This reader accompanies Photosynthesisers: Women and the lens, an exhibition of videos and photographs by 41 women artists and collectives from Aotearoa and Australia, including fa`afafine, queer, and trans women, and those with ancestral ties to Aboriginal, Māori, and diasporic communities. It is intended as a discursive supplement, collating 30 texts produced between 1981 and 2024 by artists, curators, and writers from the region. These texts take the form of article, essay, interview, lecture, review, thesis, or subchapter, collectively tracing ideas, exhibitions, and histories apposite to Photosynthesisers.

This 312-page volume includes contributions from Judy Annear, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku, Christina Barton, Susan Best, Ella Henry, Anne Marsh, and Zara Stanhope, among many others, addressing manifold concerns gleaned from the relationship between women and the lens—including the gaze, coloniality, feminism, objectification, psychoanalysis, self-imaging, liveness, documentation, and more—affirming its indispensable place in art history.

ISBN 978-0-473-73595-1
Pages 312
Publisher Te Uru Waitātakere Contemporary Gallery 
Dimensions 297 x 210mm