om Blachford, one of our talented photographers, is holding his first solo exhibition – a carefully considered collection of otherworldly landscapes.

The exhibition is titled AOTEAROA, the most commonly accepted Maori word for New Zealand, which roughly translates to “the land of the long white cloud” – ao (cloud), tea (white) and roa (long). In the last few years, Blachford has spent a bit of time getting to know this neighbouring land, particularly the South Island, which he describes as “an amazing, ridiculously beautiful place”.

“It’s like a painting, but a painting that’s so good that if you could actually paint it and hand it in you’d only get a C+ because no-one would believe anything could be that beautiful,” Blachford says.

So he’s spent a lot of time trekking up mountains in an attempt to capture that surreal, awe-inspiring beauty. And he’s done a damn fine job. Blachford has selected 10 landscapes from his expansive archive to present to the public, and unsurprisingly, snow topped mountain-scapes of New Zealand’s rugged ranges make up the majority of the exhibition.

All images will be available for sale in various sizes – a very welcome Christmas gift.

AOTEAROA shows at L’Unico Gallery December 16–23.

L’Unico Gallery
323 Bay Street, Port Melbourne

tomblachford.com