Marti Friedlander

By Leonard Bell

From Maori moko to Dame Whina Cooper and the 1975 Maori land march, from Rita Angus to Norman Kirk, from Israel to Fiji, Marti Friedlander's photographs have captured the transformation of our lives over the last 50 years. While recording these places, events, and personalities of recent history, Friedlander has brought to her subjects a distinctive eye. Arriving in New Zealand as a Jewish immigrant from England in 1958, Marti Friedlander has always viewed life through the lens of an outsider. Whether photographing artists and writers or protests and street scenes, her photographs have drawn out key human dynamics - conflict, ambivalence, anger, warmth - by excelling in the photographer's art. This landmark book is the first sustained examination of Friedlander's life and work. It is illustrated with almost 200 of her photographs, many published for the first time. In a world awash with throwaway images, Marti Friedlander's photographs provide evidence for the value of really seeing, showing how sustained, inquiring and attentive looking by both photographer and viewers can lead us to new truths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781869407926

Leonard Bell

Leonard Bell is associate professor of art history at the University of Auckland. His writings on cross-cultural interactions and representations and the work of travelling, migrant and refugee artists and photographers have been published in New Zealand, Britain, the United States, Australia, Germany and the Czech Republic. He is author of Marti Friedlander (Auckland University Press, 2009), Colonial Constructs: European Images of Maori 1840–1914 (AUP, 1992) and In Transit: Questions of Home and Belonging in New Zealand Art (2007). He is co-editor of Jewish Lives in New Zealand (2012).