The Way We Were: New Zealanders in the 1960s and 70s through the lens of John Fields’ camera.
Presenter David Langman, art historian and former Director of the NZ Centre for Photography, has studied Fields’ images for 30 years and will talk about why he is captivated by them. Have we always been who we are? Photographs from the past reveal how different life once looked. This U3A talk explores around 50 images of New Zealanders taken by John Fields between 1967 and 1976.
Fields arrived in New Zealand in 1966 to work as a photographer at the University of Auckland, first at the DSIR, then the School of Medicine and Cell Biology. But it’s his work outside the lab that secures his place among significant photographers of the era.
Unlike contemporaries Ans Westra and Marti Friedlander, Fields had no formal training in photographing people, and by his own account in his diaries, felt temperamentally unsuited to the intrusion it required. Yet he largely overcame this, forging warm rapport with his subjects – while gravitating away from the city toward the sea and the outdoors, leaving a rich archive of maritime and rural imagery.
His scientific training gave him exceptional darkroom skill, and his work is now held in national collections.
Review: Piers Fuller, August meeting
On a chilly Tuesday in August, a large group of Martinborough U3A-ers met with Piers Fuller, editor of the Wairarapa Times-Age (bought by Stuff in 2024).
Piers drew on 20 years in the area to describe the shrinking of print journalism over that time – fewer papers, fewer journalists, smaller readership. Yet, as he put it, print has lost influence but isn’t irrelevant. He said he can’t meet a local group without coming away with a story – that day it was the loss of a local police officer in Martinborough. It made for a wide-ranging talk and discussion on what makes news, and why some stories run longer than others.
He also mentioned that a WTA online subscription starts at just $2 a week, with or without a hard copy – though be warned, you’ll need to go via the Stuff website to sign up (it took a bit of an internet runaround to find). There were pointed questions on how the paper handles election reporting. Journalists can hold political views, he said, but should keep them to themselves when there are no other papers of varying political colours. And a fact for the record: the WTA is the only local paper with its own sports journalist. Piers finished with a plea – he wants more letters to the editor! Reach him at piers.fuller@stuff.co.nz – he’d genuinely like to hear from us.
Preview: David Langman, Tuesday 6 October, Heartlands, 10.00–11.30am. Everyone welcome.
