Anne Noble

Anne Noble is one of New Zealand’s most widely recognised and respected contemporary photographers. With images renowned for their beauty, complexity and the conceptual rigour, Noble has been described as “one of New Zealand photography’s most subtle and poetic of practitioners” and her work as “strangely arresting and almost always profoundly moving”.

Noble has been at the forefront of photographic practice in New Zealand since first attracting attention in the early 1980s with her acclaimed photographs of the Wanganui River. Throughout a long and broad-ranging career, in a strategy that has enabled her to explore her subjects and medium in great depth, Anne has worked in series investigating her subject over several years. A common theme across these different bodies of work is how we perceive and understand the natural world. She explores the way representation – photography’s seemingly straight depiction of reality - can operate metaphorically to suggest invisible content and alternative perspectives. Her work never simply describes what it purports to show whether person, landscape or bee.

Recent series include an investigation of honey bees and their role in our world most recently a whimsical and quasi-scientific investigation of the language of treese visible. Conversātiō - In the company of bees by Anne Noble with Zara Stanhope and Anna Brown was published in September 2021.

Anne Noble is full-time artist and Professor Emeritus / Fine Art (Photography) at Massey University College of Creative Arts, Toi Rauwharangi. She is the recipient of numerous awards including an Arts Foundation Laureate Award and a New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to photography. She has exhibited widely nationally and internationally and her work is in collections throughout the world.

We have access to Anne Noble’s full catalogue of work, beyond what can be seen on this website. Please contact the gallery for more information about the artist and her work.