Shifting Nature

Photographs by Wayne Barrar with essay by Geoff Park

This book explores the relationship between human culture and nature through visual art. Photographs of dam construction on the Motu River or the ordered rows of a pine tree plantation demonstrate the impact of human beings on the landscape. The photographs are Barrar's collected works from nine series completed since 1985. The landscape is constantly evolving. Natural processes build up and wear down its features, and the many demands of a complex society leave their own imprints.

Since 1985 photographer Wayne Barrar has developed a number of projects discussing the relationship between culture and nature. Presented in this book are works from nine series: Landscape of Change, Nauru Portfolio, Saltworks: The Processed Landscape, Shifting Nature, Mason Bay: A Natural Succession, Waikato Te Awa: The People and the River, Restoring Ground, Herschel’s Blue and An Immortal Double. This is the first time that his photographs have been brought together as a body of work in one publication. In an introductory essay, ‘Beyond the Beauty Spots of the Uninitiated’, Geoff Park writes, 'The country in his pictures has been entirely cleared of human beings, but humans are without doubt the reason that the country appears as it does. These are places we have ‘settled’, but in Barrar’s images they are capable of unsettling us.

Review Quotes

'Barrar's work is provocative because it confronts the viewer with the effects our daily needs have on the landscape – in a quiet, unsensational way.' – Art News

'... thought-provoking ... startling ... These are the sorts of pictures worth 1000 words.' – Otago Daily Times

About the Author

Wayne Barrar is a lecturer in photography at Massey University, Wellington. His work is exhibited regularly in New Zealand as well as internationally. He has been an artist-in-residence in Iceland and the US. A solo exhibition, ‘Wayne Barrar: Landscapes of Change’, was curated at the Nevada Museum of Art in 2001.

Publication details

Paperback, 120 pages, illustrated, ISBN 1 877276 05 7, $49.95