Tēnā koutou katoa
Ko tēnei taku whakapapa
Ko Tutumapou te maunga
Ko Te Hoiere te awa
Ko Te Hoiere te waka
Ko Ngāti Kuia me Ngāi Tahu ngā iwi
Ko MacDonald te ingoa whānau
Nō Otautahi ahau
Ko Brad toku ingoa
Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa!
Who the hell is Brad MacDonald? That’s a hard question to answer because I’m not sure I know myself. This website is an attempt at trying to answer that question, to convey who I am as a creative individual and what I want my work to convey to the world.
I have a background of over 20 years in creative industries, mainly centred around design, printing and advertising.
For nearly 15 years, I ran my own design agency based in Canterbury where I served local, national and international clients. Business was not something I consciously entered into, just happened around me and I got caught up in the whirlwind that goes with the industry. Fast forward to 2018 where I was forced to make some tough decisions, I closed the businesses which allowed me some time to look at my personal work retrospectively.
I have since spent the past few years reigniting my passion for photography and writing, while doing a lot of research on subjects that have always appealed. This time has allowed me to look at my work with a ‘helicopter view’. Doing this has allowed me to see the interconnected threads of all my work, subjects of interest, which have a personal nature, as it all comes from my life experiences.
Born 1981 and speeding through life trying to do something without being someone, by using visual narrative and poetry to explore my existence in space and time.
For ease of explanation, I may call myself a photographer; however, this is not just about photography; it’s about an exploration of the world around me and how I fit into it. To do that I use all the tools I can; it just happens that the camera is the most natural medium for me to express.
My work is my take on the world around me. Everything I do for me, is an exploration, and everything I do I’m exploring myself – what can I do? What can I bring? How can I reinvent what has been done before with my approach, based on my life experiences?
Although my work is an outlet for my self-exploration, I also want to understand how I interact with society and in turn, the collective psyche. Through this understanding, I want to make people see; I want to make people think and feel.
I spend my time creating an interlinked body of work with common underlying themes that trace back to my personal experiences and interactions.
This journal offers an insight into my dreams, how my brain works and ultimately my interpretation of the universe, expressed in a creative form.