Breakfast - Roger Donaldson on Photography

That's how it all started out really, it was my passion for photography in a way that I think it was one of the reasons that I really stayed in New Zealand ... I was going to be a geologist, when I came here to New Zealand it was a way to escape Australia and escape the sort of pressure from my family to you know 'get a real job' and I came here and became a photographer...

– Director Roger Donaldson on his early days as a photographer in New Zealand

The stills were always a real passion, but I just wanted to go further, I guess.

– Roger Donaldson on moving on from still photography

As the plane took off for LA I sat back in my seat with a drink in my hand and watched a replay of the six o'clock news. The first story up, accompanied by graphic news footage, was about a storage facility burning to the ground — the very same storage facility where I had, just that day, stored all the treasures and memento of my life. Among the stored items that went up in smoke were the years of negatives and prints that I had made since starting out taking photos in my teens. As I sat there it was hard to comprehend what a loss this was.

– Excerpt from Roger Donaldson's foreword to his 2008 photography book All Dogs Shot

Roger is a storyteller. He cannot help himself. Sometimes he seems impatient with this and tries to force his images into the formats of a classic photographic past. I suppose there is a sort of story in that, too. Photography is an art he clearly loves, with a tradition he clearly respects, but his vocation as a teller of tales has too firm a grip on his imagination. That, I think, is his demon and his strength.

– Friend and art critic Hamish Keith in his foreword to Roger Donaldson's photography book All Dogs Shot