Piecing back together the picture portraits of Ans Westra

When a black-and-white photo of a man and a woman sitting on a patterned sofa outside an old weatherboard house appeared on a billboard in central Wellington recently, Arthur Uruamo's phone lit up.

- Eva Corlett

"A lot of people have rung me about that photo," Uruamo told the Guardian.

"People recognised me and said, 'Hey Arthur, I'm sure that's you in that photo,' and I said, 'It is me!""

Taken in 1972, the photo shows Uruamo, then 20, and his cousin attending the annual 25 January celebrations at Rātana Pā - a Māori church and movement in the lower North Island. Uruamo recalls the photo being taken but did not realise the woman holding the camera was one of New Zealand's best-known social documentary photographers, Ans Westra.

Westra died last year, aged 86, leaving behind more than 300,000 images of New Zealand life over many decades.

The image of Uruamo as a young man on the billboard was put up as part of a campaign by Westra's family and Suite Gallery in Wellington to identify thousands of people the photographer captured over her lifetime. While Uruamo had always known about the photo, after seeing it on the billboard he contacted the gallery, which was finally able to identify him.