| Matakana Pictures Exhibitions Artists |
Photo: Elise Macdonald
Ian Macdonald was born in Auckland, New
Zealand in 1946 and the first years of his working life were spent in the British Merchant Navy, which he left at the age of 24. He completed a year's course in graphic design at the Auckland Technical Institute and then enrolled at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, where he majored in photography under Tom Hutchins and John B Turner for his DipFA, 1973-1975. He worked as a landscape designer while attending these courses. Considered too radical by the Head of Elam for the position of Technical Instructor in Photography vacated by Max Oettli, Macdonald joined the Auckland City Art Gallery as its Exhibitions Officer in 1976.
In 1977 he left the Art Gallery to form Real Pictures, which in April 1979 became a limited liability company. (His partners were fellow ex-Elam students, Kevin Donovan and Charles McKenzie, who were later joined by Rob Giles as shareholders.) Formed firstly as a laboratory for Cibachrome and chromogenic printing, for whom Peter Hannken, Megan Jenkinson and Cathryn Shine (other Elam associates) all worked. In November 1979 he opened Real Pictures Gallery and for the next decade, while emphasising high quality colour work, exhibited a wide range of exemplary photographers such as Jenkinson, Laurence Aberhart, Mark Adams, Fiona Clark, Robin Morrison, Anne Noble and Macdonald himself.
Ian Macdonald initiated the unique social documentary show and book, By Batons and Barbed Wire, on the protest against South Africa's Springbok Rugby Tour of New Zealand in 1981, with photographers from all over the country adding their work for a constantly evolving exhibition at Real Pictures. Another version of the exhibition was created for showing by the United Nations, and toured internationally to promote the downfall of apartheid in South Africa. When His Majesty's Arcade was demolished by Auckland's speculators and City Council,
Real Pictures moved to Grey Lynn. In 1989 it was sold as a colour processing laboratory and relocated to Karangahape Road. A year later Macdonald moved north to reside on a small farm in Matakana.
Macdonald first made an impression with his 1975 colour essay on stranded whales at Muriwai when he was a student. He later did extensive work on New Zealand's native forests, culminating in publications including To Save a Forest: Whirinaki in 1984, which helped to cease all logging of native forests in public ownership.
In 1998 he commenced a contract with the British Broadcasting Corporation's Science Department as stills photographer for their Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Beasts, and other series. He has widely travelled for the BBC, especially in the Americas. Since then his work has been extensively published, locally and internationally, including the UK Radio Times (covers and editorial pages), Life, Time, and Art New Zealand.
Ian Macdonald's Muriwai whales photographs were included in the Auckland City Art Gallery's first Triennial Exhibition, 'Bright Paradise: Exotic History and Sublime Artifice,' curated by Allan Smith in 2001 and later purchased as a complete set of fifty prints.
He currently works from Matakana as a computer programmer specialising in marketing analysis software for major international clients. He is a leading practitioner of the latest digital printing techniques with a well equipped studio. In June 2005 he opened Matakana Pictures, a new gallery, in a new era, to continue his vision for Real Pictures.
John B Turner
Content & Form
2005
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