When photography can’t express the things you need it to, I turn to music.

I have been a musician for as long as I have been interested in photography — and that started when I was around ten years old. My mother gave me a Kodak Retina camera (without any film) and my father gave my brother Paul and me guitars. I still have mine, though I regrettably left my brother's guitar at a bus stop after school one day. Paul went on, sans guitar to start New Zealand 80’s band Pop Mechanix and after a very brief stint as a guitarist with the first version of Jordan Luck’s soon to be Dance Exponents I followed my heart and travelled to the UK to study photography.

I played in bands professionally when I was younger, and then purely for pleasure during most of my adult life. Music is the other half of my creative life, and I love it.

Afterlife by Agneu is a project I started in August 2025. It is not the end of something — like photography — but the beginning of something new. The music draws on years of observational and lived experience: photographs I've taken, stories I've been told, and things I remember or have experienced. The musical soundscape emerged during the recording process and is, I think — though I don't fully understand why — a response to what I imagined when I wrote the lyrics.

Agneu is a homophone of my mother's family name, Agnew. The songs were composed and performed by me in my garden studio in Ponsonby. The vintage butterfly is from my partner Tam West's personal collection, and a different butterfly will accompany each song out into the world. They were photographed in the garden studio during the recording process.

Backing vocals were provided by Lucy MacIntosh and Willa Cameron.

Percussion and drums were performed by Steve Melville

Mixed and engineered by Steve Melville at Burning Boat in Perrysburg, Ohio.

Mastered at Studio 301, Sydney.

A vinyl pre order will be available in August

Limited edition of 100 Afterlife photographic songbooks available in October 2026.

Large scale limited edition prints from the album available in October 2026.

First single out 20th July 2026