Ans Westra

a documentation of Māori culture

Ans Westra is responsible for the most comprehensive documentation of Māori culture over a 60 year period of cultural change in New Zealand. Regarded for their realism and spontaneity, Westra’s images bear witness to the post-war urban drift of historically rural Māori as they moved to urban areas and began living in a very different world, alongside Pākehā (New Zealand Europeans), often for the first time.

Westra emigrated from The Netherlands in 1957 and in 1962 began her career as a fulltime freelance documentary photographer, primarily working for the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education and Te Ao Hou, a Māori magazine published by the Department of Internal Affairs. Westra’s work for these two publications led her to travel extensively throughout New Zealand and the South Pacific. Her Humanist style was greatly influenced by Edward Steichen’s landmark international exhibition The Family of Man which Westra saw when it traveled to Amsterdam in 1956.

-And excerpt from Anastasia Photo

Ans Westra’s life's work – around 150,000 negatives – has been digitised and preserved by the National Library of New Zealand.

Also {Suite} Art Gallery is dedicated to celebrating the artist's life time of work and images. Visitors may browse through articles dating back to 1960 and view over 200 books featuring Ans' images. Exhibitions change regularly alongside displays of the artist's ephemera. Visit the gallery at 243 Cuba Street in Wellington New Zealand.
If you would like to get your hands on a Ans Westra print a selected number of images is available please contact {Suite} for more info.

In 1998, Westra was awarded the Companion of the Order of New Zealand Merit (CNZM) for services to photography. In 2007, she received an Arts Foundation Icon Award. She has received several Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grants, which have been used to fund the publication of further works focusing on New Zealand and its society. Westra was the Pacific regional winner of the Commonwealth Photography Award and travelled to the Philippines, The Netherlands, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2015, Westra received an honorary doctorate from Massey University in recognition of her longstanding contribution to New Zealand’s visual culture.

Westra’s publications include Washday at the Pa (1964), Māori (1967), Whaiora (1988) and The Crescent Moon: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand (2009).

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