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Lisa Powers Photography

Chapter: National /
Pro Type: Photographer

Lisa Powers was born in the south of France and emigrated to New York with her family when she was ten years old.
She began her photographic training when she quit her day-job in the creative department of a small advertising agency for the cleaner/janitor of a large commercial photo studio.
Her ambition was to become a professional freelance commercial photographer and she learned by watching the studio photographers shoot in the daytime, then shooting for herself with models at night.
She learned more by artistic experimentation and intuition than technical correctness, since she had no technical knowledge.
This was in the film era, long before digital cameras.
For the next thirty years she was one of the few women working successfully in commercial photography, an industry which was, and still is, largely male-dominated.
In 2005 she did the “BIG SCARY”… She left New York and relocated to New Zealand where she shifted her photography from commercial to PhotographicFineArt, and herself from "a New York photographer in New Zealand” to “a New Zealand photographer from New York”.

It makes a difference.

Lisa Powers has won many prestigious international awards, including ‘Distinction Honours” from The Royal Photographic Society, UK.

Her Photographic Art has been exhibited in art galleries in New Zealand, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo. Her current exhibition, “WanRong: The Last Empress of China” is at the FoGuangYuan Art Gallery at The Buddhist Centre, Christchurch, New Zealand.

"I don’t capture pictures, I create them from nothing in my studio… not as one would perceive them in reality but as imagined images. To do this, I build from an idea. Choosing the right model to direct is crucial. I am completely self-taught and perhaps because of that, I am fearless. I love mixing analogue film elements with digital effects."-- Lisa Powers