Starting Point for a Complicated Story

Starting Point for a Complicated Story 

Marti Friedlander

Starkwhite Auckland 
94 Newton Road , Auckland

12 July - 19 June 2024

Marti Friedlander, Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration, Turangawaewae, 1971

Marti Friedlander (1928-2016) had an almost sixty year career in New Zealand. She arrived from England in early 1958 and was taking photographs until shortly before her death. From the early 1960s on she became one of the best-known and most celebrated photographers here; her work reproduced in periodicals and books and exhibited ever more widely, especially after the Auckland Art Gallery-organised retrospective in 2001, which toured the country.

To quote Friedlander academic Dr Len Bell, "Appearances may be deceptive, and Marti Friedlander’s photographs often probe beyond surfaces and visualise social and psychological conditions, ambivalences and ambiguities, which might be difficult to articulate otherwise. You need to look closely not just what she photographed, but also, and crucially, at how she pictured her subjects. Each photograph in this exhibition could be the starting point of a complicated story – as the best photographs are”.

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