The Surprise, by Auckland photographer Deborah Kelland, whose images documenting the migration of monarch butterflies features in the Auckland Festival of Photography this month.
The Surprise, by Auckland photographer Deborah Kelland, whose images documenting the migration of monarch butterflies features in the Auckland Festival of Photography this month.
High up on a mountain in Mexico, Auckland photographer Deborah Kelland experienced one of nature’s miracles.
The symbolic release of Deborah Kelland’s monarch butterflies will mark an emotional milestone for the former boutique real estate high-flyer, whose exhibition The Sacred Journey: A Flight for Life opens on May 15.
The extraordinary images were taken at the Cerro Peon Sanctuary in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains.
Millions of monarch butterflies fly south on the slipstreams from Canada each autumn, a 4800km migration that can take several months.
Roosting in fir and pine trees high up the mountain, the Cerro Peon colony swarms down to feed on a grassy plateau as it warms in the sunshine, 3000m above sea level.
Every morning for nine days, Kelland rose early to meet them. Setting out from Macheros, a tiny village in the foothills, she made the two-hour trek up the mountain on foot, carrying her camera gear.
Flights of migrating butterflies were still arriving from Canada, forming pulsating clouds so dense they almost obscured the sky.
“When I got up there, I was on my own, so it was an incredibly spiritual experience,” she says.
“You’re just overwhelmed, standing in this paddock at the top of the mountain with the enormity of the butterflies coming towards you. It’s like being in a snowstorm.”
The Arrival. Migrating monarch butterflies were still flocking in from Canada when photographer Deborah Kelland climbed to their feeding ground at the Cerro Peon Sanctuary in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountain range. Photo / Deborah Kelland
The monarch butterfly has a typical lifespan of only four to six weeks. However, once a year a “super generation” is produced that lives for up to nine months and can survive this epic migration.
In 2022, the species was officially listed as endangered, reflecting its devastating decline. In Mexico, the population has fallen by 70% over the past 30 years, largely due to illegal logging that threatens their roosting spots and an increase in severe weather events caused by climate change.
Kelland, who describes her art photography as inspired by the “life force and vibrant energy of nature”, was immediately fascinated when she read about the migration of the monarchs and their vulnerable existence.
Specialising in backlit photography, she wanted to photograph the butterflies against a black background – an effect she achieved by lying on the ground and shooting into the mountain.
The results are striking, setting the glowing orange butterflies against a backdrop of velvety midnight black as sunlight streaks the grass.
“It was incredibly challenging, defying all the principles of photography, really,” she says. “But I didn’t want blue sky, which is what everyone associates with butterflies.”
The sanctuary is protected by guardians who ride up the mountain on horseback. Silhouetted in several of Kelland’s images, they appear as an almost ghostly presence: the rump of a horse emerging from the shadows; a dog’s bushy tail that looks for all the world as if it belongs to a wolf.
The Wolf. A dog belonging to the guardians of the butterfly sanctuary looks remarkably wolf-like as it's captured passing through the frame. Photo / Deborah Kelland
Attuned to some cosmic clock, the first wave of migrating butterflies arrives each year on the Day of the Dead (Dia De Los Muertos), which is celebrated in Mexico on November 1 and 2.
“They say the butterflies are the souls of their loved ones returning,” Kelland says. “And I can believe it.”
More than five years after the images were taken, her collection is about to be shown publicly for the first time at the Auckland Festival of Photography.
A region-wide series of free exhibitions and events, the global programme includes work by NZ Herald photographers that will be displayed outdoors, along the fence at Queens Wharf.
Waka ceremony at Waitangi, by Dean Purcell, from an exhibition by NZ Herald photographers at the Auckland Festival of Photography, which features work from around the world.
Provision 8, by Clara Watt, from her exhibition The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values.
A work from Sarah Cusack's series, Conflict Portraits.
A real-estate hotshot in the 90s, Kelland was the first agent at Bayleys Real Estate to receive the $100 Million Award for settled sales and later founded her own boutique agency.
In 2009, she walked away from the industry on the day her partner, Sue Nelson, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
The couple married in 2013 after 27 years together in one of the first same-sex weddings celebrated in New Zealand after a law change the previous year.
By then, they were living on Waiheke, where Kelland began exploring art photography alongside her charity and philanthropy work. In 2011, a T-shirt she designed in the days after the Christchurch earthquake raised thousands of dollars, with orders peaking at 700 a day.
Her first photography exhibition, the Light of the Soul series, was dedicated to her late mother. Shot at the Parnell Rose Garden, it featured large-scale backlit images mounted on to light boxes to mimic the rays of the sun.
Deborah Kelland at her home on Waiheke Island, with her dog, Toby, and sitting at her late wife Sue Nelson's piano.
Nelson kept her cancer at bay for more than a decade before her health began to deteriorate. She died in 2020 on their seventh wedding anniversary, only five months after Kelland returned from Mexico.
Devastated, Kelland set her butterfly photographs aside until late last year, when art collector Dame Jenny Gibbs convinced her to mount them in the foyer of the Wynyard Quarter apartment building where the two women are neighbours.
“For a long time, it was far too raw,” says Kelland. “Jenny encouraged me to release the butterflies, literally. It was a very emotional moment.”
Healthy Poison, by Karl Mancini, from a portrait series of factory workers in Samut Sonkhram, Thailand.
Melt 4, by Wairarapa-based photographer Wendy Brandon. Her exhibition MELT: A Strangely Beautiful Interior, explores Antarctica "from a starting point of us needing to sustain a symbiotic relationship with the wild places on our planet".
This theme of this year’s Auckland Festival of Photography, Sustain/Tautīnei, resonated deeply with Kelland, who was moved to tears by both the resilience of the monarch butterfly and a fragility that mirrors our own.
“I love to immerse people in the joy of nature and all its magnificent creatures, but we also need to be so much more conscious of the devastating damage to our environment,” she says.
“For a while there, I couldn’t even look at the devastation, because I like to have hope. To me, producing these images gives people hope, because the beauty is still there.”
The Sacred Journey: A Flight for Life is on at Little Rosie in Parnell from May 15 to June 15 as part of the Auckland Festival of Photography. For the full programme, go to photographyfestival.org.nz
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.
