Like one of her own images, the reputation of photographic artist and researcher Dr Mizuho Nishioka’s work is set to expand —on an international scale—in 2026.
Known for research-driven work that engages with seascapes, landscapes, and climactic conditions, the senior lecturer in photography at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington is balancing back-to-back busy years with further exhibitions and projects in development across Europe and Asia.
She is currently presenting two projects in the 2025 edition of The Wrong Biennale, one of the world’s largest decentralised digital art biennales, which continues until the end of March.
Mizuho holds the distinction of being the first woman in Aotearoa New Zealand to earn a PhD in Fine Arts Photography—a milestone reflecting her commitment to expanding the conceptual and technical possibilities of contemporary photographic practice, including how images are produced and altered through environmental and computer processes.
“I became particularly interested in the relationship between photographic memory and the apparatus and instruments of photography itself,” Mizuho says.
This has led to Mizuho establishing a strong presence in the past 12 months at major international art expos including Venice, Ars Electronica, Noorderlicht, and other leading venues for contemporary photographic and digital art practice.
Later this year Mizuho will visit London for two exhibitions featuring her work. During this visit, she is attending a formal ceremony marking the acquisition of some of her images into a collection to be housed within the Immersive Media Port—an EU-funded research and exhibition initiative supporting innovative intersections of science, technology, and the arts.
Last year, she was selected for the Noorderlicht Biennale—one of Europe’s leading platforms for contemporary photography and lens-based media—where her work contributed to an exhibition theme examining the entanglement of technology, environment, and visual systems.
Her work featured as part of separate arts collective exhibits at the Noorderlicht Biennale:
Artificial Lines of Flight, led by a Turkish curator Isil Ezgi Celik, explores computational image systems, abstraction, and movement across digital and physical environments.
The Scale of Blue, curated by a Taiwanese curator Ping Ho based in the United States, brings together international artists responding to scale, atmosphere, and environmental perception through digital and lens-based practices.
“Photography is famously understood as a medium that ‘stops’ time, but I began to question why this was necessary—especially when one of the most compelling qualities of the natural environment is that it is constantly in flux.”
In recent years she has also exhibited widely across Aotearoa and internationally, with highlights including Cadastre II and Movement_17; Tasman Sea at Personal Structures, Palazzo Mora, Venice (2022 and 2024), presented as official collateral events of the Venice Biennale. Her collaborative project Tide Sketch was shown at Welcome to Planet B, Ars Electronica, Linz (2021–2022), and Propagations featured at the Fiebre Photobook Festival, CentroCentro, Madrid.
“Photography remains one of the most compelling image-making practices because of its capacity to generate a record, or a series of marks, that align closely with a seen reality,” Mizuho says.
“At the same time, photography is no longer bound to a single device, moment, or viewpoint. “
It was during her university years in Tokyo that she first visited New Zealand, repeatedly drawn back by the contrast with Japan’s capital— “the openness of the landscape, the space to think and work, and a feeling that the environment was not something distant, but something you live alongside.”
Based in Paekākāriki, north of Wellington, Mizuho continues to develop new work that expands the spatial, atmospheric, and conceptual possibilities of image-making in an era shaped by environmental change and technological transformation.
“Conceptually and technically, it is expanding into systems, processes, and durations—becoming less about the instant and more about how images are formed through time, technology, and environmental conditions,” she says.