LANDMARK BOOK, EXHIBITION CAPTURE LIFE AND WORK OF PHOTOGRAPHER MARTI FRIEDLANDER

The above heading led a story on the blog on 29 September.

Now I have my own copy of the book and I spent the past weekend reading it and looking at it over a period of some hours. And what pleasure this stunning book delivered.
Here are some thoughts further to my earlier post:
Written by University of Auckland Associate Professor of Art History Leonard Bell the book provides the first detailed examination of Friedlander's life and work.

It is illustrated with almost 200 of her photographs, many published for the first time, featuring artists and writers, street corner scenes, shots from political events, revered Maori figures, and much of the everyday life of ordinary New Zealanders.

The photos are almost entirely black & white, which seems totally appropriate as that has been her main medium, the great majority of them within New Zealand although in chapter six, Displacement, Migration, Travel, the photographs are from Israel, Tokelau, Fiji, India, London and Paris.

My favourite chapter though has to be Chapter Two - Inside Outside, Public Private -which features a series of portraits including, among others:

Tony Fomison 1977, Mervyn Williams 1965, Cathy Downes 1979, Keith Sinclair 1969,

Louise Henderson 1972, Charles Brasch 1970,Philip & Lee Trustrum 1980,

Michael & Dene Illingworth 1966, Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pre 1972,

Toss & Edith Woolaston 1969, James & Helen McNeish 1975, Dan Davin 1984,

Maurice Duggan 1965 & 1971, John Pule, 2001, Rita Angus 1969, (below right), Karl Stead 1982 (pic left) & 2007, Margaret Mahy 2008.

Bell discusses each of the portraits and I found his comments both fascinating and illuminating.
Here is how the chapter starts:
“Emotional involvement is the key to my photography and why I photograph mostly people………it is people that matter,, with all our fallibilties………the alienation from each other, in spite of our need to belong” she wrote to the historian Michael King in 1972.

I read this chapter and then went straight back and read it again. And of course spent ages looking at the images both times through. I so love her portraits.

This book is a stunning tribute to a much loved and admired New Zealander, a great photographer, an outstanding artist, and a wonderful chronicler of the past 50 years of our social history. Congratulations and thanks Marti, I salute you.

Well done too by author/editor Leonard Bell, by publisher Auckland University Press, and finally I must mention the special and most thoughtful foreword by Kapka Kassabova, a superb essay which I am sure must have thrilled Marti Friedlander.
Together they have all delivered us a very special book, a taonga no less. I feel privileged to own a copy. Don't miss this one.

Book details - Auckland University Press, October 2009, 285 x 235 mm, hardback, tritone and full colour illustrations & plates, 232 pages, ISBN 978 1 86940 444 4, $75.

The publishers have kindly allowed me to reproduce four images from the book. There are two above while left here shows Street Corner meeting 1969 and right is Grey Lynn 1969.

Because of the size limitations of my blog I cannot do justice to Friedlanders superb black and white work but I hope they will give you an indication of her sharp eye.