Theo Schoon captured this mudpool in the 1960s.
When you live in a unique region, it's easy to get blase about the natural landmarks you see.
Photographer Theo Schoon had a fascination for this landscape, and he believed Rotorua residents inhabit a living art gallery but most can't see it.
Schoon took his first image of Rotorua's geothermal
landscape in 1950 and by the 1960s he was spending more and more time in the region taking photographs. During his artistic career, he took hundreds of photographs of Rotorua mudpools and silica as he believed our geothermal region was one of the greatest natural art galleries in the world.
"He would wait for hours to get the perfect shot he wanted and thought it was the most amazing canvas," said Rotorua Museum communications lead, Jo Doherty.
Rotorua residents viewing the exhibition of his work might be surprised by the abstract art lurking in our mudpools, as "most people taking photographs do a typical landscape shot, but Schoon focused on the smaller details, the patterns of nature, and his work is quite modernist," said Ms Doherty.
