Jennifer French has photographed the New Zealand landscape on many occasions. In this series she looks at the land as post-colonial, tamed. The pastoral and urban, along with the rural and the wilds of the Auckland west coast. In each there is an odd unsettled nature. In two urban settings, figures range off into the inner scene. There is a sense of longing, of ennui or of a thing almost but not quite contained [read essay]
French creates a resonance from her document of bee invasion across to the landscape image which shows a just a glimpse of West coast surf. The post-marked walkway protects a fragile dune system (if walkers keep to it), but imposes its own colonial stamp on an image that would otherwise be devoid of human marking… [read essay]