Paul Moon

One of the British Empire’s most troubling colonial exports in the 19th-century, James Busby is known as the father of the Australian wine industry, the author of New Zealand’s Declaration of Independence and a central figure in the early history of independent New Zealand as its British Resident from 1833 to 1840. Officially the man on the ground for the...

The photographer Ans Westra, who died in 2023, took hundreds of thousands of images over her long career. Together, those images constitute what is arguably a photo album of Aotearoa. Her dedication and determination sometimes came at a cost but she was focused and driven, overcoming a difficult childhood in the Netherlands and later complex adult relationships to forge her...

Professor Paul Moon is one of New Zealand's most prolific authors; his latest biography on photographer Ans Westra garnered glowing reviews. In this book his meticulous research shows, through selected art works, how imperial art became a form of colonisation by colour. He writes, 'artists in New Zealand in the colonial era, not tied to a state vision, tried to...