Recently I spoke with Will Matsuda at Aperture Foundation. You can read the interview here on their blog published to coincide with the latest issue of Aperture Magazine, “Earth”. Thanks to Managing Editor Brendan Embser for commissioning the piece.
'Who can tell the story of an indigenous community? In 1996, photographer Martin Toft traveled to New Zealand and spent six months living with the Māori, participating in an illegal occupation of Mangapapapa, an ancestral land inside Whanganui National Park. It was during this time spent documenting their lives that Toft formed a deep connection with the land and community—even being given a Māori name, Pouma Pokai-Whenua. Twenty years later, Toft returned to New Zealand to rekindle the the spiritual kinship he had experienced and continue his project. But, as photographers and critics reckon with the medium’s colonial, often racist history when it comes to representing non-Western people, how do photographers reckon with issues of representation and power?'
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In a conversation between Will Matsuda and Martin Toft they discuss making his new book, Te Ahi Kā, against the backdrop of decolonization, climate change, and Māori spiritualism. https://aperture.org/blog/martin-toft-will-matsuda/
Copies can still be purchased through Dewi Lewis. For New Zealand, Australia and South Pacific visit Oratia Books. In the Americas go to Grenade in a Jar Books. All Special or Collectors Editions contact me directly.
