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Jane Ussher was chief photographer for the New Zealand Listener for 29 years, a role that kicked off her career in 1977. She has since been a key player in documenting New Zealand culture through images and is widely considered one of the country’s best portrait photographers.

David Lange was a lawyer and politician and the 32nd prime minister of New Zealand, in office from 1984 to 1989. He died at the age of 63, in August 2005. Alana Rae interviews Ussher about the candid photo taken of him at Wellington Botanic Garden in 1988.

Q: Why did you decide to shoot this in the botanical gardens?

A: At that time the New Zealand Listener office was in Bowen St, next door to Parliament. When you’re photographing a prime minister, it’s a logistical exercise because they need security with them as well. This was taken in 1988 – he had been PM since 1984. I had a relationship with him from photographing him before as an MP and I think I would’ve suggested we take him away from the office setting for this portrait. The Botanic Garden would have been an easy place to get to because it’s just up the road.

Q: He’s obviously having a laugh – what made him crack a huge smile?

A: I’m dredging this up from my memory but I’m imagining we would have met up at the botanic gardens and we would have walked through some of the paths. It’s most likely that I would’ve been there earlier and found a couple of appropriate places. With David, you had to expect the unexpected. He may have been making a comment about the little statue in front of him and he would have just started laughing. It was the certain person he was. A lot of things relied on chance in this image as opposed to me really setting up and framing a shot - and it relied on his personality.

Q: Do you think some of your best work is thanks to this spontaneity?

I think spontaneity is what draws people to my photos. But this was slightly outside of how I normally work. Normally, I set up a framework with my Hasselblad camera, which is a square format on a tripod. Within that framework, I let people take over. I try not to dictate where they should be, how they should behave. But with this photo, I don’t remember saying I’d meet him there and I didn’t have everything set up. I think the whole thing was more spontaneous.

It’s difficult to take that sort of photo and make it looked uncontrived. It takes someone like David who was very confident in himself. He took centre stage wherever he was. He was almost like an actor in his own sphere. When you’ve got security people around you and you’re in a public space and you can still be that relaxed – that says a huge amount about him as a person. It probably says a lot about me, too, in that I was nimble enough to see the opportunity and still take a photo that I think is nicely framed. It’s got all the things I would normally angst about in terms of framing and composition and light. All those things I find really pleasing would have happened quickly in this quite opportunistic photo.

Q: David Lange was 41 when he became PM – you seem to have captured this youthful side of him.

A: I wonder whether he’s looking so relaxed because he’s nearing the end of his tenure as PM. My memory is that he decided that he was going to leave politics. I’m trying to think of why the Listener would have decided to do an in-depth article about him in 1988.

He had some tough years in politics. A lot of New Zealanders felt a lot of pain during that time, and he felt a lot of responsibility for that.

One of the reasons he left was because morally he didn’t want to be in that position anymore. It feels to me that this is the David Lange that is unremarkably cheerful. He’d remember who you were, whether you had one child or more. So whenever you were with him there was a sense that he knew you very well, which is very flattering since he met hundreds of people every week. People who knew David slightly like I did always felt he was very warm – that was his nature.