs of abstracted landscape-like painted bodies from his series Palimpsest. Following on from the fair, Ward will have his first solo exhibition with Milford Galleries in June at their new gallery space in Queenstown.
Lisa Reihana will debut photographs from her latest work Māramatanga with her dealer, Sydney-based Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert. The photographs were developed alongside Māramatanga, a 6m-high moving image commissioned by Auckland University in 2024.
Recognised by ARTNET as one of the most influential artists of the decade in 2019, Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennial in 2017. A selection of Fiona Pardington’s evocative photographs will be there courtesy of her gallery Starkwhite and visitors will also be treated to Australian contemporary artist and environmentalist Leila (pronounced Lee-la) Jeffreys represented by the Sydney-based Olsen Gallery.
Jeffreys’ photographs, capturing the personalities of Antipodean birds, have also had solo exhibitions in Hong Kong, New York, and London, and collectors are interested to see her egg photographs which caused a stir at last year’s Sydney Contemporary where the gallery sold multiple photographs in editions of 8 and 14 – many more than they had anticipated.
“The level of creativity and skill involved in contemporary photography has elevated its status significantly,” says gallery director Tim Olsen. “The essence of Leila Jeffreys’ eggs are they are an extension of photography taking on the qualities of sculpture and in particular the albatross egg connecting to Brâncusi in its shape and texture.”
He is referring to Constantin Brâncuși, a Romanian artist considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century and the pioneer of modern abstract sculpture. Olsen says, “The colours, the patterns, the drawings within the eggs are extraordinary. The marks and Zen like calligraphy on other eggs are marks that artists such as Cy Twombly would have died to have owned.”
The artist will be at the Art Fair too and will discuss the intersection of art and environmental preservation during a free talk on Saturday 3 May at 2pm.
From a collector’s standpoint, photography is often more accessible than other forms of art.
“Photography has a unique ability to connect with people as the subject is often universally relatable. If you’re looking to diversify your collection, it’s a fantastic way to do so while supporting emerging and established artists,” says Olsen Gallery’s Katrina Arent.
Right from the start of her gallery days in 1984, Auckland’s Trish Clark of Trish Clark Gallery embraced photography and moving image works alongside painting and sculpture. At this year’s Art Fair, Clark is showing some of Christine Webster’s works. Webster, one of the very few artists from Aotearoa who managed to break out of a purely national art scene in the 80s and 90s, has work held in prestigious collections internationally. Clark describes the photographs she’ll be showing as having “powerful potency, emotional strength, possibly somewhat discomfiting”.
On April 29, Aotearoa-based, US-born Mickey Smith will open her third solo exhibition with Sanderson Contemporary. A master chronicler of libraries, Smith’s exhibition Morphologies is currently touring institutions in the US. This new series, Volume: Domesticated, emerged from time spent photographing inside Aotearoa’s second-hand bookshops, the artist’s first exploration of books within the domestic realm. The exhibition will continue at the gallery’s Art Fair booth from May 1.
Art adviser and writer, Hamish Coney, both a personal collector of photography and a curator of a large photography collection, says: “In a world context, New Zealand has got brilliant photographers. Photography is the only genre of art production where a small collector on a budget can collect a photograph from an edition that a public gallery also collects. It’s little bit of fun for the collector to say, ‘Well, I’ve got one from the edition and so does Te Papa’.”
*To learn more about collecting photography, don’t miss The Art of Collecting Photography talk with curators and collectors moderated by Suite Gallery’s David Alsop on Sunday May 4, 12pm, at Aotearoa Art Fair, Viaduct Events Centre. Tickets are available here.
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