For the Love of the Country

This gorgeous collection of photographs, accompanied by extended captions and insightful interviews, is a visual celebration of the New Zealand farmer and the landscape in which they live and work.

It tells the stories of the people who are the backbone of farming in Aotearoa New Zealand — people who love this land and love what they do with it. Alan Gibson, a much-awarded photojournalist, was raised on a remote hill country farm. Ever since picking up his first camera as a child, he has wanted to record the people he grew up around and the world they inhabit. He knew the subject of this book intimately; he just had to find the right people to tell the New Zealand farming story.

Through Alan’s lens we enter the world of dairy farmers, sheep farmers, deer farmers, horticulturists, aquaculturists, beekeepers and viticulturists, among others. From the air, in close-up or in panorama, the photographs focus on the landscapes and people that provide New Zealand’s superior primary produce, from oysters, mussels, kiwifruit and venison to beef, lamb, eggs and seasonal fruit and vegetables. 

Author Biography

For more than 25 years Alan Gibson has drawn on his passion for storytelling working as a photojournalist both in NZ and the UK. Alan spent most of that time with The New Zealand Herald covering the central North Island, allowing him to record life in the landscapes and communities he loved.