Self-Portrait

From a childhood spent in London’s rough East End to a half-century in New Zealand photographing winemakers and artists, children and kuia, Marti Friedlander has lived a life marked by adventure, travel, and its fair share of challenges. It is also a life that has been defined by the art of observation and capturing on film. In Self Portrait, the renowned photographer tells her story for the first time. As clear and unflinching in her prose as she is in her photography, Friedlander describes growing up in a London orphanage, being Jewish, working in a Kensington photography studio, marrying a New Zealander, the challenges of moving to a new country, and a life spent photographing the ordinary and the extraordinary, from balloons and beaches to politicians and protests. She also explains how, with a stranger’s eye, she captured the transformation of New Zealand life over the last half century. This is a rich meditation on one woman’s photographic journey through the 20th century.
From a childhood spent in London’s rough East End to a half-century in New Zealand photographing winemakers and artists, children and kuia, Marti Friedlander has lived a life marked by adventure, travel, and its fair share of challenges. It is also a life that has been defined by the art of observation and capturing on film. In Self Portrait, the renowned photographer tells her story for the first time. As clear and unflinching in her prose as she is in her photography, Friedlander describes growing up in a London orphanage, being Jewish, working in a Kensington photography studio, marrying a New Zealander, the challenges of moving to a new country, and a life spent photographing the ordinary and the extraordinary, from balloons and beaches to politicians and protests. She also explains how, with a stranger’s eye, she captured the transformation of New Zealand life over the last half century. This is a rich meditation on one woman’s photographic journey through the 20th century.