When Wars Will Be No More (2021)

‘The cover for this book is a photograph I took of a beautiful mural painted at Waiomio Primary School, Waiomio Valley, Te Tai Tokerau. It was painted by the school teachers and students there at the time’.

‘This photobook is the biggest project I’ve worked on. The book documents 1 year of my reclamation journey. Incorporating my whanau in a Te Ao sense, both those alive and those who have passed, are present. A big part of this work has bubbled up from my internal conflicts; existing in this world as a white-skin Māori; a pākehā mum and a Māori dad. A feeling like I was having to transition between two worlds, and feeling like I did not exist in either completely. This book explores a lot of my paternal relationship, through lyrical imagery and scribbled and unscribbled texts. Like my previous photobook, the style of image and text works poetically together to give off an impression or a feeling, rather then tells you what to think. This is about legacy, whanau and home, intergenerational trauma and the world we live in.

A psychologist once told me, you might be suffering from ‘cultural stress’. This book and my stress, was a kind of reaction to Ōtautahi, where I was living at the time. My post-graduate studies is an extension of this work’.

Recipient of 2021 Selected ANZ Student Photobooks blog post, ‘When Wars Will Be No More (2021)’ was nominated by Tim J Veling, University of Canterbury, Lecturer and Photographer.