Leonard Bell Books

The biography explores the impactful work of photographer Marti Friedlander, highlighting her journey from a Jewish immigrant in 1958 to a key figure in capturing New Zealand's evolving landscape. It emphasizes her unique ability to reveal the human emotions behind significant events and personalities through her empathetic lens. The richly illustrated monograph contrasts her thoughtful photography with the prevalence of transient images, showcasing how a deep, attentive perspective can uncover profound truths in the complexities of life and culture.

For fifty years, Marti Friedlander (1928–2016) was one of New Zealand’s most important photographers, her work singled out for praise and recognition here and around the world. Friedlander’s powerful pictures chronicled the country’s social and cultural life from the 1960s into the twenty-first century. From painters to potters, film makers to novelists, and actors to musicians, Marti Friedlander was always deeply engaged with New Zealand’s creative talent. This book, published to coincide with an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Wellington, brings together those extraordinary people and photographs: Rita Angus and Ralph Hotere, C. K. Stead and Maurice Gee, Neil Finn and Kapka Kassabova, Ans Westra and Kiri Te Kanawa, and many many more. Marti Friedlander: Portraits of the Artists chronicles the changing face of the arts in New Zealand while also addressing a central theme in Marti Friedlander’s photography. Featuring more than 250 photographs, many never previously published, the book is an illuminating chronicle of the cultural life of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The census tells us that 8000 New Zealanders actively identify as Jewish and it is estimated that the broader population is probably around 25,000. There has never been an authoritative history of this country's Jewish population and yet people of Jewish descent (both secular and religious) have played vital roles in all aspects of our society throughout its history. Auckland alone has had five Jewish mayors. Jews have been prominent in New Zealand's business, cultural, intellectual, political, medical, intellectual life and more since the 1840s, and successive waves of immigration have added to the tapestry of New Zealand Jewry. This significant book covers key sectors of activity with specialist writers assigned to each. Richly illustrated, it slots another important piece into the jigsaw of our history.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, a substantial number of forced migrants? refugees from Nazism, displaced people after World War II and escapees from Communist countries? arrived in New Zealand from Europe. Among them were an extraordinary group of artists and writers, photographers and architects whose European modernism radically reshaped the arts in this country. In words and pictures, 'Strangers Arrive' tells their story

Leonard Bell examines the complex and unbalanced cultural interchange between European and Maori in 19th-century New Zealand and the relationship between visual representation and the ideology of colonialism.