2025 Peter Turner Lecture in Photography - Anne Noble

Photography – The Art of Paying Attention

In this lecture Anne Noble will discuss modes of collaborative practice across a series of projects that spans her work with bees as well as current projects concerning the environmental degradation of our waterways. In 2023 Anne Noble was commissioned by Ngāi Tahu to create an archive of images that would reveal the deteriorating state of freshwater across South Island waterways and the resulting impact on mahinga kai customs and practices. These photographs supported the Ngāi Tahu Statement of Claim heard recently in the High Court in Ōtautahi Christchurch, seeking recognition of Rangatiratanga (authority) over wai māori (fresh water) within Ngāi Tahu takiwā. An exhibition, drawing on the archive and created collaboratively is currently showing in Ōtepoti, at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Free entry, however bookings are advised. Doors open at 6.15pm, Lecture at 6.30pm. Lecture will finish at 8pm, please join us for refreshments afterwards.

Anne Noble has been at the forefront of photographic practice in New Zealand since the early 1980s, creating bodies of work that mark sustained engagement with particular places, sites, histories, species and more recently the environmental degradation of land and water. Her images are known for their beauty, complexity and conceptual rigour and for their persistent inquiry into the ways photography impacts our perception, understanding and relationship to the natural world. Anne Noble is Professor Emerita of Fine Arts (Photography) at Massey University, Wellington and is the recipient of numerous awards including the 31st Higashikawa Photography Award (2015), an Arts Foundation Laureate Award (2009) and US National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Award (2008). She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and her work is held in collections throughout the world.

This year's lecture is one of a number of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Photography programme at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University.

The Peter Turner Memorial Lecture was established in 2008, in the memory of the late Peter Turner historian, curator and former editor of Creative Camera magazine who came from the UK to live in NZ in 1981. His contributions to the medium of photography during his time in New Zealand spanned curatorial work, writing, reviewing and teaching. He is remembered for his passion for the medium, support of photographers and their work and his special love of practices he termed lyric, transcendent or poetic documentary photography. Founded on reflections on this legacy the annual Peter Turner Lecture is conceived as a means to broaden discussions about the social and cultural value of the medium of photography today – as an expanded field inclusive of a broad range of lens based media and approaches.

In association with the Peter Turner Lecture a fund has been established by the Massey University Foundation to support the Peter Turner Scholarship that was launched in association with the lecture and each year provides a postgraduate student scholarship for a student engaging with social and cultural issues through the medium of photography in its broadest sense.

The Peter Turner Fund has been established by the Massey University Foundation to grow the support this scholarship can offer young photographers aspiring for a career the lens based arts.