“Hands of a true artist, and a traditional leader”
Photo by Alex King
Alex King started pursuing photography while living in New Zealand in 2012. Although she never went to school for photography, her stories started to unfold naturally when she bought her first camera and started photographing as a hobby. She seeks to capture emotional and real-life events through weddings, street photography, and portraits.
Passionate about Pacific and Indigenous cultures, the environment, climate change, animal welfare, and women and children’s rights; her goal for the future is to be able to use her photography to document real and raw stories around the world. Those that are captivating, eye-opening, and change people's perspectives. To use photography and video to create change, as she believes it is the real art and ultimate goal of photography.
In a recent interview, PWB caught up with King to find out what makes her more than a photographer.
Michael Tavioni sketching designs to teach his nephew
Photo by Alex King
PWB: What makes you more than a photographer?
Alex King: I've had my own experiences and struggles and challenges in life, and through acknowledging those experiences I'm able to connect to my audience and my subjects a lot better. I am more compassionate and empathetic and I understand from a personal point of view what it feels like to go through struggles and challenges.
PWB: How do you think your work has as a photographer has connected you to your community
AK: The recent project that I did in the last few months, sort of continually being done, is what I am going to exhibit at the CONTACT photography festival in Canada. That one is about Michael Tavioni, a local traditional artist. He's really well known and valued, especially in our community here. What I’m doing with my camera is trying to learn more about what he's doing and expose more about him; as a person and as an artist. Not just the final product that he makes but also the struggles and personal challenges that he's had. It's been really important for me to put that out there and to remind our community of the valuable people around us, especially our elders since they hold a lot of knowledge. And it's just so important that we document this while it's here. While we have them. He's a very valuable person in this community, in the Cook Islands, because he holds so much traditional knowledge of our culture, our people and our history; especially the history of our people.
A lot of our history has been wiped out of the books, so there's a lot of people today that don't know exactly where we come from or what our traditions are, and who our people actually are. So he is one person in our community that it's been really important for me as a young person to document so that I can connect it to the people in my generation.
Because our culture is a Pacific community, the whole world doesn't know about it, and I think it's really just so important that our story is out there. This is what the Cook Islands is, this is who we are, this is what we do, and this is where we come from.
Michael Tavioni teaching the art of traditional carving to school children
Photo by Alex King
PWB: What does storytelling mean to you?
AK: Creating a space for people to come. Come into it from another perspective. Just to see that there are so many sides to a story, that’s a really important thing, that not only one is being told. When you provide the space for people to share their story you know that it's coming from a very honest and truthful place.
Alongside my photography, I also write about things. And when I do put things out there, content that I write about, a lot of audiences are really responsive to it. And I get a lot of people internationally too, talking to me and messaging me with open minds about what I share. I've noticed that it has created a perspective in people's minds. And people have come to me sharing that they have connected with a new perspective, a new story. And just creating that space, allowing the mind to think about things from a different view, that’s really amazing.
You're already creating some kind of change in somebody. I think that's really important about the responsibility that comes with my job. The way that I do storytell is creating a space for people to come in and think about things and change within themselves. I've given them an opportunity to change the way they think about themselves.
Photos by Alex King
PWB: How has your work as a photographer expanded on existing narratives of your community?
AK: I was living back in New Zealand about five years ago. And I moved back to the Cook Islands five years ago, and I decided to basically reconnect with my culture here. I wanted to reconnect with my family and learn about my genealogy and my ancestry. And I thought it was really important to be able to do that in order to tell anyone else's stories, especially when it came to indigenous people, and connecting with other indigenous cultures. I needed to know my own first. That's the journey that I am on at the moment. Also, a lot of what I do and how I do it incorporates writing. I'll sit down in the evenings and I'll look at all my content and I've got my images and things that I want to talk about. And I'll sit down and I'll write out my three full pages on one subject or one image. And I'll think about it really deeply. I've always loved writing. I was really great at my English class in high school and I always refer back to how I loved writing stories and I've sort of come back to that now.
I've been incorporating all that reflection and storytelling into the work that I've been doing. Since I found PWB that was just like the perfect platform for me to push myself and expand the work that I'm doing here into that and connect with people to build new networks. I want my work to connect with other cultures, which I think is just so important, especially as I come from a very cultured background. I love to be able to continually connect with others around the world and sort of show a lot of similarities between our cultures. I think there's a lot of things that we do and say, they’re very similar.
When you're doing photography, you may be photographing sensitive subjects for communities and people. You have to know that you’re doing it for the right purpose and the right reasons. And I know that when I'm doing my work.
Photo by Alex KIng
Alex King is a featured photographer in PWB’s exhibition “Original Perspectives” held digitally as part of CONTACT, North America's largest photography festival.
For more of King’s work, visit her website and find her on Instagram @alexkingphotography
