In a career that spanned six decades, the Dutch-Kiwi photographer Ans Westra (1936&– 2023) made it her life' s work to capture the growth of a nation through hundreds of thousands of images. Her photographic catalogue is now widely thought of as a photo album of Aotearoa New Zealand.This richly illustrated biography interrogates her remarkable — and at times controversial — practice, and a life that always put photography first.

WASHDAY AT THE PA, by New Zealand premier photographers Ans Westra, was first published as a photo-story booklet in 1964 by the Department of Education for use in Primary Schools, but all 38,000 copies were withdrawn following a campaign by the Maori Women's Welfare League that it would have a 'detrimental effect' on Maori people - and that the living conditions portrayed within the book were atypical. A second edition of the booklet was published the same years with some images omitted. This edition is a selection of these two editions together with photographs of the washday family taken in 1988, and includes essays by arts critic, journalist and broadcaster Mark Amery detailing the controversy and background of WASHDAY AT THE PA.

A group of New Zealand's leading cultural studies scholars provide their perspectives on the politics of display in this thought-provoking collection of essays. Philip Armstrong, Roger Blackley, Kyla McFarlane, Annie Potts, and Paul Williams, among others, showcase their thinking about cultural activities--looking and showing, viewing and arranging--that are deeply embedded in ideology. From the antique plaster casts held by Auckland Museum to the wild foods on New Zealand's West Coast, the essays pursue a variety of trajectories on how New Zealanders display themselves and what they profess and contest in their collective representations.

What have Maori been protesting about? What has been achieved? This book provides an overview of the contemporary Maori protest 'movement', a summary of the rationale behind the actions, and a wonderful collection of photographs of the action u the protests, the marches and the toil behind the scenes. And it provides a glimpse of the fruits of that protest u the Waitangi Tribunal and the opportunity to prepare, present and negotiate Treaty settlements; Maori language made an official language; Maori-medium education; Maori health providers; iwi radio and, in 2004, Maori television.

THE CRESCENT MOON : THE ASIAN FACE OF ISLAM IN NEW ZEALAND opens new doors into the lives of the largest group of Muslims in New Zealand and in the world as a whole: those of Asian descent. Photographer Ans Westra and writer Adrienne Jansen - armed with a camera and a tape recorder - take a trip through the country, catching up with people in their everyday lives. They meet a very diverse group, ethnically, culturally, and theologically. There are lawyers and farmers, computer trainers and butchers, fourth generation New Zealanders and new migrants. They talk with disarming honesty about the media, about 9/11, about identity, about their faith - but mostly they just talk about who they are and their life in New Zealand today.