Born in 1997, in Ingham, Far North Queensland, Australia, Azura moved as a child to Reporoa, Aotearoa [New Zealand]. Now living in Basel, Switzerland as an exhibiting photographer, photography tutor and freelancer, she is engaged in collective exhibitions, holding hands-on workshops and realising commissioned works.
In 2024 Azura is currently working on the topic of repair with the project “Moments to be Shared” with her sister who is based in Sydney, Australia. The project is strongly inspired by both the work of Edith Amituanai shown in “Photographing Moment’s to be Seen” (Stanhope, 2020) and “Listening to Images” (Campt, 2017).
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Girl with the tichel tie, 2023
During her studies at the Lab HyperWerk, Academy of Art and Design, FHNW (2020-2023), she began working on the topics of identity, heritage and respectful storytelling through collaborative making and sharing of photography together with her collective “Narrative Agency Making”. Strongly influenced by the practice of Lebohang Kganye and her series “Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story” (2013), Azura made “Her Legacy” (2023) in conversation with her stepmother’s archive of family photographs. It was exhibited alongside series' of the collective in 2023 under the name of “Narrative Agency Making – Our-shared Stories” at the bachelor process sharing public event.
Azura asks if there is a way we can collectively shift the use of photography to become a tool for self-exploration of identity and heritage. Her work is influenced by the practices of photographers Edith Amituanai, Naomi Hobson, Lebohang Kganye, Natalie Robertson, and Ans Westra, political activist late dame Whina Cooper and writers Adrienne Maree Brown, Tina M. Campt, Bell Hooks and Aphrodite Désirée Navab. She works toward finding ways of engaging the people she photographs to be more involved in the making, sharing and telling of their own stories.
It’s important for her that the story which is being told, shared, created or reproduced in an image, is one which is made respectfully, from its creation to publication. Part of this means she dedicates herself to writing individual consent and publication agreements together with each person photographed for every individual use of portraits she publishes.
Campt, T. (2017). Listening to Images. Duke University Press.
Stanhope, Z. (2020). Photographing Moments to be Seen: Edith Amituanai’s Little Publics. The Journal of Public Space, 5(4), pp. 177–192. doi: 10.32891/jps.v5i4.1424.