2026 NZ Booklovers Award for Best Lifestyle Book
Judges wrote "This book’s appeal reaches well beyond photography, art and history circles. It speaks to New Zealanders of all ages across the motu through images that capture people, places, and moments. From everyday scenes to major shifts in our national story, it provides a shared visual record of who we’ve been and who we’re becoming."
Expertly curated, and showcasing images taken between 1850 and 2025, this book is an essential reference that honours artistic legacies and explores our identity as a nation. Together these photographs tell stories about life in this country from almost the earliest days of European colonisation and about how the practice of photography has evolved here.
When it was first published in 2015, New Zealand Photography Collected was a landmark book, captivating audiences. In this fully revised and enriched edition, of the more than 400 images, almost half are new, reflecting the dynamic and increasingly diverse nature of the collection, allowing for previously unseen treasures, and enabling familiar works to be recontextualised with fresh insights.
Athol McCredie is Curator Photography at Te Papa, where he has worked since 2001. He has been involved with photography as a researcher, curator and photographer since the 1970s. His publications include Brian Brake: Lens on the world (editor, 2010), New Zealand Photography Collected (2015), The New Photography: New Zealand’s first generation of documentary photographers (2019), and most recently Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer (2024), shortlisted for New Zealand’s national book awards.
Photography and photographs
Hardback, 392 pages
H: 305mm W: 250mm