Tash Hopkins

Tash Hopkins once horse-trekked solo across Mongolia to experience being alone in an unfamiliar landscape. Her search for compelling images and quality of light has also taken her to the Netherlands, the U.S, India, Morocco and France.
Tash studied photography at Wellington Polytech in New Zealand and a year after completion she moved to London where she worked as an assistant.
Now based in Auckland, she shoots a variety of assigned work as well as self-directed projects. She is currently working on a long- term series, The Western Springs Project.
The Western Springs project is a long-term study that looks beyond the visual cliches and stereotypes that appear frequently in the portayal of young people in the media.
Teenagers are often presented in terms that are reductive in nature – either aspirational and idealised, or judgemental and patronising. Tash looks beyond these generalities to reveal the individuality of her subjects.
She uses a large format camera and gives as little direction as possible. This largely unmediated process enables Tash’s subjects to retain their autonomy and to be authentic in front of the camera. The resulting images provide a contrast with, and a challenge to – the flood of contrived and artificial images of youth seen in mainstream and social media. Instead, they reveal honesty, depth, complexity and vulnerability.
The series is shot at Western Springs College in central Auckland which was chosen because of the diversity of its student community – and because it’s one of the few New Zealand secondary schools that doesn’t have a uniform.
In an article written for Art New Zealand about the project, curator Christina Barton sai “… the success of the series lies in it’s candour, in the photographers ability to let her subjects be, catching them on that marvellously akward cusp just before adulthood. There is little of the auteur here, no voyeurism; she seems genuinely curious about who these people will become, and the goal of the series is refreshingly open ended”