The City Looks Back - Photographic Exhibition

The City Looks Back

A new exhibition of photography by Andrew Ross

For over twenty years photographer Andrew Ross has carefully documented selected buildings and sites around Wellington and further afield. The Hirschfeld Gallery is excited to announce I Last Saw You There-Andrew Ross, a new exhibition of exquisitely printed photographs which reveals the depth of Ross's ongoing project.

Andrew Ross is interested in the ways in which a city shifts and changes over the passage of time. Ross is well-known for his photographs of Aro Valley in central Welllington prior to the construction of the inner-city bypass-a controversial and elongated chapter in Wellington's history.

I Last Saw You There-Andrew Ross includes photographs from this body of work, and others which record the changes in Wellington's urban landscape. On show are images of familiar old buildings from around Wellington: the Odlins Building on the waterfront, Mr Smiles on Cuba Street, Wellington Fish Supply on Molesworth Street and the Chinese Church on Frederick Street.

This exhibition also includes a collection of work from Ross's recent travels overseas and his tramping trips around New Zealand. Ross is a keen tramper and comments on these photographs, "These are more like a personal diary of significant places, but often they centre on architecture. I usually photograph every tramping hut I stay in, especially those more back country ones. A lot of the ones that I have photographed have now been removed by DOC."

This is indicative of the artist's approach, which is similar to that of an archivist or social historian. Aware of the importance of these buildings, Ross' photographs record and remember places that are listed for demolition or soon to disappear.

Andrew Ross contact prints his hand-developed negatives and creates photographs with subtle tonal variations and a quiet beauty. He has exhibited widely in galleries throughout New Zealand and in 2009 was awarded the Tylee Cottage Artist's Residency in Whanganui. This was followed by a substantial solo exhibition at the Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui in 2010.

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