TITLE: Transit

Transit investigates the complexity of New Zealand wildlife reserves. Ōhuiarangi's wetland habitat exists as a sanctuary for threatened wildlife and a respite from the 'exhaustive mundanity' of urban living. Transit was taken while walking through the paths of the habitat, and reflects the fragility and tension of a space which exists both to protect wildlife and exhibit it to entertain.

Polaroid photography is fragile, temperamental and sensitive to environmental conditions, forming a relationship with the photograph's location in the chemistry of its making. Monochrome photography was employed to reference the complex political history of New Zealand's land. The contemporary treatment of landscapes is still heavily influenced by colonial Europe's aesthetic valuation and categorisation of Māori land. This romantic framing is referenced literally though the polaroid's physicality, but subverted by the environment's affect on the image.

AUTHOR: Roma Anderson (New Zealand)

Roma Anderson is a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours student at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, Zealand. She works primarily in analogue photography and digital moving image work.