Harry Culy

Harry Culy is a contemporary artist and photographer. Born in 1986 he lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington.

Harry uses photography as a means to examine every day contemporary life in both Australia and Aotearoa. He often works on long-term projects that span a number of years, frequently returning to places and communities that he has a personal connection to. Each image Harry takes is a pause amid an intensive, wandering process. Using a large format 4x5 field camera he produces enigmatic photographs found within daily life, often including vacant interiors, stark portraits, and landscapes—each hinting at narratives beyond the picture plane. 

Harry’s work is influenced by the Antipodean Gothic art movement. He says of this movement, “I don’t exactly know why I’m interested in this type of work. I think I am subconsciously drawn to it. It’s difficult to describe, but it draws on Freud’s notion of the uncanny. I have spent a lot of time going down the rabbit hole, researching, reading books, watching films, looking at gothic painting and art, looking at ideas behind the gothic, like post-colonial discourse, and the way it works on a psychological level. I’m drawn to the feeling it gives me. More than anything it’s a feeling of being unsettled, of uneasiness, of anxiety. That feeling seems to echo my relationship to Aotearoa and my own sense of ‘home’.”

Alongside his photography work, Culy runs a small press photobook company called Bad News Books.