Māori Camera Club

Māori Camera Club is the inaugural exhibition for the members Hendrix Hennessy-Ropiha, Keita Newbery, Ben Girven, Abigail Hau, Tiana Krafft-Soffe, Vanessa Green, Renati Waaka, and Jazmin Tainui Mihi. The group exhibition presents a selection of new and existing lens-based works by the members. 

What exactly is a Māori Camera Club? Aside from the intent and need for professional development through peers who practice in the same discipline, it also offers the opportunity to bring together a vantage point that is not siloed to their rohe. The starting point to rewrite the encounter between toi Māori and photography was the exhibition Site Seeing by the founding members of the club, Conor Clarke and Bridget Reweti, which was held at the National Library in Wellington in 2025. For the previous exhibition, Reweti’s work through the fog it came and the slice of the sea (for Sarah), 2023 presents a pounamu plate negative with the silhouette of an albatross. The material collision of the plate hybridises the medium without seeking resolution. The work hinted at the larger contradiction of an imperial tool which surveyed the whenua and the flora, fauna and tangata whenua. There is a playful interrogation of both toi Māori and photographic histories in Reweti’s work, and this is further compounded by a mountain reveals a mountain, 2022 by Clarke, in which the portrait of a sandcastle on the beach questions structures like pepeha and our construction of identity. Their exhibition and works are an important foundation for my definition of Māori photography.

In te reo Māori, the word for photograph is whakaahua. In Ben Girven’s works, he understands this through Natalie Robertson’s framework, Towards a Māori creation narrative camera model, but in reverse with his contact print. Girven is informed by the Kahungunu maramataka methodology, in which the images describe a living visual diary that grows with us, and our environment. His mahi is further expanded into another cosmic dimension in Te Kōpu o te Taiao by Tiana Krafft-Soffe. The three-channel moving-image work also features movement artist Sylvie Aroha (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa) and builds on Krafft-Soffe’s background in contemporary dance and ballet. Te Kōpu o te Taiao is a pedagogical framework, the universal origin of all Māori relationships, be it Te Tai Ao, tangata, ātua or, for Krafft-Soffe, a visual choreography of wai. 

Renati Waaka offers an image of Māori boyhood that I recognise from swimming in the same Kaituna awa, close to where my father lived in Paengaroa. The image of the boy emanates Te Arawa pride through the many lakes and rivers that surround the motu. However, Waaka’s image of home and self has been filtered through pop culture references. This is my best friend Guillaume. It’s French for William…He’s Samoan. I often wonder why his name isn’t Viliamu mirrors a Drake album cover; Solange, his TikTok For You Page and depressing gay movies also inform Waaka’s portraits.

Keita Newbery’s works are taken on a visit to her marae in Tūhoe country. They hold a reminder of Peter Peryer’s photograph Two Goats, with a sense of being out-of-time. This is a version of Aotearoa that is obscured in urban centres. However familiar parts of Newbery’s photographs are, they are difficult to parse for a casual viewer. This dimension of refusal images her Tūhoe identity and a relationship of intent to place.

In 1884, Hennessy Ropiha’s tipuna Hori Rōpiha accompanied Tawhiao Tukaroto Matutaera Te Wherowhero, the Māori King, on his journey to England to meet with the Queen about renewing the promises of Te Tiriti. Hori was an esteemed rangatira of Ngāti Kahungunu and Rangitāne. However, the voyage was unsuccessful, resulting in a stalemate between hapū and Crown. Hennessy Ropiha’s series 1840 interrogates related events, definitions and objects that have formed a standard narrative of colonisation. These large-format photographs reflect an identification from the artist with their subject matter, but simultaneously, a desire to untangle oneself from such narratives – and the enduring impasse of resistance.

Taniwha Chasers by Jazmin Tainui Mihi are cowboy photographs. They antagonise Hennessy Ropiha’s images through their evasion of this history, instead exuding mana. The horse turns its eye back on the viewer. These rangatahi Māori have a strong connection with the wild horses of Ōpotiki, the hometown of the artist. Māori have held a long and historic connection to horses. Although they were used as a tool to colonise Aotearoa, they have since been reclaimed as part of our whakapapa.

Abigail Hau’s work resulted from their advocacy for Te Tai Ao and a deep concern for the health of the whenua. Being out hiking is an essential part of Hau’s process – this slow time with the environment is a crucial step in her analogue photographs. Punaruku I and II developed from their first visit to where they whakapapa to. They appear like night vision images, steeped in red and vibrating with the rich pigments of the whenua.

Kaputuhi Pā was photographed by Vanessa Green during a visit to her marae for Te Kawau Mārō o Maniapoto in 2024. The portrait of the marae positions the viewer from the approach of manuhiri arriving to be called on. The backdrop of the hills and the green of the pasture are emblematic of the Waikato, as is the neatly mown lawn. The wharenui has become synonymous with our identity, but the questions seem to no longer be about reclaiming our identity, which I associate with the work of our modernists, but perhaps proximity, as our whakapapa is there and certain. 

A Māori Camera Club is such a Western idea of collectivity and reminds me of sporting clubs that my father enjoyed, like the Te Puke Golf Club that he was a member of with his friends. A fellow image-maker said he wouldn’t want to join the club because photographers are too uptight (and I say this as someone who studied photography and practices photography). It has an artistic rigour, or say perfectionism, in which dust and whenua don’t seem to mix. But a Māori Camera Club’s concern is with the ambition for rangatahi to ride at sunset, to reinvent the methodology of our approach to whakapapa, through visualising the cosmology of Māori photography together.