Salt prints capture intense beauty of water

Wayne Barrar's gold-toned albumenised salt print, Lake and Dam at Birchville, Upper Hutt in the Seasoned: contemporary salt prints exhibition at the McNamara Gallery until January 24. Photo/Supplied

Seasoned: contemporary salt prints by Dan Eastabrook, Ben Cauchi and Wayne Barrar is at the McNamara Gallery until January 24.

Gallery owner Paul McNamara says the Wayne Barrar photographs are part of a water suite of work, and exhibiting salt prints is characteristic of a gallery specialising in a medium.

The photographs of Eastabrook (US), Cauchi - resident in Berlin, and Barrar, are the only contemporary salt prints viewable in a New Zealand gallery.

The salt prints have a faint aubergine tone with a high degree of sharpness and contrast and almost look three-dimensional.

Salt printing, invented in the 1800s, is one of the oldest photographic processes.

The three threads as to how McNamara Gallery approaches/explores the medium of photography are: the nature/essence of photography (Available Light at Mahara Gallery, Waikanae); the physical nature of the photographic print (alt print, digital print, gelatin silver print, Polaroid print) and the subjects of photography (portraits, landscape, caravans, flora).

Cauchi returned from Berlin for the December opening of the exhibition, where he recently completed a Creative New Zealand Visual Arts Residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien.

Since he graduated with an advanced diploma in photography from Massey University in 2000, Cauchi's photographs have been shown widely.

His first two exhibitions were in Wellington in 2000 - solo with The Seven Deadly Sins, and a two-person show Rendered in Silver.

He went on to be awarded residencies in Wanganui at Tylee Cottage in 2005; a Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago in 2007; in 2011 he received the New Generation Award by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand; was artist in residence at McCahon House, French Bay, Auckland, and artist in residence at the Rita Angus Cottage in Wellington.

The McNamara Gallery Photography also develops exhibitions at other galleries. Available light, imagining more than we see was developed by the gallery, and is being exhibited at the Mahara Gallery in Waikanae until January 26.

Flora Photographica Aotearoa is where the photographers explore the "transformative quality of light on film: Laurence Aberhart, Great Anderson, Wayne Barrar, Janet Nayly, Andrew Beck, Gary Blackman, Rhondda Bosworth, Joyce Campbell, Ben Cauchi, Max Coolahan (1918-85), Lisa Crowley, Derek Henderson, Frank Hofmann (1916-89), John Johns (1924-99), Ian Macdonald, Anne Noble, Richard Orjis, Fiona Pardington, Peter Peryer, Haruhiko Sameshima and C. Brian Smith.

Bowen House Exhibition Space at Parliament, February-March:

McNamara Gallery exhibitions - February: Rhondda Bosworth Booklet 1, 2014; March: Paul Johns.