In this issue

1. My Artwork of the Week

2. Frontispiece

3. Defining Yourself-writing an artist statement

4. Photographer's corner- some notes on white balance.

5. Waiata mou te ata-Slowmoment Sunsetsong

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

7. Endpapers

My Artwork of the Week

On my second trip to South Africa in 2009, I was invited to a braai (the South African equivalent of a barbecue). My hosts were planning a road trip the following week and had invited me to come with them.

"What would you like to see?" They asked me.

I thought about it for a moment, and then the answer came.

"You know, when I was at university, studying American history and literature, I read about the settler migration across the Great Plains in the 1800s. After weeks of travelling in the wagons across a featureless wilderness, the wide open spaces drove some of them mad. I've never experienced that because, in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the landscape changes every five minutes. It is said that when God was experimenting with different landscapes, he tried all he could think of in my country. Then, satisfied, he went out and did it on a far bigger scale in other parts of the planet."

"You know," I continued, "I would love to go somewhere with a 360° horizon, where I can turn a full circle and see nothing but the horizon. I want to experience that."

It was in Namibia where the vastness of Africa came home to me. One day, on the road to Mariental, I suddenly asked to pull over. I got out of the car, walked into the middle of the road, and did a full circle, following the horizon. There was nothing to be seen in any direction but an unbroken line, marking the transition between land and sky. In a way, I felt relieved. The vastness of the place in the absence of any features left me feeling expanded rather than diminished.

Some days later, we took a bush plane late one afternoon and flew West across the Namib Desert to the Atlantic Ocean. The desert, 120 km wide by 600 km long, is a series of giant dunes marching east.

We flew out across them to the ocean, where they abruptly dropped into the sea, and then we retraced our path back east. As we floated across the sky, the frozen ocean of petrified dunes stretched away north and south as far as the eye could see.

There is no water in the desert; however, the plants have evolved their leaf systems to take advantage of the condensation from the fog which rolls in from the Atlantic.

Morbidly thinking about what would happen if the plane crashed, I began understanding why people are forbidden to go out into the desert.

And I remembered the line from Dante's Inferno:

Frontispiece

Atamaarie e te whaanau:

good morning everybody.

I am unsure whether to call this week's newsletter the Africa edition or the Back to the Future edition. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, I commented that I had another computer filled with hard drives (twelve in all!). It has been sitting in my garage for the last four years, unable to be accessed because of a blown motherboard. It contains my digital archive, all my pictures dating back sixteen years to 2006 when I first began using a digital camera.

Last week, thanks to a gift from a wonderful Engel (angel), a large box arrived on my front doorstep, containing a fully working 16 TB NAS (network attached storage), meaning I can now offload all those files and back them up. I have spent much of the last week taking out each drive, copying all the files to the NAS, and then cataloguing them using Lightroom. So far, I have managed to offload four of the drives.

I can now access files I haven't seen in sixteen years. But, of course, they have always been there. However, because I have constantly been moving from place to place and moving on artistically, I haven't looked back over my shoulder at these postcards from the past. Until now. It feels like going through a collection of photo albums and tracing old memories. The difference is that these are not faded pictures in cheap PVC albums falling apart at the seams. Instead, the files are as perfect as the day I made them and loaded them onto Lightroom 0.6. And, because my technical mastery has improved in that time, along with having tools I could only dream about, I can now visit them in a new way.

I think I will call this week's newsletter the Africa Edition simply because I am currently pouring through my four visits there.

And because I left a part of my soul with Mother Africa.

Defining Yourself-writing an artist statement

I'm currently very busy working on redesigning my website (more about that in a few weeks when it is done). I have twice tried to define my purpose as an artist; however, these things need to be revisited from time to time.

Writing your artist statement can be very defining because you locate your work in time, space, and purpose. But, unfortunately, artist statements are often mocked (and justifiably so) because many are (deliberately) obtuse and don't say anything of value other than show that the artist needs a lot of words to give gravitas to work of limited significance and importance.

My latest artist statement (V3.0) wrote itself over a week, and I would love to share it with you.

Have you written yours?

It can be a defining experience.

Following the Song of Mother Earth

The wonderful Jesuit priest, the late John O'Donohue, writes, in his remarkable book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace:

When it is time, each of us must pass, must move on. Our mind will return to Ranginui, our Sky Father, our body will return to Papatuuaanuku, our Earth Mother, from whence it came, and wairua (our soul) will journey onwards. What are we then to do with the time between arrival and departure? What is our purpose? And how will we express that purpose?

Forty years ago, I walked out onto the lawn under a full moon and sang a song to my future. I wanted to be a great photographer, to make beautiful pictures that resonated in people's hearts. And the journey began, a winding twisting trail through dark forests, primal chasms, alongside flowing streams and onto the dizzy, razor ridge heights of switchback mountains. For four decades, I have made pictures of that journey, for what does an artist do when he applies his craft but faces himself in the mirror of his soul?

A true artist does not term himself that and yet measures his value, his worth, through the approval of others.

A true artist is in service to something intrinsic, something internal, to an Awareness which is transcendent.

An artist, a true artist, an artist who is true, is aligned with the flow of the Great River. He Is continually in service using his skills and the technique he has finely honed on the whetstone of Life. An artist is merely a paintbrush in the hand of IO, the Being beyond Being.

We have more than one pair of eyes with which to see.

I choose to visit with my heart's eyes, spirit, and wairua. In allowing that, I can approach Te Taiao, the natural world, and see through the eyes and hearts of all the living creatures who inhabit our glorious blue planet, the animals, plants and minerals. I choose to approach the lifeforms visible and invisible, to live in the meeting place where all these worlds overlap, intersect and interact.

My work, visual and written, is about making the likeness of the wonder of our natural world in words and pictures and drawing people's attention to it. Perhaps, as we realise the glory of what is before us, we will decide to honour it and be the kaitiaki (caretakers) our species was always meant to be.

The time for talking and taking has passed.

It is now time to give back, honour and return.

·        Kotahitanga.          Unity

·        Whanaungatanga.   Family

·        Manaakitanga.       Cherishing and Caring

·        Kaitiakitanga.        Guardianship

These are the four pou (pillars) of our responsibility to Papatuuaanuku and our calling as artists.

My work also sits under the watchful gaze of four atua (gods)

·        Taawhirimaatea, the God of the winds and all the creatures that live within his round, visible and invisible.

·        Taane Mahuta, the God of all the living things that dwell upon the earth, including plants and animals.

·        Hine Moana, the daughter of Tangaroa, the atua responsible for the rivers and inland waters and all the creatures living within them.

·        Papatuuaanuku, Mother Earth, and the earth itself, including the minerals and rocks.

My visual art seeks to honour the unique haa (breath) of each of them, while my words seek to weave all of them together.

Tony Bridge

July 2022

Photographer's corner- some notes on white balance.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received on my way up the tree of photography was from a retired professional who helped me to climb yet another branch.

Looking at my pictures, he remarked:

We must learn to see light as it is, not as we have been conditioned to see it. Over a lifetime, our mind becomes programmed to see what it believes it should see rather than what is. So, before we can learn, we must first unlearn.

Colour temperature is one aspect of coming to understand the light with which we work. We all know that light changes temperature (colour) throughout the day. For example, we know that sunset tends to yield warmer colours, and perhaps that is why sunsets appear so romantic. However, the colour of the light changes not just according to the time of day but also the time of year. Instinctively we know that summerlight has a much greater blue component, while Winter light has much more yellow.

So, to see light as it is, you can use a simple technique to help you learn/unlearn and reprogram your mind.

Change the white balance setting on your camera to daylight. Better still, set the colour balance manually to 5600 ° Kelvin and lock it there.

Now make all your pictures using this setting. You may well find yourself surprised by what your camera shows you. Of course, assuming you are shooting RAW files (you are, aren't you?), you can always change things later. For example, you will find that shadows often turn blue, that faces photographed beneath trees are green, and interior lighting is not what you think it was.

In time you will learn to see light as it is, and then you will be able to make better decisions. To help you, I suggest you record a small JPEG alongside your raw file so that you can use it as a basis for comparison.

If you want to mess with your mind and work in an environment lit by warm white fluorescent tubes, try photographing a sheet of white photocopier paper with your camera or phone set to 5500° Kelvin. You may/will be surprised at the result.

You can find out more here.

Waiata mou te ata-Slowmoment Sunsetsong

Slowmoment sunsetsong

Stroking the quivering airstring of the end of day,

I stopped and pinioned my wings

along a long meandering moment,

drew in a short featherfrond of breath

and allowed myself to dream

into a place beyond.

And, as I shimmershivered

softhandswoven

into the unbound bounded edge

of fabric without form or function or limits

on the not-edge of a korowai without knots,

your eveningface rose from the soft slowsilver silence

at the edge of the world

and goldglow-dyed my hovering heart.

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

Henri Rousseau’s Heartening Story of Success after a Lifetime of Rejection, Illustrated — www.themarginalian.org

“People working in the arts engage in street combat with The Fraud Police on a daily basis,” Amanda Palmer wrote in her fantastic manifesto for the creative life, one of the best books of the year, “because much of our work is new and not readily or conventionally categorized.

NASA Reveals Its 2022 Photographers of the Year — mymodernmet.com

While the public soaks in the triumph that is the first images of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA reminds us that the agency also takes some incredible imagery right here on Earth.

How to Be an Artist, According to Edvard Munch, Master of “The Scream” — www.artsy.net

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was something of a rebel. He was known to paint on the beach in nothing but a loincloth, or outside in the snow, in the dead of winter. More significantly, he rebuffed artistic trends.

NASA's $1 billion Jupiter probe has taken mind-bending new photos of the gas giant — www.businessinsider.com

NASA's $1 billion Juno spacecraft completed its 10th high-speed trip around Jupiter on December 16. The robot gets relatively close to the gas giant and takes new photos with its JunoCam instrument roughly every 53 days while traveling at up to 130,000 mph.

David Hockney: ‘My era was the freest time. I now realise it’s over’

David Hockney takes two crumpled cigarette butts from his pocket and places them on the lunch table. “You’re disgusting,” says his lifelong friend Celia Birtwell, who has featured in many of his paintings.

Last minute dinner sorted: Cook bacon and egg pie tonight — www.stuff.co.nz

Pies can be a real faff, if you decide to go down the route of making your own pastry and cooking the filling separately before baking. And sure, there’s a time a place for a pie like that, but it’s not your typical Tuesday night. A pie like this is practically effortless.

Deep Time Sickness — www.noemamag.com

MEXICO CITY — In the middle of 2018, nine months or so after the city had last shaken with a major earthquake, Elena* lay in bed in her apartment, wide awake for what must be the fourth night in a row.

The Hummingbird Whisperer — altaonline.com

When I was a kid, teaching myself to bird-watch, I would go out to the arboretum, and I found this one Anna’s hummingbird holding a territory.

Poet, Artist, Erotic Muse of Mexico’s Avant Garde: Rediscovering Nahui Olin — lithub.com

In Diego Rivera’s La creación, Nahui Olin sits among a gathering of figures that represent “the fable,” draped in gold and blue. She appears as the figure of Erotic Poetry, fitting for what she was known for at the time: her erotic writing and sexual freedom.

End Papers

I think it was at one of those lovely, boozy get-togethers in Stellenbosch when we had eaten too much steak and boboetie and drunk too much red wine that my hosts turned to me and asked me the question:

"so, what do you make of Africa?"

Silence spread its blanket across the room as they waited for the Kiwi to reply.

"Well… It seems to me it's rather like a railway line. You have two tracks, and you have 1 foot on each. On the one side is life, and on the other is death. So it's one or the other."

They nodded approvingly.

Hence the two pictures for this section.

One afternoon, on my tour-of-one through the Kruger National Park, I stopped by the side of the road to make pictures of the feeding vultures. The couple in the truck next to me told me how a young rhino had tried his luck with an older one that morning and been killed for his troubles. The park rangers had come out, chainsawed off the horn to avoid it being stolen by poachers, and then opened a flap in the animal's side for the vultures to feed. In the warm evening light, there was something both beautiful yet horrifying about it.

The cycle of life.

A week or two later, my hosts took me to a township near Stellenbosch. They wouldn't stay because they were terrified of what might happen to them. Tony, ever the innocent, wandered around happily with his camera, chatting to the locals and photographing them. They were bright, cheery and friendly and happy to talk. I was talking to these two women, a mama deeply proud of her baby and her neighbour who was there to help.

And I walked on the other railroad track.

Death and life. Life and death.

I learned a lot in Africa.

In some ways, they are the drawing pins that anchor the spiral of our life.

Because, deep down, we all know that the mortality rate in all living species is 100%.

However, try telling that to the birds in my garden. I am sure that one of them is named Oliver Twist because it keeps coming back for more.

They are living their best life. So perhaps, instead of worrying about our problems and all the trouble in the world, we should emulate them.

We should live our lives joyously.

As always, I wish you love, light, joy and peace. Whatever that means for you.

Ngaa mihi nunui arohaa ki a koutou:

much love to you all