“I take 30 years of living as part of her [Manukau] and I channel that into images that subvert convention, challenge media stereotypes and become the tools for my truth, my honesty,” says New Zealand-born, South Auckland-raised Samoan photographer-brotographer, Raymond Sagapolutele. The 38-year-old from Manurewa says he started off taking cliched landscape shots but realised very quickly that every other photographer seemed also to be doing that. So he looked for subjects that would distance his work from everyone else’s. “Manukau serves as my focal point” he says, “as she not only offers a broad canvas but she is so many different things to so many different people but more specifically she gives me the scope to reveal something other than what you may term as ‘your view’.” The exhibition opens on Thursday 1st October 2009 and runs at the Fresh Gallery Otara until 24 October 2009. The exhibition features an artist talk on Saturday 17 October at 12 pm. Fresh Gallery Otara is a community gallery profiling new Pacific art from Manukau City. Read more about Raymond Sagapolutele from The Aucklander.
"The lights are out but no-ones home" (2009) by Raymond Sagapolutele. (Image courtesy of Fresh Gallery Otara.)
