derek henderson Eden Hore Collection Photographs

Derek Henderson

Derek Henderson is one of New Zealand’s most prolific photographers, with a wide-ranging portfolio that spans various genres; from architecture, fashion, interiors, landscape and portraiture. Derek has exhibited at fine art galleries throughout Australiasia, with some of his photographs in permanent collections, namely the National Gallery of Victoria, Christchurch City Art Gallery and the Wallace Trust Art Collection.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Central Otago high country farmer, Eden Hore collected high fashion by New Zealand’s best designers. As the collection grew to over 230 items, it became the most significant of its kind in Australasia.

In 2019 Derek Henderson photographed some of the Eden Hore Collection, on location, in Central Otago. He recalls the first time he saw the garments:

“I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe what they had. It was amazing....to see it in Alexandra and to realise that it was a high- country farmer who had collected this off his own back was incredible. You might have expected something like this coming out of Paris and New York, but not Central Otago.”

A group of internationally acclaimed fashion industry professionals, led by renowned photographer Derek Henderson, created a series of photographs of Eden’s high fashion in stunning Central Otago landscapes. The photographs are testament to the collaborative efforts of many helpers, fashion curators and textile conservation specialists, all drawn by the mystique of the Eden Hore Central Otago collection.

This photography project was developed in partnership with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongawera and Central Otago District Council.

Derek went on to create a series of 18 photographs, that form the Derek Henderson Eden Hore Collection Photographs. This limited-edition series is available for sale, in three different print sizes, on eco solvent print on 3mm aluminium dibon, each accompanied by an official signed certificate of authenticity.

Contact ruenell.wing@codc.govt.nz to discuss further, as conditions apply.

Biography excerpt from www.derekhenderson.net

Derek Henderson’s varied subject matter is united by an approach marked by a kind of democratic naturalism, where all phenomena is given equal attention. Although variously described as anti-heroic and anti-iconic, Henderson’s interest in the ‘ordinary’ can be deceptive and his narratives often reveal themselves to be more complex and unsteady than they first appear.

There are photos of the bush. There are photos of Māori teenagers. There are bubbles, spaceships and abattoir workers. All of these are apparent in the work of Derek Henderson, but they do not define what his work is about. There is space in between these photographs, in between each frame, each dark slide, and it is this territory that Henderson chooses to mine.

Suggestions of memories spark like struck flint, the brief luminescence of recognition, borne from a childhood spent looking through moving car windows. The indeterminate residue of past occupants, the closed history of an open landscape, the gaze held and the gaze fallen away. These are things we can and cannot know.

Throughout Henderson’s landscapes, there appears to be a removal of self, carved clean with the clarity of distance. The uniformity of focus across the frame acts as a democratic agent, freeing the image from any pointed prescriptive reading. Yet where this lucidity aids his landscapes, Henderson employs a different approach within his portraiture, inverting the depth of field to a point where you feel it trembling, intimating the human being in flux.

It is this refusal to yield information, to pin down what it is we are looking at in particular, to be dogmatic and absolute, that embodies Henderson’s work with the other, that which cannot be touched, that can only be experienced through sight, through memories summoned, edges frayed and worn.

Collections

National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.

Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Wallace Trust Art Collection, Auckland, New Zealand.

Publications

Postcards from Abroad, published by Bad News Books 2021

Rosa, by Simone Gooch and Derek Henderson, published by Perimeter Books 2021.

Milk Run, published by Bad News Books, 2020

Circadian Rhythm, published by Bad News Books and Precinct 35, 2017

Darkness of Noon, with Kelly Thompson, published by Pearce Press, 2013.

Mercy Mercer, published by Michael Lett, 2009.

The Terrible Boredom of Paradise, self-published, 2005.