Tim J. Veling
Pūharakekenui Styx
In recent work along the Pūharakekenui | Styx River, Tim has used large-scale colour photography and techniques such as tri-colour separation to explore light, weather, and water. These images highlight the river as a living system, and as a place where urban development, memory, and ecology meet.
View the magnificent collection of Tim’s photos of the Puharakekenui Styx on his website https://timjveling.com/pūharakekenui-styx
Artist Profile
Practice: Photographer, documentary/fine art
Location: Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand
Tim J. Veling is a photographer whose work sits between documentary and fine art, with a long-term focus on the psychological, social, and political landscapes of the places he calls home. Based in Ōtautahi Christchurch, he is known for slow, sustained projects that return to the same suburbs, streets, and families over many years, building layered portraits of people and place.
His photographs are often quiet and carefully composed: empty lots, shifting river edges, traces of demolition, and the small details of everyday life. Seen together, they form complex narratives about belonging, memory, and change.
Practice & Themes
At the heart of Tim’s practice is an interest in how history, policy, trauma, and ordinary routines shape the look and feel of a place.
Recurring themes include:
Home and belonging: Exploring what it means to live in a city marked by upheaval and ongoing transformation.
Psychological landscapes: Using streets, houses, riverbanks, and vacant land as reflections of emotional and social states.
Post-quake Christchurch: Tracing the impact of the 2010–11 earthquakes and the subsequent red-zoning and reconfiguration of neighbourhoods.
Family, grief, and care: Weaving together personal stories with the wider story of the city.
Tim’s images rarely rely on spectacle. Instead, they invite slow looking: noticing a gap where a house once stood, a garden surviving amid rubble, or the way light falls on a familiar corner. This subtle approach gives the work its emotional weight.
Selected Projects & Series
Place in Time: The Christchurch Documentary Project
Tim is director and primary administrator of Place in Time, a long-running project and archive dedicated to documenting Christchurch and its people. Working with students and collaborators, he helps build a collective visual record of the city’s changing face—its architecture, communities, and everyday life.
Red Bus Diary
Originally developed as his MFA project, Red Bus Diary follows life on Christchurch’s bus system. The series looks at routine journeys as spaces where chance encounters, private thoughts, and public infrastructure intersect, revealing a quieter portrait of the city in motion.
Support Structures / Vestiges / Rewilding
Across several connected bodies of work, Tim has photographed the residential red zones and post-quake suburbs of Christchurch. These projects show:
Demolished homes and empty sections
Earthquake-damaged streets slowly being reclaimed by grasses, trees, and wildlife
New uses for old spaces, as people adapt and the land changes
The images capture both loss and regeneration, documenting how the city’s edges are being reshaped over time.
Family-focused projects
Series such as These Are The Days, D,P,O (Dad, Pete, Opa) and ENTOURAGE weave together family life, illness, and grief with the changing city environment. They show that the story of Christchurch is also the story of individual households, relationships, and daily routines lived amid wider upheaval.
Background & Teaching
Tim was born in 1980 and completed a Master of Fine Arts with distinction at the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts. He now teaches there as a senior lecturer in photography, supporting new generations of image-makers to develop their craft and ideas.
His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is held in public and private collections, including the Christchurch Art Gallery and the University of Canterbury. Alongside exhibitions and books, he regularly contributes to conversations about documentary practice, urban change, and the role of photography in recording lived experience.
Ongoing Focus
Across his projects as photographer, educator, and archivist, several threads run consistently through Tim’s practice:
Attention to everyday life: Finding meaning in ordinary streets, bus rides, backyards, and riverbanks.
Long-term commitment: Returning to places over many years to record gradual, cumulative change.
Care for people and place: Treating subjects—whether family members or strangers—with empathy and respect.
Living archive: Building bodies of work that will serve as a visual record for future generations.
Tim’s photographs offer a thoughtful, grounded way of seeing Christchurch: not simply as a city that has endured disaster, but as a place where people keep living, remembering, rebuilding, and reimagining what home can be.
Sources
Tim J. Veling – official website: https://timjveling.com/
“About” – artist bio on Tim J. Veling’s website: https://www.timjveling.com/about
PG Gallery 192 – artist profile: https://www.pggallery192.co.nz/profile/tim-j-veling/
Place in Time: The Christchurch Documentary Project – main site: https://placeintime.org/
Place in Time – project profiles (e.g. Support Structures, D,P,O): https://placeintime.org/projects/support-structures/profile/tim-j-veling and https://placeintime.org/projects/dpo/profile/tim-j-veling
CoCA Toi Moroki – Tim Veling: Vestiges: https://coca.org.nz/exhibitions/tim-veling-vestiges/
World Press Photo – artist bio: https://www.worldpressphoto.org/tim-veling
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū – event page / artist talk: https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/events/tim-veling
XYZ Books / Artbooks – Dad, Pete, Opa project: https://www.artbooks.xyz/residencies/timveling
Rim Books – ENTOURAGE: aka Physical Distance Theory…: https://www.rimbooks.com/wordpress/entourage
