New Zealand photographer, Laurence Aberhart, is internationally renowned for his black and white prints of landscapes and interiors and overlooked details of small town life, all produced using a 100 year old wooden 8x10 inch view camera. Eschewing technology, the contact prints of these large format negatives are made without an enlarger, but in a basic chemical darkroom – providing the viewer with an image of exacting precision.
Aberhart recently conducted a residency at The Linnaeus Estate, Byron Bay, in a partnership with Lismore Regional Gallery. This exhibition, an exclusive for the Gallery, combines work from that residency, along with images of New Zealand as well as a significant body of work from his time spent in the USA.
His subject matter is of quiet, ordinary places, but he teases out something metaphysical, even transcendental. On the surface, Aberhart's photographs are documentary in that they record real places, but they also stem from subtleties made possible through the photographic image and a command of photography.
