Author: Peter Peryer

This author has written 801 articles

Eels

 
All of my life I have been scared of eels.
Don’t know why, I can handle spiders and cockroaches,
but eels and snakes give me the shivers.
 
It may have something to do with the way that
they can come out of the water onto land.
 
The blackness of them is a factor as well.
And the silver bellies. And the pink gums with their
little stubby sandpaper teeth. And they can live in mud.
 
Today however, I went with a friend and a quantity
of dog food, and watched while he fed his friends,
these muscular animals.
He stroked them and looked into their eyes.

Looming Mythic Mountain

 
 
This was the view of Mt Taranaki from my sitting room
a couple of evenings ago.
 
Coincidentally, if there is such a thing,
I have been reading Bright Star, a biography
of Beatrice Hill Tinsley written by
Christine Cole Catley. It is breathtakingly
good .
 
Christine Cole Catley who went to New Plymouth Girls High
as did Tinsley, later wrote the centennial history of that school.
In her biography of Beatrice Hill Tinsley she describes Mt Taranaki as that ‘looming mythic mountain.’
 
Beatrice Hill Tinsley was well on her way
to becoming one of the great astronomers
of our age, until melanoma cut her down at the early age of 40.
 
 
 

Rock, Back Beach

 
 
 
A photo from Back Beach,
one of my favourite haunts
on the coast here.
Luckily it is only a few
minutes drive from where
I am sitting.
 
In this photo I recognise
one of my favourite themes:
just how big is the object that I am
looking at.
 
I don’t do this deliberately,
I just can’t help it.
 
Unfortunately in this case
the barnacles undermine the illusion.

Eyes

 
Some rocks in New Plymouth
that have been painted.

Gourds

 
A couple of days ago I bought 3 large gourds.
They were for sale at a market.
I instantly thought of them as a possible
photo subject and have been experimenting
for a couple of days.
I now think that there is not going to
a ‘keeper’ there but it is a worthwhile
exercise to give it a try, if for no
other reason than to discover why the
photos don’t work.
I tried in colour and black and white
but still to no avail.
I did however remember how I had
taken a photo of a cone shell
several years ago. It is called
After Rembrandt because I
based it on a Rembrandt etching.
When I look at this photo, alongside
the gourd ones, I see that it is really
the speckles, the pattern
that I am interested in.

et al

 
 
A couple of days ago I went to see
Michael Lett’s new gallery space in Auckland.
Even though I knew that the opening
show was an exhibition of the famous
NZ art collective known as et al,
the one that exhibited at the Venice Biennale,
and I thought that I had a pretty good
idea of what to expect, this time I was
well and truly fooled.
 
I arrived by car, parked in the generous
parking spaces off Beaconsfield Street but was confused.
This can’t be the right space I thought,
this is an empty space still under construction.
 
Screwed up newsprint, rusting metal
structures lying around, a roller door
semiclosed, this can’t be it I thought.
 
It was only when a courier arrived and I asked
if they knew where Michael Lett’s was that I
realised that my mind had been well and truly
stretched beyond its current limitations.
 
This was the show, but it was spilling out of
the spaces inside into the carpark.
 
What a rewarding experience.
Art that expands my thinking is the
kind of art that I like.
 
 

Ponsonby

 
 
At the Karangahape end of Ponsonby
Road there are three or four of these
John Radford sculptures. “They have
been there for several years.
 
Now however, suddenly, they have
gained a new significance.

Christchurch

 
 
It’s been a struggle over the last few
days, finding something to write
a post about.
 
It seems that perhaps the events
in Christchurch are
preoccupying me.
 
Last Tuesday at 12.51 p.m.
I was nowhere near a television
that was on, or a radio that was playing
or near another human being who could tell
me the news.
I may have been the
last person in New Zealand
to know about the tragedy unfolding.
 

Templates

 
In a previous post I mentioned how art auctions
often bring out little known works of mine.
This photo of a lizard, which I think is a
Monitor, is an example.
It has appeared in the latest Webb’s
catalogue.
The image is probably about 30 years old
and I doubt if there are more than
one or two prints in existence.
However the reason that I have
included it in this post is
that recently I took a photo
of a sea lion and when I look
at the two photos together
they are almost totally congruent.
It is almost as if I have templates
somewhere in my brain
and that it is subjects
that fit these templates
that I am looking for.
 
 

An Early Work

 
 
One benefit of my work showing up in auctions
as it often does is that I sometimes see images that
are quite rare, and not often seen.
 
In the latest Webbs catalogue I
have seven prints for sale.
I have no idea where they
have been all these years.
 
Amongst the seven there is this portrait
which is one of my favourites out of all the
photographs that I have ever taken.
 
I don’t know how many prints of this
image are in existence but it is probably
only 3 or 4.
 
I’m not sure of the exact date that I took
this photo but it was probably about
1980.
 
In 1981 Sheridan Keith wrote an essay on my work, entitled Frontierland,
which was published in London Magazine,
illustrated below. It is a powerful piece of writing.
 

Erika Parkinson, to whom I was married at the time,
said to me one day that she had met a woman with
a very interesting face and perhaps
she would be a good subject for a portrait.
Upon meeting her I agreed, and Donna Yuzwalk very kindly
volunteered to sit for me, although sit seems a
rather strange word to use in this case.
So here Donna is, standing in front of a river
in Kaukapakapa. Why a river? Well, for some
reason I was going through a phase where
I was hoping to take photos to illustrate
some of the poems that I had learnt by
heart as a schoolboy. In this case you are
looking at The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Newer Posts
Older Posts