Mark Adams: A Survey/He Kohinga Whakaahua

Mark Adams: A Survey /He Kohinga Whakaahua is a beautifully crafted book, as befits one of New Zealand’s most acclaimed photographers. It is a tribute to the stunning photographs he has produced over the last 50 years, his thoughtful exploration of our postcolonial history and of cross-cultural encounters between Pakeha, Māori, and Pacifica people.

Mark Adams is a man of few words, preferring his photographs to speak for themselves, but the depth of meaning behind them can be difficult for the viewer to decipher. However, in her excellent in-depth essay at the beginning of the book, Sarah Farrar, the author and the Head of Curatorial and Learning at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, has provided us with an excellent window into his life, his photographic process, and his thinking.

When Mark Adams first taught himself photography in the 1970s, he used a large-plate camera, the same kind of camera the popular Burton Brothers, who ran a photographic studio in Dunedin, used in the nineteenth century. But whereas they saw the New Zealand landscape through a colonist’s lens and also took stereotypical pictures of Māori for the tourist trade, Mark Adams sought to be, in his words, ‘the Burton Brothers in reverse.’ He strove to decolonise his thinking and to free himself from this Eurocentric vision.

In this age of digital photography Mark Adams is a rarity. He has continued to use his large-plate camera. Lugging this heavy camera, tripod and lighting equipment around, sometimes to remote locations, is a mission few photographers today would want to emulate. But when enlarged to mural size, the image quality is incomparable! And it suits his personality, his patient, thoughtful approach, and his striving for perfection.

Mark Adams: A Survey/He Kohinga Whakaahua is divided into ten sections showcasing a wide selection of his photographs and includes sites which Captain Cook visited, places where the Tiriti o Waitangi was signed, and his series of photographs of Samoan tatau (tattoo).

Ngāi Tahu trusted him to photograph sites of significance across Waipounamu because of his deep respect for Indigenous kaupapa and cultural practices. He always sought permission from local kaumatua at various marae before taking these photographs. This section in the book has been given the thought-provoking subtitle:

Whenua i mahiratia, haehae ngā tākata.

Land of memories, scarred by people.

Some of Mark Adams’ most iconic photographs are of places where Captain James Cook and his crew came ashore in Fiordland and Queen Charlotte Sound. This is where some of the first interactions between Māori and the British Empire took place. Artists that accompanied Cook on his voyages, such as William Hodges and John Webber, created dramatic, majestic paintings of some of these sites, influenced by the dominant style of English landscape painting. Mark Adams has responded to these historic artworks by creating some stunning black and white panoramic photographs.

Mark Adams’s photographs of three meeting houses, Hinemihi, Rauru and Tiki a Tamamutu, carved by esteemed Ngāti Tarāwai tohunga whakairo (master carver) Tene Waitere, are a testament to Tene Waitere’s outstanding skills as a carver and his innovative style. One stands in the garden of Clendon House, a private estate in England, another is on display in a famous German anthropological museum, and one was purchased by a colonial businessman to display at his Spa Hotel in Rotorua. It does beg the question as to how appropriate it was for private collectors and museums to acquire whare whakairo (carved meeting houses) as ethnographic artifacts, a far cry from their traditional function as a meeting place for iwi and statement of Māori identity, culture, and mana. The good news is that Hinemihi will be returned home to Aotearoa in the not-too-distant future.

Mark Adams is well known both here and internationally for his striking series of photographs documenting the tradition of Samoan tatau performed by Tufuga tatatau (master tattooists) in domestic settings in Tāmaki Makaurau. Early on in this series, when taking a photograph of his model Salati Fiu, he had a lightbulb moment. He realised that he himself was ‘the exotic’ in the frame. Salati Fiu already knew he was in Polynesia.

Mark Adams: A Survey/He Kohinga Whakaahua was published to coincide with a superb exhibition of his photographs presently showing at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Commenting on the occasion of the major book and exhibition, Mark Adams says:

“Books are useful as repositories of accessible work, but only an exhibition can show the conceptual intent, full scale and unique qualities of the large format photographic medium I have used for 50 years.”

Having had the privilege of both reading this book and viewing the exhibition, I would encourage others interested in art, photography, and New Zealand history to do this as well. Both are amazing.

But when the exhibition finishes, on the 17th of August 2025, this book will continue to be available and be valued by future generations as a taonga, a precious record of Mark Adams’ achievements so far.

Reviewer: Lyn Potter

Massey University Press and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki