Crown Knot.Six or seven years ago I seemed to become especially interested in photographing knots. Not only when I was a boy, but later, when working on trucks, I learnt to admire and respect these intriguing yet supremely functional creations. In my teens I worked on the Auckland wharves as a ‘seagull’ the name then used for casual wharf labour. There is no casual wharf labour now. This was before containers, heavy, awkward, sacks of cement were unloaded by passing from one man to the next. It was physical, well paid, and because of the repetitive lifting, as a bonus, very bodybuilding. There was also a cachet to the occupation, it was an age of Kerouac & Camus. And it gave you time to read. Others were doing it as well. Although It was low fees at university and a time when it was relatively easy to try out papers. In trying-out-ed-ness, I did my best. I regret none, not Annie Shepherd’s lectures on Old English or the microscope study and appendant drawings that I enjoyed, every week, in Botany& Zoology. The microscope was an excellent introduction to the camera. When I look back on my life I feel very fortunate to have met good teachers, teachers who were bigger than their subjects. Not often, but often enough to make a big difference. Paul Ohms did that for me, in Biology, at Takapuna Grammar.
I was a lab boy then. Setting out, in our break time but paid all the same, the experiments for the next class eg
the dissection of the reproductive system of the earthworm.
Sculpture-Hamish McKay Gallery.
