Remembering Ans Westra CNZM
Anna Jacoba (Ans) Westra CNZM was a pioneer of documentary photography, and one of the first women to work in this area in Aotearoa New Zealand. Born 26 April 1936 in Leiden, Netherlands, Ans immigrated to New Zealand in 1957 at the age of 21, eventually basing herself in Wellington.
Self-taught, Ans spent long periods of time traveling around the country as a full-time freelance documentary photographer committed to observing and candidly documenting New Zealand life and culture. In 1998 Westra was awarded the Companion of the Order of New Zealand Merit for services to photography.
A major exhibition of her work, Handboek: Ans Westra photographs, opened at the National Library Gallery in 2004 with an accompanying book and film. The exhibition was also shown at major centers around the country before traveling to the Museum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden.
In 2006 a documentary was made about the artist called Ans Westra: Private Journeys/Public Thoughts, and in 2007 she was made an Arts Foundation Icon, an honor bestowed to a living circle of 20 New Zealand artists for their extraordinary lifetime achievements. In 2015 she received an honorary doctorate from Massey University in recognition of her long-standing contribution to New Zealand's visual culture.
Ans has left a remarkable legacy of photographs documenting New Zealand’s most remote areas to street scenes, stock saleyards, rugby games, and the Porirua Mongrel Mob. She also photographed around the world, including Tonga, Fiji, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and New York. Her contribution to debates about how New Zealanders view themselves and each other is exemplary and has had a marked and lasting effect on our visual culture.
Ans' style and dedication were immensely influential on generations of cinematographers and documentary makers, in Aotearoa and beyond.
Ans died peacefully at her home in Tirohanga, Wellington, on 26 February 2023. She is survived by her half-sister, three children, and six grandchildren.
David Alsop
