Kate van der Drift is a contemporary photographer working and living in Aotearoa. She has a particular interest in recording and highlighting the relationship between humankind and our natural habitat through ecological studies of the land using analogue film processes.

In 2022, van der Drift completed her Masters at Elam School of Fine Art.

Her recent artworks were made as part of her masters project ‘Listening to a Wet Land’ exploring the ecological complexities of the waters situated in the Hauraki Plains, south of the Coromandel. The project has culminated in a series of large-scale prints made from camera-less ‘river exposures’ and an essay film.

Each artwork title features the co-ordinates where the large format film was placed in the river to expose over a period of time. Van der Drift was an exhibited finalist and the Highly Commended Award Winner in the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award – (2024). She was also the winner of the Uxbridge Malcolm Smith Gallery Art and Ecology Award (2020) and the Stoneleigh New Zealand Artist Grant (2018).

Courtesy of Sanderson Contemporary