Ross T. Smith

Artist Name: Ross T. Smith Group: Ngāpuhi/Māori New Zealand. Artwork Title: L'Amour et la mort (sont la même chose) (Love and Death (are the Same thing)) Year: 1990/1992 Medium: Hand printed fibre-based, silver gelatin photographs toned with selenium, nailed to plywood Dimensions: 120 x 240 cm Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Gift of anonymous donors, 2016

Bio

Ross T. Smith (b. 1961) is a Ngāpuhi/Māori photographer who has lived between both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Smith studied fine art photography in Melbourne at the Australian College of Photography Art and Communication between 1987 and 1990. In particular, Smith is known for his photographic series such as Hokianga (1997–98), held in the permanent collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and Hemi Tuwharerangi Paraha (1999) in which these two bodies of work position the image of young Māori men and women within the remote New Zealand landscape. In these complex series of portraits, Smith depicts the figure in varying states of strength and fragility, eschewing evocative documentary portraiture to consider the restrictions of identity and representation in a marginalised group. Smith is known within Australia for his large-scale photographic composition L’amour et la mort sont la même chose (1990–92), held within the National Gallery of Victoria collection and exhibited within QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection (2022), TRANSMISSIONS: Archiving HIV/AIDS, Melbourne 1979–2014, George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne (2014), and Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS (1994), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Smith's work is held in various Australian, New Zealand, and international collections.