Mark Adams has always been a self-conscious artist as he recognises the mistakes that have occurred over the millennium and photographs them. He is aware of the global archive of anthropological photography and its problematic nature, as well as art history, and the connections between modernism and anthropology through the history of mankind. He uses a conventional realism to investigate aspects of New Zealand and Pacific post-colonial history as a form of critique. He likes the notion of ‘art being that of a witness’. His carefully composed photographs, of great formal elegance, are arresting as they encompass the paradoxes and complexities of the cross-cultural relationships of the histories they record. Mark Adams photographs of Samoan tatau, Maori-Pakeha interactions around Rotorua, historic sites around the South Island and his investigations into New Zealand's post-colonial history have been extensively exhibited within New Zealand, as well as in Europe, Australia, South Africa and Brazil