Ans Westra: Her Story

Ans Westra's personal and photographic journey intersected with New Zealand's cultural history across seven decades. Janet Bayly shares memories of the mother, artist, and traveller.

Janet Bayly is director/ curator of Mahara Gallery, the Kāpiti Coast District Gallery. She has an MFA in photography and film history, studio and theory from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, and has worked with Ans Westra on several projects, including Witness to Change, Life in New Zealand, Photographs 1940-1965.

Looking back over her long life and the thousands of photographs left to us, there are three images that best encapsulate Ans Westra – mother, artist, and traveller – for me. The first time I saw Ans was in a photography class at Elam School of Fine Arts in the late 70s. A longlimbed young woman at the front of the lecture room held a relaxed conversation with the lecturer, while breastfeeding her son of nearly three who was draped across her knee. The second is Ans Westra framing and defining herself with her ubiquitous Rolleiflex in a mirror, in Self-portrait at Te Kaha, 1963. The third is an image I chanced upon much later, in a Taupō cafe. Ans Westra, journeying artist, grins out of a mural-sized print, leaning against a classic VW. Ruapehu rises behind her, the road opens out around her. It seems full of possibility. Much of Ans Westra’s life was spent on the road, first as a single woman, later as a solo parent, her art-life integrated into her travels.

In her seventies Ans still slept in the back of her car, then later in a more comfortable campervan, on her still frequent travels around New Zealand, and also in Asia, the Pacific, and Holland. Her independence and commitment to the creative life were inspiring

Ans was the only child of non-conformist Dutch parents. Her home city of Leiden was occupied by the German Army throughout World War Two. In 1957, aged twenty-one, she joined her father, who had remarried, in New Zealand, and quickly found her vocation in photography.

Over seven decades Westra’s personal journey intersected with New Zealand’s cultural history as it became a less Anglocentric, and more multicultural society. She was more naturally an observer than a commentator, more low-key than directorial. Her personal politics were best represented in the counter-culture where she formed her artistic roots. It was characterised by personal freedom and connected “alternative”, communities, like the independent artists, writers, and thinkers she met while working freelance for School Publications and Te Ao Hou in the 1960s. These cultural pioneers became her new whānau. They included figures such as Barry Crump, Hone Tūwhare, Eva Rickards, Witi Ihimaera, Kāterina Mataira, James Ritchie, and Joanna Margaret Paul. She was a committed recorder of pivotal events in our cultural history, including the 1975 Land March and 1981 Springbok Tour.

Westra’s story has two constants: children –both her own and others’ – and her positioning as an independent observer who wanted to “get past the front door” (Luit Bieringa, Handboek 2004). Starting in her teens, Westra had always made extended photo-essays. Photography became her way of learning about life. Her images and their framing, narratives, most (in)famously Washday at the Pa (1964), became a lightning rod for debate on cross-cultural representation in the tough climate of the post-modern, posthumanist 1980s.

Fellow Dutchman and arts leader the late Luit Bieringa curated Handboek, Ans Westra Photographs (2004) and directed an accompanying film. It was based on the huge Ans Westra Collection, an active archive of around 48,000 negatives and contact sheets in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. It was characterised by academic Lawrence McDonald as resembling “a toolshed,” an “image reservoir,” and “the submerged part of an iceberg”.

Ans was a kind, generous, and faithful friend. She often shared her home with people needing support. It was full of art and books, with a touch of Dutch eccentricity (she never lost her broad Dutch accent). She was fun to be with, communicative and always interested in what was going on in other people’s lives. Our last outing together was an evening celebrating the re-opening of the extension to Whirinaki Whare Taonga, one of her local galleries. She also had a very close relationship with the Dowse Art Museum. The Dowse exhibited, collected, and commissioned her work. Quite a shy person, she enjoyed being part of the crowd, watching the performances, and being treated as a venerated elder. She had a beautiful smile and a great chuckle, from under her neck, permanently tilted from so many years spent peering down through her viewfinder. She created visual stories with genuine warmth and aroha. She became an insider while recording from the outside. By photographing the parts of New Zealand that meant the most to her, she made them more meaningful and cherished by others. I will miss her friendship, as an artist, a woman, and a gentle sympathetic presence in our bicultural landscape and history. She is survived by three adult children, her half-sister Yvonne Westra, also a photographer, and six grandchildren.

Finalists Exhibition 25 May – 20 August 2023

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