Stanley Palmer

This black and white portrait of painter and printmaker Stanley Palmer was taken in his studio in Mt Albert, Auckland, by Steve Rumsey in 1973. The photograph was commissioned by the Auckland City Art Gallery for a proposed booklet on Palmer's bamboo printing technique and was one of a number that Rumsey took to document the artist's process. It was not published in the booklet because the print Palmer is working on in the image was not included in the exhibition.

Bamboo prints
Untitled (Stanley Palmer) documents Palmer's distinctive bamboo printing technique. Palmer would collect sheaves of bamboo, flatten them, and glue them to cardboard to make plates, which he would then engrave. Rumsey's photograph shows the bamboo plate in the foreground and a sample print on the wall behind. Palmer is using the print as a model while making corrections and additions to the plate.

Portrait of an artist
Untitled (Stanley Palmer) is a good example of the way Rumsey photographed artists and craftspeople. In 1965 Rumsey established Photo Associates Limited, and he soon began working for a variety of institutions, including the Auckland City Art Gallery, the New Vision Gallery, and the government's arts funding body, the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council.Te Papa owns a number of portraits of artists such as painter Michael Illingworth, sculptor Alison Duff, and potters Len Castle and Patricia Perrin, which were commissioned for publication. His photographic archive is therefore one of the most comprehensive documentaries of the Auckland pottery and craft scenes in the 1960s and 1970s. Rumsey's photographs have been reproduced in a number of books, including Artists and Craftsmen in New Zealand by Peter Cape, published in 1969.