Shaun Higgins – Abstract and bio

Your Tāmaki Makaurau: Collecting selfies from Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

In 2019 we created a project to collect selfies for both the permanent collection and to show in a gallery due to open in 2020. For some time I had wanted to collect selfies and work on planning a new gallery created the perfect place to start. From a simple brief, to an upload page, submission and retention requirements, media campaign, defining a selfie and how to display them, I will talk about how we collected 900 selfies through crowd sourcing from people in Tāmaki Makaurau | Auckland.

Shaun Higgins, Curator Pictorial, Auckland War Memorial Museum |
Tāmaki Paenga Hira

Shaun is a curator responsible for photography at Auckland Museum. He has an interest in many aspects of photography such as its early use in Australia and New Zealand, photojournalism, documentary and photographic technology and identification. His work at Auckland War Memorial Museum includes research, exhibitions and development of the pictorial collection. Current interests also include emerging technologies in digital photography and computer vision as well as the analysis of photographic media. He maintains a knowledge of cameras, old and new in order to practice photography in addition to collecting and researching it. Shaun has worked with photographs for two decades ranging from research and publication, exhibitions, collection management, imaging and archaeological investigation. He has a background in Anthropology, Art History and Photography combined with Museum Studies and specialist training in Photographic care and identification.

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