At present it is Te Papa’s 10th birthday. While leaving Wellington
on a ferry a few days ago I saw this view of it. I realised that
I hadn’t seen any photos of it from the sea for a long time, maybe 10
years. Now I see why. (click on the image to see a larger view)
While I have heard the front view described as that of a ‘Russian polytech’ this view
reminded of my backyard. Sydney Opera House it is not.
Last Sunday I left New Plymouth heading for the ferry to cross Cook Strait.
Ten minutes south I stopped at
a technology museum to photographAnother 20 or so minutes south, at Stratford I had to stop again to photograph the fire engine, sitting on top of a toy museum. I did u turns for both of them. Still, I thought that I was on a roll. It seemed a good sign.
I saw two more photos between New Plymouth and Wellington but both times the traffic was fierce and I was on the wrong side of the road. I didn’t turn around on those occasions because I was concerned about getting to the ferry on time. Still I’ve made a mental note of their whereabouts.
Today I drove from Greymouth to Alexandra in Central Otago. Including a couple of
stops for fuel and food, plus 3 times when I took my camera out, it took me 9 hours.
The last time that I went over the Haast Pass, as I did today, was about 20 years ago. I also took a photograph of this scene on that occasion but I was using a square format Rolleiflex that did not have a telephoto lens. I prefer the version that I took today.
If I was to print this up for my wall I would increase the contrast slightly.
Until March 2nd I have an exhibition of 31 photos that I took during
the 4 months that I was the William Hodges Fellow in Invercargill.
None of the photos have yet been printed up in editions and made available for sale.
However, Whitebait, the one above will be printed soon. Any enquiries about it
can be directed to Paul McNamara. It will be a silver gelatin print, about 300 mm square, in an edition of 15 one of which has been sold. (9/02/08)
I have been asked how took this photo. I went whitebaiting and these unfortunate creatures were emptied into a plastic bucket. The bottom of the bucket formed the circle in the photo. The light on the bottom right was a result of the sun striking the outside of the bucket at that point.
On the Road Again
At last I am nearly ready to take to the road. On Sunday I leave New Plymouth and on Monday I will be on the ferry crossing Cook Strait. I even got a discount because I am now a pensioner!
From now on I hope to be making postings more regularly. This 2 months back in New Plymouth has been a strange time. I have been very distracted and have barely picked up a camera. It is in such contrast to the previous 4 months when I was was in Invercargill and which turned out to be one of the most fruitful photographic periods of my life.
I ask myself what happened when I returned because it is important that I understand. Firstly I arrived back with a bad flu which seemed to carry on right into December, through all this I struggled to get together 31 prints that I needed for a show at the Southland Museum & Art Gallery, opening right at the beginning of January. This was not my choice of a date but I decided to go with it because it wanted to get that project behind me. These 31 were photos that I took while artist in residence there. I desperately wanted to go into the New Year without too much drag from unfinished projects.
I was also very busy with getting together my choice of 80 photos to use as the core of a book to be published in September. Orchestrating these was a big task but a very important one. No sooner was I getting on top of that than I developed a bad case of blood poisoning. I am still on antibiotics and they make me feel a bit strange in the head.
Another major task over this month has been making the switch from PC to Mac. In September I bought my first Mac, a 13 inch screened Macbook. Three weeks ago I bought a 24 inch iMac as well. I want to become a power user. In the past I have been operating my PC in rather a basic way and it has been costing me a lot of time not to say psychic wear and tear.
Every day I have been spending time learning how to operate a Mac. They are very different machines. There are marvelous online tutorials, some of them in video form.
I have an iPod as well and am now learning how to operate that in a way that gives me maximum benefit eg by downloading books for me to listen to when I am travelling which I’m mostly doing on my own.
So there we have it. Flu, show, book, Mac, blood poisoning. That will be some explanation as to why I’ve not been photographing or blogging. I’ve been rather weary as well, still had no holiday for a very long time.
There may be other reasons however. Invercargill is as far away from the art scene in New Zealand as is possible to get unless I travelled another 20 minutes and moved to Bluff. I think that this helped my work to be on the fringe. In many ways the art world is a distraction for me, certainly on many occasions an aggravation. It doesn’t seem to a source of nourishment alas. I hope that this may change.
Alexandre Hogue 1898-1994
There is quite a bit of publicity about Rita Angus at present because this year, being the centenary of her birth, Te Papa are publishing a biography and staging a large exhibition with a substantial catalogue.
Once I owned a Rita Angus landscape painting, although it was one which it seemed she had gone back to at some later stage and made some alterations, to the detriment of the work. There was definitely an area along the bottom that looked different.
Subsequently, I sold the painting to help subsidise my own work. I don’t know where it is now.
It was a surprise to me many years later when, at the National Museum of American Art, in Washington DC, I walked into a room and there were walls covered with paintings that bore a close resemblance to hers. They had been painted by Alexandre Hogue, at the time, still alive and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I had not realised until that moment just how much her approach was part of an international style. It was an education for me.
The course did however give me an appreciation of just what it takes to approach a boulder and try to make something of it so I’ve been to visit the symposium two or three times.
One of my favourite pieces is a kiwi, done by a Belgian, Pierre Closset. Apparently he has never seen a kiwi, and judging by the work he hasn’t even looked too closely at a photo of one either, yet there is a freshness and comicality to his sculpture.
Here is a link to the symosium’s website. Do visit it, it is very well constructed, with lots of
information.
First of all Happy New Year to all my visitors. I’ve been off-line for quite a while I know, very sorry about that. Special thanks to those who sent me messages enquiring as to my whereabouts and wellbeing!
For several years, deep under a very old crown on a bottom tooth, I had an abcess. My excellent dentist had been monitoring it and a couple of years ago put in a drain right down through the crown, through the root canal into the infection. (Those of you who don’t enjoy the thought of a long slow root canal had better skip the rest of this post) While having a check up between Christmas and New Year, the temporary filling was taken out from the drain, because from the outside it seemed that the abcess was no longer there and perhaps it was time to put in a permanent filling.
Unfortunately a tiny trace of infection was found to be still in place, so I had to go on another round of antibiotics to see if it could be wiped out once and for all. Within hours of being home I could feel some pain and swelling. Foolishly, instead of ringing my dentist I left it for a few days believing that the antibiotics must work. Also it was holidays and the surgery was closed. That was my mistake because it let the bacteria spread beyond the lower jaw and throughout my body. I began to have hot and cold fevers and then as it advanced I got the shakes. I had developed a fullblown case of blood poisoning. Now, after much medical treatment I am beginning to feel better. Part of the treatment involved removing the tooth and making an incision in the side of my jaw. And more antiobiotics of course.
I was very sad about losing to tooth. I was attached to it, physically and emotionally. I even cried. It had served me well.
I was, however, very glad to live in an age of modern medicine. In earlier times
I may well have died, blood poisoning was often fatal. My maternal grandmother died of it.
On the other hand, days and days of high fever was quite interesting. It’s an altered state of consciousness. I was reminded of hearing novelist Elizabeth Knox describe how The Vintners Luck came to her during a high fever, seemingly out of nowhere.
