Derek Henderson: Waitoa Meat Plant
27 August, 2013 - 6 October, 2013
Photography Gallery
Derek Henderson, Untitled #5 (2007), giclée print
When I was a teenager growing up in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand a lot of my friends left school at 15 and worked in the abattoirs. The country was doing well and my friends were making a lot of money back in the 1970s. I always wondered what it was like working in these places and how they could slaughter large animals day in day out without it affecting them.
Derek Henderson, 2013
New Zealand-born artist Derek Henderson spent the better part of the last twenty years in New York, London and Los Angeles before returning in 2007 to the Southern Hemisphere. He is one of this region's most renowned and dynamic photographers. With a talent for turning ordinary everyday scenes into images of mysterious beauty, Henderson works with leading advertising agencies and magazines around the world.
Henderson’s varied subject matter is united by his approach to his material. This is characterised by a kind of democratic naturalism, in which all phenomena are given equal attention. Although variously described as anti-heroic and anti-iconic, Henderson’s apparent fascination with the ordinary can be deceptive - his narratives often reveal themselves to be more complex and ambiguous than they first appear.
Exhibition concept supported by McNamara Gallery Photography
Derek Henderson is represented by Melanie Roger Gallery in Auckland