Kauri (native coniferous tree, Agathis australis) ngahere (forests) in Waitākere face ongoing accumulated violence through land alienation, forest clearance, kauri dieback disease (Phytophthora agathidicida), and atmospheric contamination. These contexts, along with Aotearoa settler colonial history, mean kauri are both denied the status of personhood and at risk of extinction. As such, this practice-led research develops a photographic-kinship methodology with kauri persons—conscious forest beings—within Te Kawerau ā Maki rohe (territory), Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, kauri ngahere, Aerochrome film, and tauiwi tangata Tiriti (non-Māori people of te Tiriti o Waitangi) learn together how harm may be held tenderly: acknowledging violence without spectacle, witnessing loss without collapse, allowing recognition of each other through shared vulnerability. Kauri, Aerochrome, and photographer engage as conscious collaborators in a framework that holds paradox without resolution, recognising unique relational capacities.

These capacities emerge through five interconnected dimensions—material-consciousness that recognises agency in all-beings, inclusive of film and forest; embodied-consent that reads permission through somatic response; spectral-kinship that holds histories alongside present care; photographic-communion that dissolves subject/object boundaries; and wounded-witnessing that sees through rather than beyond wounding. Working with Aerochrome—Kodak’s photochemical military surveillance infrared film originally developed for the American War on Vietnam (1955–75)— the photographic works explore how this film may be reoriented from extraction towards care through sustained embodied practice. The resulting photographs suggest that Aerochrome exercises editorial choice, selecting when to offer vivid revelation or retreat into restraint. The work focuses on how wounding may generate capacity for kinship, as contaminated collaborators recognise each other through shared chemical memory.

The photographic works dwell within complexity rather than seeking its resolution, asking what it means to love kauri who are being lost to dieback. This dwelling requires an attention that demands neither looking away nor hardening against pain. This attention seeks to hold harm tenderly, which involves carrying disenfranchised grief for kauri kin, violated sovereignty, and contaminated ground, while simultaneously holding joy, hope, and wonder at their persistence. Through my photographic practice, what emerges is not a prescriptive framework but a lived negotiation where accountability operates as ongoing commitment rather than achieved transformation. Using photography to attend to loss without looking away creates forms of witnessing that are unavailable through detachment or closure, suggesting possibilities for relationships with kauri persons grounded in tenderness and reciprocal care.