One of the things we've most enjoyed over the years has been visiting artists' studios. Back in the late seventies we were lucky enough to work with Marti Friedlander who'd been photographing artists in their studios since the late sixties. The result of that collaboration was the book Contemporary New Zealand Painters Vol I  ( don't ask about Volume II ). The experience also encouraged us to stay with our own interest in taking studio photographs that had been sparked by books like The artist in his studio by Alexander Liberman and Snowdon's Private view both of which were models for Contemporary NZ Painters.

So we asked some of the artists we've recorded how they'd feel about having their 'studios' put up online. This site is the result and there is more to come as we work through the files and visit more studios.

All these images are free to use, and licensed under Creative Commons, but if you want to do anything major with them (beyond just putting them on a site, using them in presentations or sending them to friends), it'd be great if you could contact us first. We may have other images that might interest you and we'd like to put you on to the artist concerned or tell them what you have in mind and can give you access to larger files or original negatives.

Please credit: the artist and  Jim Barr & Mary Barr. If you want access to larger files for more recent digital images you can contact us at:  jim at barrs dot co dot nz or mary at barrs dot co dot nz or contact us for large image files.

We've included captions on the small images but you can enlarge each of them and see it without the caption by clicking on it.

The archive of original negs, tranies and high res files of images taken before 2019 are held at the Auckland Art Gallery Library and Archives.

Header photograph: Seraphine Pick's Wellington studio studio, 2025

You can find more about these artists in the archives of Over the net



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.