Author: Peter Peryer

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The Dunedin Chinese Garden

Recently after 8 years in the planning, this large garden with accompanying buildings opened in Dunedin. It has been built as a tribute to the contribution that Chinese people have made to the history and prosperity of Dunedin and Otago.

The Garden was prefabricated and assembled in Shanghai on a site identical in size and shape to the one in Dunedin. It was then dismantled and transported to Dunedin where it was reconstructed. Workers came from China to complete this task.


The Aesthetics of Dispersal

In the Otago Museum on Friday I was intrigued by this display showing the difference in the design of traditional ocean going craft of the Pacific.

Yet somehow this photo is not about these waka at all, but about the spaces between them. The canoes are merely the excuse.

Discovery World

On Friday I visited the Otago Museum. I went mainly to see the new tropical butterfly house, however as often happens if one is prepared to focus softly and pay attention to what is happening on the fringes there were other rewards.

Here is one example. I visited what is I think primarily an area for children, it is called Discovery World.

This assemblage is a sort of game in which white billiard sized balls roll down and around various complicated channels some even ending up in the mouth of a snake, like the one visible in the middle of this image . It’s a bit like one of those devices where you put a coin in a slot and it rolls around and around and around a mini-mountain and ends up where I can’t quite visualise.

If there is any connection between what is happening in my brain and the images that I make then I am more than a little worried!

What Are Your Coordinates?

On Monday, on National Radio, there was a review of my book Peter Peryer, Photographer.
It was broadcast at 10.40 in the morning.

It took me some courage to listen to it there and then. I found myself procrastinating, and saying to myself that I would listen to it via the internet at some later date. This probably meant never.

Icicles
For several mornings recently the temperature was below zero. Freezing temperatures can devastate new buds on the fruit trees in local orchards, so water is sprayed over the trees. The ice that forms encases the new growth. Strangely, this prevents the buds by being damaged. It has something to do with The Laws of Thermodynamics.

Architecture

Yesterday afternoon this group came to visit Henderson House in Alexandra, where I am living until next Feb. Here they are being photographed by an accompanying lecturer.

Half way through this residency already. Eek. Haven’t had a keeper for some time. Oh well, other things have happened, material for new photographs I hope. Good theory anyway and I probably want to believe. But I digress. All but two in this photo are staff and students from Unitech in Auckland, on an architectural field trip. The extra two are a German couple now living here. A doctor and a pianist.

Their responses to the house and garden, especially when expressed in Architectural English, a vernacular I most particularly like, added to my enjoyment of this building and I thank them for that. There was no guided tour, it was more wander wherever you fancy, sit wherever you desire, linger wherever you wish. I even tidied up my bedroom. No more feral socks, for a while anyway, in spite of my best efforts, they have a talent for reinfesting I know. DDT next.

The basement of this house, behind the group in this photograph, was the source of the schist from which the walls of this house were constructed.

It was food for me to have conversations with visitors of such quality. And field trips as an educational tool I believe in so we got off on the right foot from the start. Any of them would be most welcome to visit me again.


Alexandra Airport

I often have visitors here but last Sunday was a first. An Auckland friend not only landed at Alexandra Airport, but he was, with the aid of an instructor, flying this Piper Comanche.

I like the control tower.


This aircraft belongs to the North Shore Aero Club.


Almonds Over Alexandra

This morning, a Saturday, I made a big effort to take a photograph.

Here is one from my balcony although I admit that I softened the effect of the Alexandra houses in the foreground.

The tree on the left is an almond. The last time I saw one of these was 10 years ago on Ibiza.

Stewart Island, The Last Perhaps.

For a couple of weeks I’ve been trawling through my Stewart Island photos, the result of 4 nights there. None I believe so far that are going to be part of my oeuvre, however I must study them and try to understand why, at a particular point, I decided to press the shutter. I might have just been reminded of something that I had made earlier. It’s called raking the ashes.

The top photo I took returning to Invercargill. I was sitting in the back row of a twin engined, fixed undercarriage, Britten-Norman Islander. This particular aircraft was built on the Isle-of-Wight. The two women in the row in front of me are DoC workers.

The early morning photo below was taken from the balcony of the accommodation I had on Stewart Island. There were Kaka, a forest parrot, and cousins of the alpine Kea, on the balcony waiting to be fed. I fed them dried dates although I heard that they like peanuts too. I probably should have been feeding them forest berries.

Stewart Island Still

In Oban also known as Half Moon Bay, there is a weather station. I’ve often been attracted to these structures at other similar weather stations but this is the first time that I have attempted a photograph. It doesn’t make it yet. It may need to be black and white.

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