Obituary: Ans Westra focused her camera on Aotearoa

Ans Westra, documentary photographer: b April 26, 1936, d February 26, 2023

The life of Ans Westra is a story of how a Dutch woman born before the outbreak of World War I, became New Zealand’s most respected documentary photographer.

Westra, who has died aged 86, left a

legacy of photographs documenting everything from Māori living in some of New Zealand’s most remote areas, to street scenes in Cuba St (Wellington), rugby and the Porirua Mongrel Mob.

Wellington photographer Simon Woolf describes Westra as one of a kind.

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“I doubt that there has been a documentary photographer of Ans’ ilk, ever before in New Zealand. There will be none like her again.”

Stuff photographer Robert Kitchin met her only twice but she made a huge impression.

“New Zealand has lost a great. Her legacy lives on with her gift of showing us as we are.”

Known to all as Ans, Anna Jacoba Westra was born in the Dutch city of Leiden. In the early 1950s she moved to Rotterdam and in 1957 graduated with a diploma in arts and craft teaching. Surprisingly, given her later prominence as a photographer, her specialist subject was needlework.

The event that sparked her interest in photography was the 1956 exhibition The Family of Man in Amsterdam. Featuring 503 photographs from 68 countries, it was curated by Edward Steichen​ from the Museum of Modern Art exhibition. Hugely successful internationally, it toured the world for eight years.

Commenting on its popularity, Steichen said people “looked at the pictures, and the people in the pictures looked back at them. They recognised each other”.

It was a philosophy that would be the hallmark of Westra’s work in New Zealand.

Arriving in New Zealand in 1957, she initially came to visit her father, who had settled here.

After spending eight months working for Crown Lynn in Auckland, she moved to Wellington in 1958. It was in the capital that she began working as a photographer – freelance and for various photographers.

She first came to prominence in 1964 for her book Washday at the Pā. Six decades after its publication it remains controversial.

The book documented a Māori Family in Ruatoria, given a fictitious name and said to be living near Taihape to stop them from being identified.

Westra took the photos and wrote the text, which included a girl standing barefoot on an oven. Standing on a food preparation area is tapu for Māori and Westra was accused of posing the photo and acting insensitively.

She had spent five months living with the family, and the poverty they lived in clearly made an impression on her.

The Māori Women’s Welfare League, then an influential organisation, took offence, arguing the book unfairly stereotyped Māori and needlessly highlighted their poverty.

Washday was widely distributed to schools but given the controversy, the Minister of Education, Arthur Kinsella, recalled all 38,000 copies.

Much of the debate centred around whether the poverty the family of nine were living in was “typical” of Māori at that time.

“It is clear that the publication has given offence, and I have therefore decided that it be withdrawn from the schools,” Kinsella said.

Defending herself in The Dominion newspaper, Westra argued that critics did not understand her work.

“The booklet was never meant to portray a typical Māori family. It is just a story of a happy family living in the country. It shows the warmth of family relationships.”

Ironically, the issue that Westra inadvertently highlighted, poverty and substandard housing, has resurfaced in recent years as an issue of national importance to Māori.

In the decades since Washday was published, academics and photographers remain divided over its merits.

In an article for Newsroom headed “She took the images and ran”, Steve Braunias noted that not everyone was impressed by what Westra achieved.

“Anyone who takes photos is taking something and there are inevitable issues of appropriation in her taking photos of Māori, and pinning them in books or on gallery walls as souvenirs of the white gaze.”

He noted that one critic had been particularly scathing. “Westra misrepresented the poverty she found there as noble simplicity … Westra had taken her images and run.”

Academics Georgina Stewart and Hemi Dale published Reading the ‘ghost book’: Māori talk about Washday at the Pā, by Ans Westra, in 2018.

They argued that Westra’s book accurately reflected the reality of Māori poverty and recalling it had been a mistake.

“Book censorship is a draconian, inherently wasteful and repressive act. The withdrawal of Washday is the best, most dramatic book story in the national history of Aotearoa New Zealand.”

Stewart and Dale said Washday should be acclaimed as a “national treasure” and noted that collectors pay hundreds of dollars to buy the few remaining copies.

Westra was in her 20s when she produced Washday and over the next 60 years she would go on to produce a remarkable catalogue of work.

In 1967 she published Maori, featuring her pictures from all over Aotearoa.

In The Guardian, after her death, Māori documentary maker Cornell Tukiri wrote of his delight at discovering the book.

“It’s an absolutely amazing collection of images of Māori people with chapters called Childhood, A New Family, Hui, Tangi and Te Atatu Hou (The New Dawn) among others.”

The images, he said, were of the highest quality. “For me, they are images to treasure, images to pore over.”

Later career highlights for Westra included being resident at the Dowse Museum in Lower Hutt and a book in 2009, Crescent Moon: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand.

Residencies included the Otago School of Fine Arts, Southland Art Foundation and Creative New Zealand.

In 2011 Washday was republished by Suite Gallery. Asked how she felt about the controversy 47 years later, she told Stuff it had probably helped her career but did raise some significant issues.

“I never did another book for them [the Education Department]. That was the end of that. But it put my name out there for sure. [It] was the validity of documentary photography. It put it into question. Could you just do this, photograph a family like that?”

Her residency at the Dowse produced a wonderful collection of photographs of working class life in the Hutt Valley.

The images showcased her ability to take what many would regard as day-to-day life and give it extra meaning.

In 2022 some of the images were put on billboards in the Lower Hutt suburb of Naenae. Local councillor Andy Mitchell said the pictures still remained relevant after 33 years.

“Ans Westra has captured an extraordinary record of ordinary New Zealanders living their everyday lives in this time capsule of Lower Hutt. The places and faces familiar to the Naenae community remind us how we lived three decades ago.”

Waikanae-based photographer Eve Wereta (Ngapuhi and Ngāti Raukawa) is related to the family in Washday.

When she was studying photography she asked Westra to mentor her and they became friends.

Westra showed her photos from Washday and Wereta believes the images were a true reflection of how Māori too often lived in 1964.

What really impressed Wereta was that she was able to get the pictures.

”My views was that taking those photos and her being [a] Dutch woman and being able to take photos of people that were so vulnerable was a real opportunity for her.”

As a mentor, Westra was supportive and was happy to discuss the photos she took of Māori.

In later life, Westra teamed up with Suite Gallery owner David Alsop​. He had first met when he was living in Holland in 2006 and went to an exhibition of her work.

On returning to Wellington, he reconnected with her and began a business relationship that lasted until her death.

As well as setting up a temporary museum, he supervised the cataloguing and digitalising of more than 300,000 images. The images are now in the National Library.

Westra, he said, had always wanted an agent and, with a background in law, he was able to protect her interests, and there was a legacy for future generations to enjoy.

He regarded Westra as a close friend and said it was impossible not to be impressed by her. Working as a freelancer took courage but it was what she was good at.

“She felt secure with a camera around her neck, it gave her a purpose to engage with people.”

A “very, very independent” woman, she lived in Wellington and Lower Hutt by herself for much of her life.

As a photographer, she was “right at the top” of the tree in New Zealand.

“Young photographers worshipped her.”

Her strength was her ability to record social history and she created a body of work that would last forever, Alsop said. “She created a glimpse of what it might look like to be a New Zealander.”

Westra had two children to John van Hulst, Lisa and Jacob, and a son, Eric, whose father was Barry Crump​.

In 2019, Lisa told Stuff that her early life had been unorthodox.

Summers were spent with younger brother Jacob driving a Valiant station-wagon to Ruatōria, Ngāruawāhia and Waitangi. Westra was not always welcome on maraes, with some questioning why she was there.

She recalled that her mother was hard to miss with a camera. “A tall, Dutch woman observing and capturing life from the edges.”

Historian and documentary maker Luit Bieringa​ played a key role in promoting Westra during the later part of her career. His 2006 documentary Ans Westra – Private Journeys/Public Signposts followed her around New Zealand, including to Ratana Pā and David Lange’s memorial service.

Bieringa also curated a major exhibition of her work for the National Library, which toured nationally, and wrote Handboek, Ans Westra Photographs. In 2019 he acknowledged that on many marae she had not been invited and was not welcome.

“Ans took photographs without permission, but she was part of the scene. They’re the only record of that period that really we have, which is astounding. They’re unique images, and they’re a real treasure. That legacy is terribly important.”

Woolf said the sheer quality and volume of her work had been astounding and she had captured many key moments in New Zealand history.

“People and photographers like Ans are a rarity. She was a true taonga who will leave a lasting legacy here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I am sure even further a field.”

Perhaps the best testament to her legacy is provided by Te Āti Awa elder Ihakara (Kara) Puketapu​ in Private Journeys/Public Signposts.

Westra attended the opening of the Waiwhetū Marae in Lower Hutt in 1960. Ignoring the likes of Prime Minister Walter Nash, she focused her camera on local Māori.

Commenting many years later on the pictures, Kara Puketapu said. “What she has left us with is an important treasure.”

Westra also used the documentary to explain her philosophy on photographs and why she enjoyed attending large events.

“I work on the other side of the fence and photograph groups of people. I prefer to be the quiet observer on the sideline.”

Sources. David Alsop, Simon Woolf, Jan Bieringa, Stuff Archives, Washday at the Pā Controversy, Te Papa Collections, Suite Gallery, Ans Westra – Private Journeys/Public Signposts (NZ On Screen),Reading the ‘ghost book’: Māori talk about Washday at the Pā, by Ans Westra, Georgina Stewart and Hemi Dale, Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 2018 and Eve Wereta.