Taking Edward Sealy’s striking photographic view of Mount Somers (c.1866) as a prompt for discussion, Barrar will consider how early photographers engaged with the land. What motivated the making of their images, and what did the physical act of ‘site’ photography entail? How did they influence the outcome of substantial official surveys and ambitious personal ventures? Barrar will also draw on the archival diversity of the exhibition to highlight different processes and formats used by these photographers – why it’s important to engage with the actual photographic materiality of the time, and what’s special about seeing these images in their original ‘vintage’ form.

Wayne Barrar is a Te Whanganui-a-Tara based photographer and Honorary Research Fellow at Whiti o Rehua School of Art, Massey University. His practice has a particular interest in visualising the human construction of landscape and critiquing the ‘re-definition’ of nature. He also has a long-standing interest in nineteenth-century photography and photographers, and regularly employs early photographic processes such as albumen, platinum and cyanotype printing in his exhibition and project development.

This series of talks, developed in collaboration with artist and educator Caroline McQuarrie, brings local contemporary lens-based artists into dialogue with A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa. Each artist has been invited to offer their response to particular photographs. Drawing on their own approaches, whakapapa and interests, these artists offer fresh and varied insights into the political, social and technological dynamics of photography and its implicit relationship to settler-colonialism in Aotearoa.