Simon Devitt

He has both a strong sense of home and a wanderlust which goes right back to when he was born in a sandstorm beside a sleeping camel in 1973. Working in many different settings across cultures around the world has had a great impact on his professional practice, which has been greatly enriched by his experience of each particular context: Shanghai and its people, the fruitful silence of a Japanese bamboo forest, the light in Los Angeles, so different to the harsh, more direct light in New Zealand.

He is the author of the award-winning photo-book Rannoch and the All Things Considered series. Photo books bring together Devitt’s passion for image, place and language, which started in 2013 with the launch of Portrait of a House, his first self-published photo-book on the Athfield residence in Wellington. Since then, he has started publishing the Ripe Fruit series.

Devitt’s images feature in many books and collaborations including Long Live the Modern (2009), Group Architects: Towards a New Zealand Architecture (2010), Athfield Architects (2012) and Summer Houses (2011), as well as in numerous national and international magazines such as Elle Decor (Italy, UK, Japan and South Africa), ArchitecturalDigest (Germany), Dwell (USA), Habitus, InDesign (Australia), Architecture NZ, Home New Zealand, Urbis, Interior (NZ).

He lectures in Photography of Architecture at the University of Auckland, where he also has offered the annual Simon Devitt Prize for Photography since 2008.