Slow Burn Ahi Tāmau: Women and Photography Māreikura Whakaahua

By Lissa Mitchell

Publication: February 2026
Pages: 232
Format: Limpbound
ISBN:  978-1-99-107219-1

RRP: $35

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“Researching, collecting and writing about photography, I have often wondered where the women were.”—Lissa Mitchell

Slow Burn Ahi Tāmau showcases the diverse range of photography by women and non-binary artists from Aotearoa New Zealand, spanning the 1960s to today. This major survey exhibition from Te Papa’s collections sparks a conversation between past and present – exploring themes of identity, whānau, place, and time through a feminist lens. Highlighting over 150 works by 50 artists, this accompanying catalogue by curator Lissa Mitchell illustrates how ways of seeing can be passed down, reimagined, and slowly reignited.

Featured artists include Anne Noble, Fiona Pardington, Natalie Robertson and Lisa Reihana. The curator’s essay provides further historical context to the exhibition, and biographies of the photographers make this a valuable research resource.

Slow Burn builds on ten years of deeply considered research, inclusive collection decisions, and the 2023 publication of Lissa’s acclaimed book Through Shaded Glass: Women and photography in Aotearoa New Zealand 1860–1960. The exhibition and catalogue bring work by photographers from the last 65 years out of the storeroom and into conversation with each other – a celebration of photography’s ever-evolving nature in Aotearoa.

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Review highlights

• New Zealand Arts Review, reviewed by John Daly-Peoples. “The mixture of well-known and rarely seen, the descriptive and the enigmatic, the personal and the public make this collection intriguing and valuable in exploring the various ways in which photographers explore their environments as well as themselves.”