A Different Light features a portrait of Wiremu Tāmihana with the background removed by the photographer. In this lunchtime talk, photographic artist and educator Shaun Waugh asks: why was it removed?; how was it done?; and, how does this alteration shift the meaning or purpose of the portrait? Exploring images under the theme ‘The Victorian Photoshop’, Waugh sparks a conversation about how we construct and manipulate images. Waugh will discuss how analogue darkroom techniques have evolved into digital tools like Photoshop, transforming image-making from physical processes to clicks and selections. He will also consider the rise of AI-generated imagery and text-based image prompts, questioning how these new technologies continue to reshape photographic truth and representation.

Shaun Waugh is a Senior Lecturer and Programme in Leader Photography at Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University. His practice examines the material culture of photographic history together with implications of new digital technologies, expanding the potentials of the photographic medium. Waugh is interested in the fraught relationship between images and the world they profess to represent - a relationship defined by deception, reduction and seduction. He makes images that confront us with representations which are not as certain as they may first appear, prompting us to reconsider and redefine what constitutes contemporary photography and its shifting implications and effects.

Through a Contemporary Lens: Artists in response is a series of talks developed in collaboration with artist and educator Caroline McQuarrie, bringing contemporary lens-based artists in response to A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa. Across five Thursday lunchtimes, both emerging and established practitioners have been invited to share their response to particular photographs. Drawing on their own approaches, whakapapa and interests from the vantage point of the present day, these artists offer fresh and varied insights into the political, social and technological dynamics of photography and its implicit relationship to settler-colonialism in Aotearoa.