MAORI. Text by James Ritchie, photos by Ans Westra. FIRST EDITION, VERY SCARCE.

MAORI. Text by James Ritchie, photos by Ans Westra.

Publisher: A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, New Zealand, 1967. FIRST EDITION, VERY SCARCE.

Excellent hardback with jacket. No inscriptions, minor marks. Jacket is quite rubbed at folds with some marks, plus some chipping, creasing and tears to edges.

Ans Westra is renowned for her long and productive career, one of the longest in the history of New Zealand photography. Considered part photographer and part social anthropologist, she took a staggering 220,000 images, including many powerful black-and-white photographs of Maori taken over five decades. The cultural value of her work grows constantly. Between 1945 and 1986, the proportion of Maori living in New Zealand cities exploded from 26 to nearly 80 per cent. Westra captured this rapid urbanisation with her lens, providing the most comprehensive documentation of Maori culture over that 60-year period of significant change. At times unwelcome, Ans Westra documented Maori when no one else was.

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