Overview
Te Papa purchased these 34 photographs by Andrew Ross in 2009.
Ross’s subject matter has tended to be the alternative city that is finally disappearing from back streets and forgotten corners: the last remnants of human scale, owner-operated businesses such as engineering workshops, motor mechanics, upholsterers, tailors, and junk yards; old buildings and structures now disused; and the dilapidated houses and bohemian lifestyles of those 'living on the edge'. Ross treats all these with a loving care for detail that only a large format camera can fully reveal. His work stands in polar opposition to the images of a sharp and shiny world we tend to be bombarded with every day, and is highly reminiscent of Eugene Atget’s life project of recording an older, disappearing Paris around the turn of the twentieth century as streets were widened and districts cleared.