Ans Westra
Ans Westra, (born 28 April 1936 in Leiden) is a self-taught New Zealand photographer, with an interest in Māori. Her prominence as an artist and author was most amplified by her 1964 piece Washday at the pa.Westra left the Netherlands for New Zealand in 1957.
Initial interest in photography
Ans was exposed to photography as a teenager by her stepfather. A visit in 1956 to the international exhibition The Family of Man in Amsterdam, together with a book by Joan van der Keukens, Wij Zijn 17 (We Are Seventeen), inspired Ans’ first photographic documentation, which featured her fellow students.
Professional photography
In 1958 she moved to Wellington, where she joined the Wellington Camera Club and worked in various local photographic studios. In 1960, Ans received international recognition winning a prize from the UK Photography magazine for her work entitled Assignment No. 2. That same year Ans had her first photograph published in New Zealand on the cover of Te Ao Hou, a magazine published by the Department of Māori Affairs. In 1962 she began working as a full-time, freelance documentary photographer. Much of her early work was for the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education and Te Ao Hou magazine.
In 1964 her school bulletin Washday at the Pa was published, and distributed to primary school classrooms throughout New Zealand. Soon after its release the journal was withdrawn by order of the Minister of Education at the request of the Maori Women’s Welfare League. Later in 1964 Washday at the Pa was privately republished by the Caxton Press.
In 1982 an archive of Ans’ negatives was established at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
In the late 1980s and 1990s Ans undertook several artist-in-residences including at the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt (1988–89), the Tylee Cottage Residency, Wanganui (1993) and in 1996, Ans was awarded the inaugural Southland Art Foundation Artist in Residence award by Southland Art Foundation, Southern Institute of Technology, Southland Museum and Art Gallery and Creative New Zealand. In 1998 she was artist-in-residence at the Otago School of Fine Arts.
Ans’ 2009 book and exhibition, The Crescent Moon: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand features her own photographs, with text by New Zealand writer Adrienne Jansen. The book’s interviews and photographs of thirty-seven individuals give insights into the lives of Asian Muslims in New Zealand.
Washday at the pa was reissued in 2011 by Suite Publishing to include other photos of the same family taken in 1998.
In May 2013, Suite Publishing released Westra’s publication: Our Future: Ngā Tau ki Muri, which includes 137 often damning photographs of the New Zealand landscape, with text contributions from Hone Tuwhare, Russel Norman, Brian Turner, David Eggleton and David Lange.
Between February 2013 and April 2014, Ans undertook her Full Circle Tour to revisit centres where she had been particularly active during her career. She visited Ruatoria, Ruatoki, Rotorua, the Whanganui River, Kaitaia, Invercargill and Stewart Island.
In 2014, the digitization of Ans’ archive of negatives held at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, came into effect through her representative, Suite Tirohanga.
Ans Westra’s print Untitled, from Washday at the Pa, 1963, set a new auction record price at NZ$10,575 at Webb’s in Auckland, New Zealand, on 11 June 2015.
Awards
Ans received a Certificate of Excellence from the New York World’s Fair photographic exhibition in 1964–1965.
Ans was the Pacific regional winner of the Commonwealth Photography Award in 1986, travelling to the Philippines to photograph and then onwards to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and America.
In 1998 Ans was awarded the Companion of the Order of New Zealand Merit for services to photography and in 2007 she became an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon artist.
On 28 May 2015, Ans received an honorary doctorate from Massey University in recognition of her long-standing contribution to New Zealand’s visual culture.
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