Emily Parr, Fyffe House, 2021

Emily Parr, Fyffe House, 2021.
Digital print from 35mm film, 841 x 594mm.
Printed in an edition 3 by Ilam Editions.

Fyffe House is one of twelve 35mm film photographs from Emily Parr’s solo exhibition Surfacing. These photographs, digitally produced at large scale, document the early stages of her PhD research, as Parr (Ngāi Te Rangi, Moana, Pākehā) returns to sites of whale migration that overlap with places of significance to her whakapapa.

Since 2019, Parr has been to Sāmoa and Tonga, where her paternal great-grandparents are from, and Tauranga Moana where the other side of her family is from. Earlier in the year Parr made a trip to Kaikōura to learn about the whales and former whaling station there. These are all places humpback whales pass through on their journey from Antarctica to the warmer waters of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific.