You don't plan to capture history, but you do anyway.
November 15, 2016 1:20 PM   Subscribe

Marti Friedlander, 1928 - 2016, photographed New Zealand's prime ministers, athletes, musicians, artists, regular people, landscapes, protests, ceremonies. She died on Sunday.

October 2016 interview by Adam Dudding: "At this time in your life, everything is courage."
"I couldn't take pretty pictures. I love people. We're all endlessly fascinating."

2007 interview by Michele Hewitson: Marti Friedlander, modern woman
What she really likes to do is agree to be interviewed and suffer through it, twitching, until she can turn the tables, get out her camera, and take her own portrait of the person who is supposed to be making one of her.

Portfolio: Marti Friedlander.com
posted by wonton endangerment (2 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
An affectionate and perceptive tribute from Giovanni Tiso:
Both Friedlander and Westra immigrated from continental Europe, which may partly explain why I have found their work so accessible and sympathetic. Theirs isn’t a New Zealand of majestic landscapes or remote places without people (unlike, say, Robin Morrison’s). Nor is it the New Zealand of quietly dignified, laconic men, or muscular sporting heroes. It is rather the country – for which Aotearoa may be a better appellation – of working people and their families: plain, seldom stylish, hardly wealthy, but always projecting with thoughtful confidence a sense of its own place in a global human society. A country that skews female, Māori and young. A country one might like to live in.
posted by verstegan at 1:34 PM on November 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


"a very difficult woman."
Ha! There are worse epitaphs. What an exciting life.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:57 PM on November 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


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