Edith Amituanai, whose works have featured before in SPASIFIK, is packing her bags for America after winning the inaugural Marti Friedlander Photographic Award.
Edith Amituanai, a Samoan photographer/artist, has been named the inaugural winner of the prestigious Marti Friedlander Photographic Award, which includes a grant of NZ$25,000.
“I’m thrilled and humbled by the recognition in my work and being the first winner of this award,” she tells SPASIFIK. “I’m a young woman and haven’t been doing this that long, so it’s sent me down the right path.”
The 27 year-old, raised in Te Atatu, west Auckland and educated at Auckland Girls Grammar, Rutherford College and Unitec, draws her heritage from the villages of Ulutogia and Pata, Falelatai. Edith graduated from Unitec in 2005 with a Bachelor of Design, majoring in photography.
Edith has big plans for the New Year. The grant will help her fund her trip to the United States at the end of May, where she has photographic assignments planned in Alaska and California. She has relatives in Alaska and is looking forward to meeting them.
The award was initiated by Marti Friedlander, a celebrated New Zealand photographer, who with her husband Gerrard donated the sum to the Arts Foundation of New Zealand to establish a new award for photographers.
“I have chosen Edith as the inaugural recipient of the Award as I believe she has an exceptional talent. I particularly like the way her photographic essays portray people and places that reveal New Zealanders and all their diversity,” says Marti Friedlander.
Edith is a widely exhibited artist and a finalist in a number of awards, including the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, The Martin Hughes Contemporary Pacific Art Award, Auckland and the KLM Paul Huf Award, Amsterdam. Extended family and immediate community are primary subjects for Edith; she collaborates closely with Christchurch and Auckland relations as well as the individuals she grew up with in west Auckland.
Edith’s work draws on documentary and constructed photographic traditions. Intimacy with the world she photographs is important. She is most drawn to forms of portrait, which typically falls outside of documentary photography and depictions of interiors. She often photographs an interior with no people present and then uses this interior as the setting for a portrait. Her photographs for the exhibition, Mrs Amituanai, worked across this portrait/interior divide by presenting both the rooms and people in the rooms.
Her work was included in the 2004/05 Break/Shift exhibition at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery curated by Simon Rees and Greg Burke. In 2005, her first solo exhibition Mrs Amituanai was held at the Anna Miles Gallery, Auckland, and later that year her work was included in the publication, Contemporary New Zealand Photographers, edited by Lara Strongman and Hannah Holm. In 2006 the exhibition Mrs Amituanai was exhibited at the Wellington City Gallery as part of the 2 x 2 Contemporary Projects, curated by Emma Bugden and in 2007 she has exhibited at the Auckland Museum, St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland, the Auckland Art Gallery and NBK Berlin. Her work has been acquired for the collections of the Auckland Art Gallery, Sarjeant Art Gallery in Wanganui, University of Auckland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Auckland District Health Board.
