In this issue

1. My image of the week

2. Frontispiece

3. Your Image (and just being with Life)

4. Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

5. End Papers

My image of the week

Frontispiece

Pukka Sahibs and the Great Photo Hunt

I have been thinking.

For some time, I have been thinking about the language we use to describe photography and the act of photography.

Bear (carry, not the animal) with me.

We go on a photoshoot; we capture our pictures; we take a good shot (or not!). We even use the phrase “trophy image” to describe a winning shot. And we have prizes for our chance encounter with the infinite.

Do you see where I am coming from?

What are we saying?

Is this something buried deep in our brain, a cortical relic of days when we wore furs, huddled around the fire, and survival meant bringing home a woolly mammoth for dinner?

I was reflecting on the hunter-gatherer nature of the language we use to describe the second-most-popular pastime in the world ( you can probably guess the first!), and s silly scenario came to mind.

There we are out on the veldt, followed by a faithful (only while they are being paid) band of helpers. We are dressed in the finest linen safari gear with a pith helmet and a noble moustache. Our trusty camera bearer hands us our lizardskin-covered DSLR with its Brobdingnagian ( sorry, I have been itching to ease that word in somewhere) 1200/2.8 lens, and we shoot the rhino in the distance.

Then we retire to our pukka glamping tents to drink Gin And Tonics served on an ornate silver platter.

All colonial silliness aside, what does that say about us and about the way we approach something that should be an act of love, gratitude and devotion?

Perhaps we need to change the language around the act of photography.

Perhaps we should look for a new lexicon.

But what?

In photography’s infancy, to make a photograph of something/someone was described as “ making a likeness of X”.

Not bad. Perhaps we should begin there.

For now, I am going with “origination” since, with the power of post-processing available to us, pressing the shutter is just that-an an origination. Then the work begins.

Perhaps Ansel Adams put it perfectly when he said:

“The Negative is the score. The Print is the performance.”

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

On the power of the Simple- the youngest sibling

Of all the photographic genres, Documentary and Street photography (Street is a subset of Documentary) must be the youngest.

The honour for Senior Statesman of Photography probably goes to Landscape Photography.

New technologies often emerge in response to a perceived need, and photography's history is no different. Photography first came into being in the early 1830s. It was a response to a requirement to more accurately document the world the European explorers were finding, recording, and, in some cases, stealing (a cynic might well say that the whole idea of a museum is a place to put stolen stuff. For future generations perhaps, but…).

When Captain James Cook made his great voyages around the globe, the only method he had of recording the new plants he discovered was through diligently crafted drawings. Sir Joseph Banks, who did the heavy lifting artistically, was a very gifted scientist and draughtsman.

However, the vast wealth of what they were discovering, along with new lands, meant that something better had to be found to more accurately document the world.

Lo and behold, photography appeared as an answer to the problem. Explorers like Timothy O'Sullivan took to this technology with enthusiasm and used it as part of their expeditions to newly found global areas.

However, while documenting the landscape was photography's reason for coming into being, portrait photography provided the economic engine that drove the medium's development. For the first time in human history, the commoner could have an accurate likeness made of himself and his family. As a result, family portraiture became incredibly popular, and many photography studios made a lot of money.

The popularity of portrait photography provided livelihoods and drove technological development in the medium. After all, there was money to be made right along the chain.

However, street and documentary photography took a lot longer to become recognised as a genre in its own right. It's probably not until the end of the nineteenth century that it began to find its voice and be recognised as a particular niche within the archaeology of the medium.

You see, it works this way. Landscape photography answers the questions where and when. Portrait photography answers the questions of who and when (sometimes where), and in a way, the two are distinctly different.

Documentary photography, the youngest of the siblings, answers all of these questions; who/what, where and when. Sometimes why.

Street photography, which many people confuse with documentary photography, is a little niche all of its own, tucked in under the armpit of Documentary. Its moko. And it isn't easy, especially if you are shy and get nervous talking to people. So, when it is done well, it has the power to speak to all of us.

Because it is all about life, it's about telling us who we are.

Many years ago, I went to a retrospective exhibition at the Canterbury Museum of the great New Zealand documentary photographer Robin Morrison, of whom I am a huge fan. Sadly, Robin had recently succumbed to cancer, so it was an opportunity to see his entire body of work.

I was standing in front of one of the glorious images of Northland he had made just before his death on his last trip with New Zealand photographer Laurence Aberhart.

Standing beside me was a woman roughly the same age as myself. We were both looking at a particular picture when my curiosity got the better of me. I turned her and said,

"if you don't mind me asking, what do you like about this work?"

Without taking her eyes from the work on display, she said slowly,

"you know I don't know anything about photography, but I love this work.

I love it because he shows us as we are."

And that is the essence of Documentary and/or Street photography in a nutshell.

It's about life. The celebration of life. The wonder of this transient room through which we pass for a brief time.

So what does this have to do with the header image?

I have a private student whom I am currently mentoring. It's a great honour, and I love sharing my knowledge. We get together on Teams each week and go over her explorations from the week before.

I do this using LightRoom, making slight editing changes or showing her how to get the most out of the file. We've only been doing it a few weeks, but she is already making tremendous progress.

As part of the selection process, I use the colour coding system built into Lightroom, a modern digital variation of Magnum photographers' contact sheets and a chinagraph pencil. Thus six or a red band indicates something worth giving more significant consideration. The colours progress up to purple as the highest level. Karen has been hanging out for a purple.

I reserve that for pictures that are so good, they get stuck in my visual Rolodex. Visual earworms, but in a good way.

I hadn't anticipated her getting a purple.

Until this week when she produced this image.

It's a straight image, not complex or manipulated in post-production. It probably won't solve world hunger or do much for climate change. Yet, sometimes the best images are the simplest ones because they have honesty and authenticity, and there is clearly a lovely rapport between subject and photographer.

They are just joyous!

It is one of those simple pictures, almost too simple, yet it is a straightforward message about the joy of being alive and amongst people.

At the moment, we need all the positivity we can get, and simple images not weighed down by artifice or self-importance can have a remarkable effect on making the rest of us feel better about our lives, ourselves and maybe others.

The thing I find so wondrous is that Karen claims to be terrified of interacting with people in the street, that it takes enormous courage for her to walk up to people and talk to them.

And yet, as I went over her expanding contact sheet, it was clear that she has a natural gift for photographing life; hence, I wanted to share this image with you.

And draw your attention to the header quote by master Magnum photographer Alex Webb.

Maybe he meant this:

“Live because you love doing it, because you absolutely have to do it, because the chief reward is going to be the process of doing it. Other rewards - recognition, financial remuneration - come to so few and are so fleeting...Take Life on as a passion, not a career.”

Do Life for the joy of it.

Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

On Writerly Jealousy — www.theparisreview.org

Recently, while reading a new book of poetry, I noticed a certain signature of influence: a poem with a macabre playfulness that reminded me of “Daddy.” Plath-y!, I wrote in the margin beside it.

Ansel Adams — www.phillips.com

Horst P. Horst The Brave One from No. Superhero

for those of you with deep pockets

The Journey of Three Brothers- a retrospective

How do you share three bodies of work, all separate and yet interlinked, when you have only ten minutes to speak?

Answer: you make an audiovisual video.

This video describes the relationship between three Maaori atua (gods) and the koru (spiral) of their interdependence.

Taawhirimaatea- the god of

She Took Photos Of New York Culture For Decades. Now She’s Getting Her Due. — www.buzzfeednews.com

Ming Smith is an artist, photographer, and model who has been working since the 1970s. Born in Detroit to artistic parents, she began modeling at a young age and first came to New York on a go-see, where she met members of the acclaimed Kamoinge Workshop.

What to cook this weekend: Ways to spruce up a roast chicken — www.stuff.co.nz

There’s nothing quite like a roast chook – it’s a crowd-pleaser, and done on the weekend offers versatile leftover options. But there's much more you can do than just throw it in the oven and hope for the best.

Giuliana Furci

Let’s picture a dinner with family or friends that began by enjoying beer, wine, fruit juice or maybe a fizzy kombucha beverage. You’re contemplating a glorious basket of bread, rapt in awe of its perfect crumb and fantasizing about the moment you slather it in butter or olive oil.

End Papers

My YouTube channel

Over the last few years, I have largely ignored my YouTube channel. However, I do have one.

You can find it here.

This week I was invited to share my work with members of the Auckland Photographic Society. No problem. However, I had to do it in 5-10 minutes!

How on earth could I do that?

I am a professionally-trained mouth with thirty years' experience of boring the heck out of unsuspecting teenagers!

Would you mind cutting me some slack? I need at least an hour!

I pondered (cue: the sound of rusty gears grinding) and then. The answer came.

Make an audio-visual, output it as an .mp4 video, and let the work do the talking.

Apparently, it went down well.

So I have uploaded it to my YT channel for everybody to see.

I would love you to pop across and have a look.

And, of course, the like and subscribe thing.

I M waiting for one core component of my YT studio to arrive this week, and then I intend to focus on making regular videos.

YT will begin paying me when I have > 1000 subscribers..lmao.

Finally

Here is a beautiful quote from Mahondas Gandhi

IMHO in my humble opinion), there is much truth in that.

We only have today and for some, not even all of that.

Let us be grateful for the wonder of waking and the joy of closing off at the end of a day.

And for each other.

Now I am off to plant and weed my maara (garden).

He mihi nunui arohaa ki a koutou

Much love to you all, wherever you are on our beautiful blue spaceship.

XXXX