John B. TurnerTe Atatu 2: Photographs of Te Atatu Peninsula
John B. Turner (b.1943) is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the Elam School of Fine Arts, at The University of Auckland. His serious involvement in photography began in camera clubs in the late 1950s, when he was a pupil at Petone Technical College. He trained as a compositor in the printing trade in Wellington during the early sixties, and then became a news and commercial photographer.
He joined the then Dominion Museum as photographer in the mid-sixties and also began writing about aspects of practical photography, criticism and the history of photography. He taught numerous workshops throughout New Zealand, and curated landmark exhibitions including Nineteenth Century New Zealand Photography (1970) and Baigent, Collins, Fields: Three New Zealand Photographers (1973).
He was editor of PhotoForum magazine from 1974 -1984, and later from 1990 to the present. In addition to teaching photography at Elam since 1971, he was Director of the Elam Fine Arts Printing Research Unit from 1985 -1995. In 1991 he studied the History of Photography with Van Deren Coke and Bill Jay at Arizona State University at Tempe. He was co-author with William Main of New Zealand Photography from the 1840s to the Present (1993) and was editor of PhotoForum’s award-winning book, Ink & Silver (1995). His book Eric Lee-Johnson: Artist with a Camera was published in 1999.
Working on various projects, as a teacher, writer and photographer, his current research centres on the pioneer 19th Century photographers, Alfred and Walter Burton, of Dunedin, and their peers. As his research into the work of his late friend and mentor, Tom Hutchins, grew, (Hutchins spent four months as an independent photojournalist in China in 1956) John, who has increasingly become interested in the history of photography in China, has just returned from a brief visit to four main centres.
Photography as a means of communication and expression is booming in China, as is their interest in the history of the medium, so there was a lot of interest in Tom’s work, made at a time when few foreigners were admitted to the new People’s Republic. In the meantime, John will also be kept busy editing his own photographs of China, which has changed so dramatically since Tom was there 50 years ago.
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