KOROUA, MOKOPUNA

JEANNIE SKINNER

DESCRIPTION Koroua and baby, Koriniti, 1961

MAKER / ARTIST Ans Westra (b. 1936)

REFERENCE Courtesy of Suite Gallery (PA-Group-00941: AWM-0070-F_10)

Away from the crowds and main action, a roving photographer with a keen eye for a special human moment crouches low to take a surreptitious photo of a koroua sitting in the shade, chatting to some mates and with his mokopuna held within the circle of his arms.

This timeless and endearing moment was caught at a hui at Koriniti on the Whanganui River in 1961 by Ans Westra with her twin-lens Rolleiflex camera. It exemplifies the ‘rules’ of this notable photographer’s informal approach: one, don’t ask permission—doing so interrupts the moment and the dynamic changes when people start to pose; and two, don’t focus on the obvious — pay attention as much to the audience as to the main players at an event.

Westra, born in the Netherlands in 1936, was inspired to become a photographer when she visited the groundbreaking 1955 Museum of Modern Art’s touring exhibition The Family of Man in Amsterdam in 1956. She came to New Zealand in 1957 and was immediately captivated by te ao Māori. Self-taught, as a freelance documentary photographer she travelled around the country, inviting herself to places and events, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, photographing what caught her eye and interest.

This particular photograph was taken at a hui at Christmas organised by the Pentecostal mission. Although little is known about the people themselves, there are many threads to explore around the place’s broader setting and history. Koriniti is tūrangawaewae for the hapū Ngāti Pāmoana of the iwi Te Āti Haunuia-Pāpārangi. Their original kāinga was called Operiki, until the settlement relocated in 1848 to better agricultural land at Otukopiri. It was renamed Koriniti (after Corinth in Greece) at the suggestion of the Anglican missionary Richard Taylor.

A flour mill was built here in 1854, Burton Brothers of Dunedin visited and took photos in the 1880s, the Dominion Museum visited in 1921 as part of an ‘ethnographic expedition’, the Pentecostal Christian revival movement burgeoned here in the 1950s, and a wharenui was moved here from Karatia (Galatea) in 1967.

These and many more stories of people and place lie behind this photograph’s simple moment, captured some 60 years ago. Perhaps, too, there are whānau who will recognise the people in it and treasure the memory and connection that the image records.

Ans Westra is one of New Zealand’s foremost documentary photographers. Her collection is a treasure house of images documenting the everyday and the extraordinary in the lives of the people of Aotearoa over more than 60 years. An archive of more than 2300 of her images was established at the Turnbull Library in 1982 and many have since been digitised.