Intimate Portraits

Parbhu Makan’s studio is in the basement of his parents’ old house in Papakura. There, he has his darkroom—a tiny converted hallway—his enlarger, his washing station and countless Tupperware boxes of photographic prints, dating back to his student days in the early 1970s. Makan is a contemporary of photographers such as Fiona Clark and Ian Macdonald, but his work has rarely been seen publicly, save for a few shows at Real Pictures Gallery, in the mid-1970s. Makan’s work has remained largely unseen by the public because he has not actively pursued an art career—rather, he supported himself as a house painter, and raised his daughter. However, over the last 40 years, he has continued to take and print black-and-white photographs, compiling an archive of prints: family portraits, figure studies, documentary images, children and old people, weddings and funerals.

Makan’s practice takes place in biographical time; his images are best considered not as individual exhibitions or groupings, but as ongoing series, which have been extended through time up to the present