Matheson Beaumont

For Matheson, photography began as an interest at an early age but is now an obsession.  Long considered to be one of New Zealand's leading Landscape photographers, Matheson Beaumont has been photographing the landscape of the South Island of New Zealand for the last forty years.  His photographs distil the texture and light of southern New Zealand to produce images praised for their integrity, design and sense of place.

His pictures are held in public collections in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Singapore and China, and in private collections in the UK, Canada, Australia, the US, Germany, Japan and New Zealand.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Photographic Society of New Zealand, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and was made a Fellow of The Photographic Society of America in 1974.  In 1975 he was presented with Civic Arts Award by the City of Dunedin and in 1994 was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's prestigious Fenton Medal, for his services to Australasian Photography, the first time that a New Zealand photographer has been honoured in this way.

Matheson was the recipient in the Queens Birthday Honours list in 2006 and in the same year, put a life time of work together in the beautiful publication Chasing the Southern Light.

He was instrumental in helping to establish the New Zealand Centre of Photography (NZCP) in Wellington which was officially opened in 1985 by the then Prime Minister David Lange. Despite his successes as a photographer, Matheson considers this to be his most significant achievement.

Matheson’s images have found their way into various New Zealand books, a stock library and galleries. Up until 1972, the artist printed his own work; black and whites and then he began making colour prints using the Cibachrome process.  Since 1998 he stopped shooting film and instead went digital.  Although he owns a tripod and flash he prefers to work handheld using available light. All his images are shot in RAW mode and converted in PhotoShop before being printed using fine-art papers and Ultra-Chrome inks.

Matheson still actively looks for and shoots new ideas on a regular basis. McKenzie Country, deep in the heart of the South Island is his favourite location of choice.  Gallery De Novo has numerous works by Matheson available, both framed and unframed.