Marti Friedlander

Martha "Marti" Friedlander CNZM (née Gordon; 19 February 1928 – 14 November 2016) was a New Zealand photographer who emigrated from England in 1958. She was known for photographing and documenting New Zealand's people, places and events, and was considered one of the country's best photographers.

Friedlander was born on 19 February 1928 in the East End of London to Jewish immigrants from Kiev, Russia. From the age of three she grew up in a Jewish orphanage in London with her sister Anne. She won a scholarship at the age of 14 and attended Camberwell School of Art, where she studied photography. From 1946 to 1957 she worked as an assistant to fashion photographers Douglas Glass, an expatriate New Zealander, and Gordon Crocker. She married Gerrard Friedlander, a New Zealander of German Jewish origin, in 1957 and emigrated to New Zealand with him in 1958. She became a naturalised New Zealander in 1977.

Friedlander's first impressions of New Zealand were of a strange country with different land, people and social customs from her previous experience. She felt constrained by what she saw as New Zealand's conservatism compared to the lifestyle she had enjoyed in London, and she began taking photographs to document and understand the country and people around her. She was particularly interested in people and social movements, especially protests and activism – one of the first photographs she took in New Zealand was in Auckland in 1960, of people protesting the New Zealand rugby team's tour of South Africa. The photograph was later purchased by the BBC and used in a television series on rugby.

Initially, the couple lived in Te Atatu South, and Friedlander worked as a dental assistant in her husband's dental practice. In 1964 she began working as a freelance photographer, and in 1972 her work became well known through her collaboration with social historian Michael King, photographing Maori women and their traditional moko tattoos. Friedlander considered this project the highlight of her career, and in 2010 she donated the series of 47 portraits to the national museum, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

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