Local Photographer Brings New Zealand Home to Dearborn

A passion for photography has taken Teresa Lousias across the world, with her artist’s vision growing nearly as expansive.

The Dearborn native’s work–images produced as far away as New Zealand and as close to home as –is currently on display until April 29 in the ’s exhibit, “Inter-Continental Pairing." A special reception and presentation is scheduled for Sunday, April 10, from 1-5 p.m.

“I like to tell a story," the 68-year-old photographer said. "I like to share my vision."

Her visions, matted in white board and hanging free of frames and glass, stretch the circumference of the marbled rotunda on the library’s ground floor. The photographs invite viewers in, offering vibrant landscapes of green fields stretching into the rise of snow-capped mountain peaks of New Zealand’s southern island, or a happy accident discovered in a roll of time-warped film from a trip to San Antonio.

There are images from nearby, such as a study in reflections shot at a Holiday Inn Express in Grand Rapids, and a celebration of the Ford connection with Dearborn in a triptych of the Henry Ford Estate and images of the Model T.

Her trip to New Zealand lasted 29 days during this past October and November, and much of the exhibit is of photographs from her time there. On display are photographs from various regions throughout New Zealand’s two islands, from the alps of the southern island to the coastal beaches along the Tasman Sea.

“This is a sampling of my work,” she said. “It’s four concepts: It’s things we wait for, seeing outside the box, my love of nature and Henry Ford.”

In some ways, the exhibit itself is a quirk of fate. While traveling through Europe with a friend six years ago, she met a couple from New Zealand and they became fast friends. After meeting again in Chicago two years ago, they asked when she was going to come to their homeland.

“Jokingly," Lousias recalls, "I said, ‘When you get me a show at your hometown to exhibit.’”

Three months later, she received an email inviting her to display her work at Square Edge Gallery in Palmerston North, a populous city in the northern island of New Zealand, not far from the country's capital city Wellington. 

It’s a badge of honor for the photographer, who has been honing her craft for 25 years. 

Widowed at 42 after her husband lost an eight-year battle with multiple sclerosis, she began taking photography lessons while working full-time as a supervisor in accounts payable at Michigan National Bank.

“I think it was always there, kind of in the genes or something,” she said, noting that her father was a photographer for the National Guard and her brother did aerial reconnaissance photography during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “I wanted to change my lifestyle, so I thought photography would interest me.”

The interest took her through the College for Creative Studies, as well as a pilot program for the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite, where she was one of only 12 photographers chosen to participate.

She left the banking industry after 27 years to pursue her art, taking a part-time job at Adray’s. As her work evolved, so did her involvement with the arts. Now a member of the Artists Society of Dearborn and part of the Dearborn Community Arts Council’s advisory board, she also teaches photography courses, including the Zen of Photography workshop.

“Now I can say I’m an international photographer,” she said.

Quick with a smile, Lousias has a sense of humor and energy that spills over into her work. One image of forks, titled "Somewhere in Tine," is as much a study in still life as it is a play on words.  Her photos on “Waiting” were born of frustration while standing in a long grocery store checkout line, yet capture an emotional resonance of energy through props rather than people.

“I thought, this is ridiculous, waiting in line. So all of a sudden, I’m thinking what can I do with this thing, and I thought of 'things that we wait for.' I had three bags of shoes in my trunk for a month.”

One image shows a score of shoes ascending the steps of a slide’s ladder. Tightly composed, the image has a sense of a child’s urgency and excitement, relying solely on a viewer’s cognitive associations to fill in the blanks.

Another image of walnut shells defies expectations. What appear to be halved shells frozen in ice is actually a simple play of light, glass and perspective.

She credits much of her work with the ability to see outside the box. One series of photographs she produced, but which are not currently on exhibit, revolved around the journey of a hair and was inspired by her father’s violin bow.

“I wanted to show how a bow is strung, and I started with Stallion horses because it’s their tail that’s used. Then I found a man that actually strings the bows and I went to his workshop and photographed him. It was how a horsehair from the tail of a horse–it has to be a Stallion because that’s the strongest hair, and how it evolved to play the most beautiful music in the world.”

For Lousias, photography is about seeing those things most people overlook or too easily dismiss, if they even notice it at all.

“Things like that excite me,” she explained. “Art is everywhere. I want people to see that. It’s there.”