In a "dream come true", Waipukurau photographer Vivienne Haldane has six images she took 26 years ago on display as part of a major exhibition at Te Papa in Wellington.
Her black and white photos now prominently feature as 2m-tall light boxes in the exhibition, Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists, a retrospective about the legacy of the "ground-breaking" collective of fashion designers, artists, performers and musicians that formed in Auckland in the early 1990s.
"I'd just graduated from Carrington Polytechnic in Auckland (now Unitec) in photography and had met a collective of artists and designers known as the Pacific Sisters. I loved their creativity: they were totally inspiring," Haldane said.
"They were creating fashion that reflected their Pacific Island and Maori culture, way ahead of their time."
The images were originally commissioned for a magazine that was never published due to a lack of funds, she said.