Marti Friedlander Photographic Award winning photographer and graphic designer Neil Pardington, of Wellington, and Laureate award winning photographer Fiona Pardington, of Auckland, gave slideshow presentations of highlights of their work in Dorothy Brown's Cinema.
Mr Pardington talked about going back to the roots of photography when he moved to Wanganui, "a city in decline", in 1986.
His interpretations of cities including New York and Berlin at the turn of the century followed on screen, including images of airports as "points of transition and where people made irrevocable choices in their lives".
His series of medical-themed photographs featured specimens, an operating theatre, cadavers in body bags awaiting medical students and a bare postmortem room, an image collected by British artist Damien Hirst, Mr Pardington said.
Photographs of the exotic contents of the vaults of Te Papa, the Museum of Wellington City and Sea and the New Zealand Film Archive completed his presentation.
Ms Pardington talked about the development of concepts and referred to the "gold mine" of Maori taonga in museums around the world.
She delved into her fascination of photographing the life and death casts of indigenous people made during one of Jules Dumont d'Urville's 19th century South Pacific voyages on the way to New Zealand.
The practice of face casts became eclipsed by photography, she said.
Ms Pardington said she had been taking photographs for 30 years.
Their exhibition was opened after the talks and continues in the Nadene Milne Gallery.
