This boardwalk leads into the Dean Forest in Murihiku Southland, an unlogged kahere that is home to tall tōtara trees, some over a thousand years old. The image is from eco-Tourism, a project Haruhiko Sameshima began in 1994. It explores cultural display strategies used in Aotearoa New Zealand – such as those used to market it for settlers or tourists – and considers photography’s role in how the country has been seen and represented. Sameshima’s own experience of moving here from Japan as a teenager left him acutely attuned to the nuances of how culture is pictured and transmitted. Here, he also acknowledges the work of fellow photographer Wayne Barrar, who often pictures places where the natural environment and human activity intersect.

kahere ~ forest

(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)

Wi Taepa is known for his organic, hand-built vessels, which are adorned with carved patterns. Taepa is acutely aware of the whakapapa of uku and the cultural and spiritual value of the material. In 2007, he said: [While] my work sustains cultural aspects of Aotearoa, there lies within it an even stronger connect to the female elements in Māori genealogy, where Hineukurangi is a descendant of Parawhenuamea, maiden of the rocks. We are all connected and sustained by Papatūānuku, we thrive off her. She is where we begin and where we end. Ipu 7 is particularly significant to Taepa because it is a memorial to a pulpit carved by his uncle Taunu Tai Taepa in the Rangiātea Church in Ōtaki on the Kāpiti Coast, which was destroyed in a fire in 1995. Taepa incorporated charcoal from the charred pulpit into the clays and slips, and the kōwhaiwhai patterns repeat those he used when contributing to the rebuilding of the church in 2003.

whakapapa ~ genealogy, lineage, ancestry uku ~ clay kōwhaiwhai ~ painted scroll ornamentation

(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)