WHAT WAS, WHAT IS
AND WHAT WAS POSSIBLE
WORDS & IMAGES Doc Ross
Doc Ross’ work has been widely collected publicly and privately, and exhibited around the world, including an exhibition and auction of Contemporary Australian and New Zealand Photography at Sotheby’s in New York.
With my photographs of Christchurch post-earthquakes, my agenda is not to create or capture memories. Instead I prefer to look for symbols that reflect the current and ever-evolving state of the city and its people. They tend to reflect that these are dark times for many, in what is now a somewhat divided city, a darkness that is also the seed of hope and even wealth for others. This is a time of extreme unfairness for some and a time of unequalled opportunity for others. I want my photographs to be a constant reminder of this place we have to endure now in a hope that they will be both a documentation of what was, and that they will remind or inform how we felt in that time.
When contemplating the question “how do we create a contemporary sense of place in Christchurch" I feel in many ways that is to a great degree out of our hands, for our place in this time has been dictated by past disaster, and (some would say) potentially by future disasters of the city planning variety. The loss of the traditional control we have over how a city evolves caused by the CCDU-controlled blueprint for the city makes the micro elements more important than they may have been prior to the quakes. It will be around the fringes where we can make a difference. The government gives us what they believe is what we want and need in a city, but we may well have to apply the frills to the sandpaper underpants they give us for a city.
Architects, designers, planners and Governments should all take the time to consider and respect each others views and remember that they are not re-building a place for themselves, but for those very others with whom they may well disagree! The danger for them is that photographs will forever record their successes and failures, and show us what was, what is, and what was possible.
OF MEMORIES AND VILLAGES
WORDS & IMAGES Tony Bridge
What we call landscape is a stretch of earth
overlaid with memory, expectation, and thought. Land is everything that is
actually there,
independent of us; landscape is what we allow in
through the doors of perception.
~Scott R Sanders. Hunting for Hope: a Father's Journeys.
It takes some time travelling on the photography
road before we can begin to realise that o the real reward which has been
driving us all along has been a conversation we needed to have with ourselves.
Throughout our journey we have, in fact, been writing postcards to our self. On
the uphill battle through the woods and mountain meadows, we all need to stop
from time to time and catch our breath. It is in those moments of perceived
failure, of self-doubt and self-questioning that we will find why we really set
off and, if we are sufficiently self-aware, we will find the courage to go on.
We will understand.
Each year for the last seven years I have voyaged
south, back to the Maniototo in Central Otago to teach a series of photographic
workshops. Each year I have driven back to the area where I was born, and each
year the same thing has happened, the same feeling has risen within me, the
same thought has floated to the surface. I am going home. This is my place on
the planet, this is my source, and this is where, over half a century ago, my
river emerged from the earth on its journey to the sea.
I drive into the valley, usually from the
east, following the Pig Route up from the coast. Each turn and twist in the
road is an old friend welcoming me home, asking what I have been up to in the
preceding year. I usually stop somewhere near Kyeburn, get out and take stock.
I smell the sweet aroma of silage blown down the wind; I listen to the silence,
the area’s greatest gift, and I watch the light slowly turning on the southern
face of the Hawkdun Range. If I have arrived near sunset I will often turn and
watch the day throw in its hand, observing the pink flush slow spreading onto
the faces of the Kakanui Mountains. Something settles within me. I am home.
I
pass through Ranfurly, looking to see if anything has changed. I circle past
the Centennial Milkbar, where I lived alone as artist in residence across the
summer of 2006-7. Again the memories
return, informing my observation. Utterly alone, knowing nobody, I would often
climb out through my bedroom window onto the iron roof, taking a bottle of
Jameson and a glass, and I would sit, high above the street, sipping quietly as
I watched the sun set, and learned to read the moods of the wind. I would watch
the double-cabs below me, lining up nose-to-tail outside Forry’s Bar, and eavesdrop
on the snatches of farmertalk blown my way like rural post-its. I slow for a
moment and then I drive away, making my way to Wedderburn and the tavern where
I will live for the next fortnight. The same people are in the bar, propping up
the same places, and the conversations are the same as they were a year before,
as if the pub has been on pause for 12 months. I know their names, they know
mine. We greet, chat, and catch up in 25 words or less. Some have had good
years, others have struggled. Dairying has come to the valley and while many of
the farmers are spiritually opposed to it, there is a touch of envy in their
voices that signals they would get into it if only they could get enough water.
Then I retire for the night to my cottage across the road. Before I turn in, I
often stand, allowing the profound silence to seep in and wash away the
busyness of the previous year.
I am home.
If there is
time I will take a trip out to Naseby and walk in the forest where I was
raised. I will drive out towards the new sawmill on Fennessy Road, now disused
and silent, and look from a respectful distance at the mud brick house where I
was raised. Then I will remember my childhood winters in this house; of my
mother concerned that if she did not get the washing in by midday it would stay
frozen on the line till the following morning; of a fire that burned
continuously for months, and running around in gumboots in the snow. I will
walk in the Black Forest, which my father managed, and listen to the wind
tousling the treetops and, if I am sufficiently attentive, I will hear more stories
from my past.
Each
year I return to the Maniototo, believing it has said all it has to offer, and
each year it proves me wrong. Each year the photographer is roused to view the
land through a subtly different lens. Each year, when I sit down to review what
I have shot, I realise the same leitmotifs have risen in my work, the same
locations have appeared; Little Mt. Ida, photographed from all angles and in
all light, my maunga, the axle around which my visioning here revolves; the
Coalpit Dam, dark, mysterious and silent under its heavy cloak of ice, the
province of my internal landscape. And each year I will return to the same spot
on Home Hills Run Road, to watch the day begin and review what the year has had
to report.
Then, after I have spent two intense and
draining weeks teaching, the Maniototo will send me on my way, shooing me out
of the basin and sending me north. This is not your home, it will remind me,
but you are welcome to come back. Next year. See you then.
I will make
the long drive back to North Canterbury and my home in Hanmer Springs. As I
cross the Hurunui River and settle onto the undeviating straight to Culverden,
usually late in the afternoon, I will look and observe how the winter snow on
Mt. Lyford is glowing, soft and golden in the early evening light and the same
settling feeling will envelope me. Perhaps this time I really am home.
As I
drive into the valley across the Ferry Bridge and make the final push towards
the village, I am again looking at the land, looking for change and not-change,
making comparisons. Sometimes, when I
get home, I will pour myself a glass of Ballantines and go out on the balcony,
to watch the day fade on the Amuri Range and listen to the snippets of sound
blown up from the village below.
I
will walk in the Heritage Forest, a sister to the Black Forest at Naseby, both
built in the early 1900’s to trial different exotic tree species. And I will
remember my father’s efforts to introduce the recreation tracks; I will
remember standing there at the official opening, as the Rt. Hon Duncan
MacIntyre pronounced it open. We children were more interested in the sausage
rolls and the morning tea. It
has taken me while, but I am beginning to understand.
I am a
mountain person and I am a village person. Ranfurly and Hanmer Springs are
small rural villages of roughly 900-1000 people. Each is about 120km from its
nearest city. Each has the mountains and exotic forest of my childhood and each
has the silence and sanctuary necessary for a contemplative. Each wears its
party frock in autumn and winter. And each comes with a sense of community, whether
it is the obligatory finger-lifted-from-the-steering-wheel wave as we pass in
opposite directions, or a smile and an exchange of history. I haven’t seen you
for a while. Have you been away? There is comfort and belonging in that.
However a landscape photographer needs time
to be with the land, to sit and contemplate and listen, Sitting in the lee of
the hill, in the soft red weave of the tussocks on Little Mt. Ida at sunset, as
the nor’wester runs out of energy and gives up for the day, I will stare out
across the Maniototo towards the Rock and Pillar Range, and observe the
farmhouses and patchwork of agriculture and get a sense of scale both physical
and temporal. From here it is possible to unpick the narrative of human industry
in the district, to read history in the land and elevate observation to
comprehension, in so doing, moving from land to landscape.
All landscape
photographers have places to which they gravitate, where time, place, moment
and memory conspire and coincide. In autumn, when the mists skirl and swirl and
haunt the fields and foothills of the Amuri Plain, I will take my thermos and
camera and climb up the track beyond the cellphone towers on Mouse Point. I
will park my truck on the small knob and wait for the sun to rise out beyond
the Lowry Peaks. I will watch the day growing in strength and colour, and
observe the transmission towers marching through the mist. I will study the
fields, noting the colours, textures and patterns of agricultural
industriousness and reflect upon the relationships, for all landscape
photography is about relationships. I will weave my memories into my images and
weave my images into my memories, seeking to find the space between, where the
human and the geographical collude, where the external overlays the internal,
for in the end all photography of this type is about the exploration and
expression of metaphors and memories. In moving from land to landscape we move
from statement to expression.
Some
years ago I went to visit an elderly friend who was living in a rest home, in
one of those tiny units with just enough space to hold a few memories.
Concerned that she felt bored and ignored, I asked her if she was happy
spending so much time on her own. She pulled out a collection of postcards and
family photographs from former times and showed them to me.
O, I
am not alone, dear, she replied.. I am never alone. People don’t come to see me
very much, but that is OK. You see, I always have my memories to keep me
company.
Click here to follow us on Facebook
