Sandra was one of the first people Tony Carter photographed in Ohura. He took this image was within half an hour of meeting her.

Peter lives in a woodshed 30km outside of Ohura and sleeps on a bed of hay bales. He's wearing the clothes of his son who died three years ago in a car accident.

As a kindness, you could say Ohura is off the beaten track. Put more bluntly, it's in the middle of nowhere.

A town once known for its coal mining, Ohura can be found about 40km off State Highway 4, heading towards Taumarunui in the heart of the King Country. Its inhabitants number 150, down from around 650 during its mining heyday. But the last mine closed in the 1970s and Ohura now is marked by empty streets and shops, with just a few people choosing to make the town their home.

Taranaki photographer Tony Carter stumbled upon the township one foggy morning, and something about the near-abandoned village in the valley of the Waitewhena Stream made him want to know more. Who were the people who choose to make Ohura their home? To live such solitary lives, away from the trappings of the modern world?

ALL PHOTOS: TONY CARTER Norm moved his family to Ohura from Auckland recently. This image won Gold in the NZIPP Iris Professional Photography Awards.

Over the next year, Carter visited the town more than 30 times. He gained the trust of the residents, many of whom had been shunned by society or chosen to turn their backs on it altogether, enough to take their photographs. He documented their lives in a series of portraits which are illuminating in their depiction of lives lived out of the spotlight, and often with little in the way of material comforts; a slice of rural New Zealand.

How did you get the idea for Another World: Portraits from Ohura?

I quite often get up early and go for a drive, especially in the morning where there's a lot of mist around. One of my favourite locations has been the Uruti Valley, just north of New Plymouth. There's something moody about the valley early in the morning, it's quite a mysterious landscape. One morning I kept driving and ended up in Ohura. I knew it was there but I had just sort of blasted through.

When I got into Ohura I thought it was quite an interesting place with all the shops shut down, it kind of looked like an American ghost town in a way. The first place where I saw a sign of life was an old garage, I thought it was open but it wasn't really, it was sort of a second-hand shop. The owners told me about an older lady called Hazel, who was in her 80s and still rode around on her pushbike looking after her livestock. They told me where she lived, and I went and photographed her.

Hazel is also a justice of the peace, she does weddings, she goes to the local church. She's quite inspirational as a person, but you just go to her house and it's so run down. She has lived in Ohura her whole life, just living a simple life.

Hazel, the local justice of the peace,has lived in Ohura all her life. Now in her 80s, she rides a bike around in order to tend to her livestock.

I could see there was a bit of a story there and I liked the energy of the people, I couldn't really say what I was doing there but I felt like I should keep doing it. That week I went back three times.

What was it about the people that captured your attention?

I've had a rural upbringing so I understand rural people to a certain degree, their blatant honesty and just pretending not to be anyone else. The more I dug, the more I realised a lot of those people were not born and bred there. They had ended up in Ohura because of maybe not belonging anywhere else. A lot of them had moved there for cheap housing and wanting to have their own place where they wouldn't be judged by other people.

How did you gain their trust?

It was quite hard. A lot of them thought I was an undercover cop. I had people look through my car to check I wasn't hiding anything and I was who I said I was. A couple of them had internet access so they were able to check. Every time I photographed someone, the next time I went up I would take them a photo so they could see what I was doing.

I said I wasn't doing this to make any money, that I would either like to make a book one day or an exhibition. Some people it took a long time to break down the barriers, whereas others weren't bothered. I think a lot of people would have thought, with my energy, that I was doing it in a positive way.

How did you choose who to photograph?

Some of them would say to me "Oh, you're the guy photographing the crazies in the village' and I'd say 'I'd love to photograph you at your place' and they'd say 'Oh I'm from Auckland, I'm just hiding here.' I went to the pub but found it was the wrong environment to meet people, I felt like I was sort of preying on them.

Every time I went there I would go to a particular couple in the village who would tell me who was new, and who not to approach.

Frank retired in Ohura after working as a taxi driver in Hamilton, lives with his brother Jim, a possum hunter.

Were there any hairy moments?

I did have a few scary times up there, one person sort of left me in the lounge and walked off and shut a few doors, shut me in a room and just left me there.

I felt frightened the first few times doing it, but I soon realised these people are nice people and you can't judge a book by it's cover. A lot of these people have had really tough lives. I was going into people's houses and they were quite often very dark places, they were quite intimidating. Because I'm a portrait photographer a lot of my job is about getting on with people and making them feel comfortable. One guy say to me when I first got there "what's to stop me from knocking you over the head and taking your camera?" It's always a risk when you're doing something like that, especially when you're in an isolated place with no cellphone coverage. Sometimes I would park my car and then hide my keys in another place, so I'd always know when it was.

One guy lived south of Ohura in a hayshed with no windows for three years, and he was literally living on hay bales. When I approached him he had a pit bull on a chain and just getting near him was quite scary, this dog lunging at you. Being invited into his shed was like – you never really knew what you were getting yourself into. You're in their domain really, and you sort of had to be really careful.

Another guy lives up on a hill just north of Ohura, in this portacom thing with no power. I went there three times, and every time I went there his house was unlocked but he wouldn't be there. The first time a goose walked out of his house. The last time I went there he was leaning over the porch having a smoke, and I got out of the car to introduce myself and he just looked at me and said "F**k off," and I thought "OK," so I did. But then some of the locals told me he was a real animal lover so I went up there again, got out of the car and started talking really fast about animals and he was fine. I took the curator from Puke Ariki up there later and he followed us up in his car and got out with a dog and rifle, and she was packing it.

What I enjoyed the most was meeting them and just finding a bit out about who they were and their stories. I never really knew what was true or not and what was a yarn, and I didn't really care. There were a few people there who I went to see a few times and they came to the exhibition and I got to trust them, I wouldn't say we were friends but we had a mutual trust.

What did you keep in mind when you were taking the photographs?

It was important to me to show these people not in a bad light, I wanted to show that they had pride and dignity and I wanted to show them as being happy people. There were a lot of situations I could have photographed people in that would have shown them in a bad light, but that's not what I wanted to do.

I explained to them when other people look at these photographs they might think you are poor, but that's not how I look at things. I basically told them a lot of people where I lived would look down on them because they don't have material things, but what I learnt from going there is that you don't necessarily need those things to have a good life.

What do you think Portraits from Ohura achieved?

I just wanted to show people a part of New Zealand that they didn't get to see, really. I didn't really care what photographers thought, I just wanted to show the general public. To a lot of New Zealanders it would be quite an eye-opener, but I'm not a campaigner with a camera or anything like that. I'm not trying to shed light on things for a particular reason, I just wanted to keep it open-ended. A lot of people said 'Oh you photographed people not in their best clothes so it's not fair' but it's like if you came to the opening, that's what they were wearing. They don't care.

To my delight a lot of them came to the opening, and to see them see themselves in those prints was quite heart-warming. They were quite proud

What did you learn from doing this project?

What I really got from it is what is happening to small towns in New Zealand as a whole really, how they are slowly closing down. Ohura is an ex-mining town that used to have hundreds of people living there, now you can't even get a building permit because of the flooding risk and they're even thinking about shutting the water down. It's a story about small-town New Zealand, and the kind of people who can't afford to live in the city.

A lot of people who I showed the photos to said 'Oh my god I didn't even know we had people in New Zealand who lived like that.'

Which image came the easiest?

I backed away from taking lots of images, like I would with digital, and went back to my film photography training and shot what I saw. One that I got the fastest and has proven to be the most popular was the one of Ross, with the lightbulb above him and the textured beard against the cobwebs. He was probably one of my favourite characters and summed up a lot about Ohura, and was kept me going back.

Retired 'horticulturalist' Ross.

He used to grow a lot of weed and went to jail a few times and is now retired and lives in a house truck. He actually lived in the shed I photographed him in for a long time, so I like how it just shows his personality and how he lives all in one picture, having that eco bulb there to save power. His bright eyes still shine through with his grey hair, his Tui shirt and his keys hanging from his neck.

Sandra was another great character. She had actually been on 60 Minutes before, on a story called Mummy's Boy. She's a very open person. Her son was a meth addict and he had ADHD and they made them look terrible on the programme. I found her to be very open and very engaging.

You have won the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography photographer of the year award five times, and make your living shooting portraits and weddings. Why do this series?

I remember years ago going to Paul McNamara, who runs a gallery in Whanganui, and showing him all my award-winning work. He looked at it and said 'That's great and it's beautiful', but he sort of said to me that some people will work their whole lifetime to have one exhibition that shows who they really are. He wasn't really interested in my work and it took me a while to figure out what he meant.

Ohura was something quite different. One of my inspirations is a NZ photographer called Robin Morrison http://www.robinmorrison.co.nz/) who was a photojournalist but photographed all around the country. His work from the roadside, and photographing real people was exactly what this project was all about.

Tell us a bit about your own background

I went to primary school in Opunake and high school in Stratford but then I ended up in New Plymouth. I have a background in sales and did the typical two years overseas living in England, and while I was there I did a night course in photography. When I came back to NZ I was lucky enough to get a job working for [Taranaki photogapher] Margaret Bake.

I have always had a passion for photographing people, and even when I do landscapes or whatever I always tend to have a human element in it, I think it's important to say something about who we are as a people. That's what I'm drawn to really. I love Taranaki and I love the mountain and dealing with people who are down to earth, it's just what I do. I love the way we've got wide open spaces, the mountain one way and the sea the other. It used to be a bit of a cultural backwater, and I didn't mind that.