Born: 1928 London, England
Died: 2016 Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand
Other name/s: Martha Gordon
Biography
Photographer Marti Friedlander (née Martha Gordon) was born into a Jewish family in 1928 in Barnsley House in the Bethnal Green area of London's East End, to Sophie and Philip Gordon, Russian-Jewish refugees who had settled there after fleeing the 1919 Kiev pogroms. At the age of three, after her father disappeared and her mother fell ill, Friedlander and her sister Anne were placed in a children's home run by the London County Council, which she recalled as grim and punitive. Two years later, in 1933, she was relocated to the Norwood Orphan Aid Asylum, a Jewish institution in Streatham Common, South East London, which at the time hosted over 350 children. Friedlander remembered it as a secure and supportive environment: 'We did not think of ourselves as disadvantaged'.
After gaining a trade scholarship, Friedlander studied photography at the Bloomsbury Technical School for Women from 1942–43, followed by a year at Camberwell School of Art (now part of the University of the Arts London). Despite the refreshingly bohemian social climate, and inspirational teachers including John Minton, Victor Pasmore, and Michael Ayrton, she soon discovered that 'painting was not my forte. I remember the principal … William Johnstone looking at a painting of a 'still life' on my easel and commenting on my singular lack of any idea of perspective. He was right'. For financial reasons, she had to abandon her studies shortly afterwards and in 1946, she responded to an advertisement in the British Journal of Photography and was appointed assistant to prominent photographers Douglas Glass and Gordon Crocker, who shared a Kensington studio. During that period, she honed her technical skills in printing and retouching, and greatly expanded her knowledge of photographic practices and processes. Glass famously observed that she could produce an image from a blank negative. In 1951 she visited Germany, where she did menial work at a camp in Nuremberg for displaced German youth, and during the early 1950s, she also travelled to France and Israel. She continued working with Glass and Crocker until 1957, when she married Gerrard Friedlander.
In 1958 the couple moved to New Zealand, settling in the Auckland suburb of Henderson: 'I think I fell off the edge of the world when I came to New Zealand. Being in a society that was so authoritarian was like going back to an institution' (cited in L. Bell, Marti Friedlander). Feeling isolated, often unhappy and out of place, she worked in her husband's dental practice before fully dedicating herself to photography in 1963. Photography became the means by which she made sense of her new home and the society around her. It was in 1972, following her collaboration with the writer and historian Michael King on his book Moko: The Art of Māori Tattooing, that her work began to receive widespread attention. The project included the stories of the last generation of Māori women to wear chin tattoos; Friedlander considered it one of the highlights of her career. Her subsequent projects included Larks in a Paradise: New Zealand Portraits in 1974, a 1980 collection of photographs of New Zealand painters, and photographs of chiefly immigrant New Zealand winemakers in 2002. A 2001 retrospective touring exhibition featuring 150 photographs by Friedlander was held at the Auckland Art Gallery and over the next three years travelled to other venues, resulting in the publication Marti Friedlander: Photographs. She subsequently donated these photographs to the Auckland Art Gallery. Throughout her remarkable 60-year-long career, Friedlander was instrumental in documenting the changing nature of post-war New Zealand, including the women's movements, the changing roles of men, and the lives of the Māori and Pacific Island societies. She was the first photographer to celebrate the importance of visual and literary contributions to New Zealand culture. Marti Friedlander died in Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand in 2014.
Related books
- Leonard Bell, Strangers Arrive: Émigrés and the Arts in New Zealand, 1930–1980 (Auckland University Press, 2017)
- Marti Friedlander and Hugo Manson, Self-Portrait (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013)
- Leonard Bell, Marti Friedlander (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2009)
- Kapka Kasabova, Leonard Bell, Kathlene Fogarty and Tim Melville, Marti Friedlander: Shadows and Light (Auckland: Fogarty Hojsgaard Entwistle Galleries, 2007)
- Dick Scott and Marti Friedlander, Pioneers of New Zealand Wine (Auckland: Reed, 2002)
- Ron Brownson (ed.), Marti Friedlander: Photographs (Auckland: Auckland Art Gallery, 2001)
- Leonard Bell, 'Narratives of Loss and Hope: The Photographs of Marti Friedlander', Art New Zealand, Vol. 99, Winter 2001, pp. 78-83
- Marti Friedlander and Ron Brownson, 'Talking Photographs', Art New Zealand, Vol. 81, Summer 1996-1997, pp. 46-50
- Marti Friedlander and James McNeish, Larks in Paradise: New Zealand Portraits (Auckland: Collins, 1974)
- Marti Friedlander and Michael King, Moko: The Art of Māori Tattooing (Wellington: Alister Taylor, 1972)
- Marti Friedlander, New Zealand Potters (Auckland: New Vision, 1967)
Public collections
Related organisations
- Camberwell College of Arts, London (student)
Related web links
- A collection of audio interviews with Marti Friedlander
- Marti Friedlander's official website
- Film documentary 'Marti: The Passionate Eye' by Leonard Bell
Selected exhibitions
- Marti Friedlander: Shadows and Light, Fogarty Hojsgaard Entwistle Galleries, Auckland, New Zealand (2007)
- Marti Friedlander: Photographs, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand (2001)
- Māori Tattooing in the 20th Century, New Zealand House, London (1973)
- Larks in the Paradise, The Photographer's Gallery, London (1975)
