Show number 9 at Matakana Pictures

Quirky: Ans Westra's kiwis are showcased like gem stones.

New Zealand has three specialist photography galleries. The newest and largest is in Matakana. Fortunately, it is worth the drive.

The purpose-built gallery is the brainchild of Ian Macdonald, who ran Auckland photography gallery Real Pictures in the 1980s.

He collaborates with two other top photographers, Haru Sameshima and Mark Adams, to create the exhibition list. It's an impressive calendar, riddled with big names, such as Marti Friedlander, Bruce Connew, Ann Shelton and Fiona Clark.

Hanging alongside are the works of emerging photographers, ensuring an eclectic mix for each two-month show. At any one visit, expect landscapes, social-scapes, portraits and life details. Some images will be conceptual and others will be high-gloss moments of perfection, caught and hung mid-air, mid-sentence.

Examples of innovation, playful explorations and sly manipulations will be hanging, each a window into a different observer's world.

One function of the gallery is educational, to open minds to the idea of photography as a valid, collectable art form.

"Even over the winter months we have been getting around 800 people a week passing through, many travelling especially to visit us," says Macdonald.

In summer he expects visitor numbers to quadruple. On now is Show Number 9, so named because it runs through the ninth month. It features work by 11 photographers, some high profile, some not, working in black and white and colour.

Humour tinges some, from Conor Clarke's image of a fat hedge relaxed like a sleeping animal, to Jocelyn Carlin's Japanese scarecrows.

Brightly dressed and blessed with rudimentary facial detail, the scarecrows, or Kakashi, look like a fun-loving species.

Paul Hartigan's signage works also carry a playful ingredient with his Dentists, L&P and K Rd Venus signs. He has used a technique involving scanned polaroids, blown up large. Something about them is reminiscent of postcards stuck on fridges with cheesy magnets.

Three images in Calm, by Paul Gilbert, are soothing eyefuls. The water in which boats and reflections float is in a windless state, so calm it looks like black plastic.

Calm, too, are Megan Jenkinson's works, a series of pages marked with photographic solutions. Like ancient books open at some minimalist poetry about water or weather, they exude fragility and quiet.

Abby Storey says in her written statement that photography appeals to her because it has the power to communicate. Her black and white images of refugees do, indeed, speak "regardless of ethnicity, gender or the level of literacy" of the viewer.

Faye Norman also presents multicultural narratives in her contemporary views of Vietnamese people. Some of her images are printed on to fabric, evoking a timeless quality and hinting at the rawness of experience.

Clearly, Fiona Amundsen is interested in theory. Her images of pony clubs are stripped of people, reality and conversation.

Also focusing on concept is Ceili Murphy, whose light dreamscapes are sparse and unwelcoming on first take. She explains they are "departure points for a narrative rather than finished stories".

Deborah Smith's work is also dramatic - more overtly so. She presents partly told stories, one involving two girls, caught in black and white, mid-private game.

Another image, in colour, is of a young woman holding a toy boat on her head with a nautical flag behind her. They are mysterious worlds blending fiction and reality.

Ans Westra lovingly presents odd Kiwi icons showcased like gem stones. They have been made elsewhere, which explains the oddness, but lined up and photographed to be special.

* Matakana Pictures, Matakana Park, 1 Omaha Flats Rd, Matakana. It is open Wed-Sat 10am-4pm; ph (09) 422 7259

What: Show Number 9
Where and when: Matakana Pictures, to Oct 9