By all accounts Wellington has a number of good active art photographers, non-profit galleries, some small artist-run spaces and a photographic dealer gallery. The art photographic scene appears to be lively, the work interesting, with much of it is project based. There are more reflections on the Wellington photographic scene here.
An example of a project based body of work is the recent book by the poet /photographer Mary Macpherson. Old New World, consists of her photographs made over seven years about the changes in New Zealand society as seen in the small regional/rural towns throughout the country. The narrative is one of a shift from a traditional New Zealand, to places of prosperity and development that look very different to the 1960s and 70s. Peter Ireland interpreted the work "as a melancholy lament for the steady disappearance of the New Zealand of her childhood and youth, especially since the economic “reforms” of the 1980s."
Maybe not. There is a section that deals with places that have been changed or transformed through development. Ireland says that:
The road trip is a bit of a guy thing, and, formally, her imagery then tended to echo the style pioneered here by Robin Morrison and furthered by other male photographers such as John McDermott and Derek Henderson [ie., The Terrible Boredom of Paradise]
However, the photographic works that Macpherson says that she thought about before making her Old New World photographs were Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places (for his photographing of everyday streets and buildings with tremendous formal sophistication) Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects (his restrained, yet socially charged images) and Walker Evan’s photographs of buildings.
