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When Ans Westra left Holland as a young girl to live in New Zealand in 1957, her grandmother had words of warning.
"Don't go outside cities there, darling," she recalls, "because they have these Maori. They hide in the bush and they'll eat you."
Westra, a pioneer of documentary photography in this country for nearly 50 years, did the opposite of what her granny had told her.
"I saw Maori when I came here in the late 50s, and there was no real documentation of them. I travelled around the country photographing them and Maori responded positively.
"I was portraying them in a way they felt comfortable with. I went to areas where Pakeha usually didn't go to."
Westra's life work, which has been published in books and school magazines and in exhibitions here and overseas, was last night presented with an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Award, an honour she will retain for the rest of her life.
The Icon Awards, launched in 2003, are limited to a "living circle" of 20 artists.
Westra, 71, who lives in Wellington, received the biennial award at a ceremony at SkyCity Theatre. Other recipients were abstract art leader Don Peebles, 85, of Christchurch, Wellington set and costume designer Raymond Boyce, 79, and Auckland sculptor Arnold Manaaki Wilson, 79.
An award was also passed on to the whanau of the late actor-director-producer Don Selwyn, who died in April at the age of 71, just days after being presented with the accolade.
Selwyn helped set up the He Taonga I Tawhiti television technicians' course in 1984, which helped many Maori and Pacific Islanders into a career in film and TV production.
Production designer and camera assistant Guy Moana stood with Selwyn's whanau to accept the award.
Originally working as a carver, he said he first met Selwyn when he heard the course was starting.
"I don't know whether I adopted him as my father, or whether he adopted me. He had this amazing ability to recognise people's skills. He told me that if I could frame a carving, I could frame the image and be a cameraman."
Moana was production designer on Selwyn's film The Maori Merchant of Venice, a project he had pursued for many years. It was released in 2002.
Don Peebles, who retired in 1986 as head of the painting department at Canterbury University's Ilam Art School, said his path down the abstract route was not easy in the conservative New Zealand of 50 years ago.
"One got very bad reviews of one's work," he says. "I was called a member of some obscure cult. But one just tries one's best. I have never felt myself in competition with anyone except myself and my own inadequacies."
Raymond Boyce, who grew up in London, came to New Zealand in 1953 on an 18-month contract to work with Richard Campion, who set up the first professional theatre company, the New Zealand Players. He stayed on for three years, returned to London, then realised his future lay back here.
"There wasn't much design work around so my wife and I decided to put on puppet shows to make some money. We made 20 puppets and wrote a script but we were really starting to starve. My dear wife knew the director of Porirua Mental Hospital and he said a puppet show would be just the thing for his patients.
"We went out there one afternoon and he brought out his home brew. You can imagine what it did to the show in the evening."
Boyce went on to design for the Australian Opera Company, Wellington City Opera and the New Zealand Ballet, and "came up with the idea" that Downstage Theatre be built in Wellington. He designed more than 100 productions at Downstage and was executive designer for the Globe Hangings at the Shakespeare Globe in London.
Arnold Manaaki Wilson, regarded as one of the most significant forces in contemporary Maori sculpture, was one of the first Maori students to complete a diploma in fine arts with honours at Elam School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1955. Its director, Archie Fisher, had told Wilson if he wanted to make Maori art he should live in a hut and wear a grass skirt.
The Herald was unable to make contact with Wilson yesterday, who was busy working.
