Lester Blair: Twenty-Four Churches

Small town and rural churches are ubiquitous in our landscape. Lester Blair's monochrome photographs depict churches across the Lower North Island, their variations, similarities and the architectural beauty of these modest buildings.

This series of photographs began with inspiration from the photographs of the German couple Bernd & Hilla Becher. The Becher photographs were a visual documentation of water towers, blast furnaces, winding towers, the industrial landscape in Germany and later Britain and USA. Bernd was concerned that these structures were disappearing, he saw them as types of sculptures.

Another artist in the USA was Ed Ruscha, who was making small booklets of photographs with the titles: “Every building on Sunset Strip”, “Thirty-four parking lots”, “Twenty-six gasoline stations”. Ed did not consider himself a photographer, but a painter. He was a big influence on photography in the 1960s and beyond.

With a nod to both the Bechers and Ed Ruscha, Lester has made this collection entitled ‘Twenty-Four Churches’. These buildings, so ubiquitous in our landscape, treasured by their communities are sometimes being sold off and becoming something else.

These churches speak eloquently of our past and reflect our diverse heritage of British, Irish, Scottish, Norwegian, Greek, Māori, Pasifica and more recently Asian.


Artist Talk: Saturday, 24 February, 11am