Pioneering photographer Ans Westra dies, aged 86

Photographer Ans Westra, best known for her work capturing the nation’s cultural and generational changes on film, has died aged 86.

{Suite} Art Gallery confirmed that the artist passed away at her home in Wellington on Sunday.

“Anna Jacobs (Ans) Westra was a pioneer of documentary photography, and one of the first woman to work in this area in Aotearoa New Zealand,” a statement released on Sunday evening said.

Westra is well known for her evocative black and white photos of ordinary kiwi life, especially in some of Aotearoa’s most remote settlements.

The Dutch photographer born in 1936, migrated to New Zealand when she was 21 and spent long periods of time travelling around the country as a full-time freelance documentary photographer.

She photographed life as she saw it. While almost certainly unintentional at the time, the amassed images are now regarded as the most significant study of life in New Zealand over the past six decades.

The self-taught artist has received numerous accolades for her work. She was awarded the Companion of the Order of New Zealand Merit for services to photography in 1998, was announced as an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon artist in 2007 and received an honorary doctorate from Massey University in 2015.

She’s the mother of three adult children, six grandchildren and lives in Wellington.

{Suite} director and manager David Alsop and the National Library of New Zealand started digitising 150,000 of Westra’s images in 2017 to ensure they continue as a historic documentation during one of the most transitional times of New Zealand history.

When Alsop first opened his Wellington art gallery {Suite} 15 years ago, he approached Westra to see if she would be interested in him exhibiting some of her prints. He had no idea he would open a Pandora’s Box.

“Over the years she’d hand-printed hundreds of images but there were thousands more that were never printed. As I started to learn more about her work I realised that I had something important on my hands and I felt an immediate sense of responsibility,” Alsop previously told Stuff.

“Her images and prints are historical treasures that needed to be seen.”

In the early days as a new immigrant she relished the opportunity to immerse herself into the Māori culture of her new home, but her desire to be a wallflower capturing everyday moments unnoticed were hindered by her statuesque height and Dutch heritage.

Nevertheless, she pulled it off. Westra previously confessed her images came about by “being quiet, by observing people first, by being open-minded, non judgemental and going with the flow.”

One of Westra most famous series called Washday at the Pa became a topic of conversation after the Māori Women’s Welfare League protested that it depicted Māori in a bad light.

The 1964 series featured a family living in Ruatoria and was distributed to primary school classrooms through New Zealand as a reading resource. Shortly after all copies were withdrawn and guillotined after the Welfare League protest.

Westra has admitted in the past, the decision to withdraw all copies of the book shocked her. She felt the claim that her photographs weren’t a true depiction of Māori life at the time, defied what she was seeing with her own eyes as she travelled around the country.

Ironically the protested series contains her favourite photo from her career. Taken in the kitchen, it depicts two boys swinging a younger boy in a woven kete. Westra once said: “I just love the look of delight on the little boy’s face” and fondly remembered how the family welcomed her into their home and made her feel as if she was part of their whānau.

An anniversary exhibition titled Home: 60 Years of Ans Westra in New Zealand opened at {Suite} in 2017.