Frontispiece

Koorero Timatanga

Atamaarie e te whaanau:

Good morning, everybody,

Not long before he passed, the famous New Zealand photographer Robin Morrison, suffering from cancer and aware that he did not have long to live, took a trip north with his friend Laurence Aberhart and wandered among the churches of Northland, producing a beautiful black-and-white monograph. When asked about it and why he chose to work this way, his comment was like wanting to leave things unsaid and in the viewer's imagination. In his words, colour said it all, but black and white offered mystery.

Last weekend, we decided to go on a bit of a hikoi (journey) and drove across to Hokianga for a picnic. Along the way, somewhere between Ohaeawai and Kaikohe, the highway passes one of those iconic churches so characteristic of Northland. Inevitably, they are wooden and painted white with red corrugated iron rooves. Once you become aware of them, you find them all over the province. Some are beautifully maintained, while others have been de-consecrated and fallen into disrepair. However, they are tangible reminders of colonisation in the 19^th century when the tide of Western Christianity washed through and over the old Maori spiritual traditions and way of life.

We decided to stop and explore the church and its surroundings. The graveyard, protected by carefully erected drystone walls, had headstones dating back to the mid-1800s. The church sat in the middle of it, obviously carefully maintained and loved by the local community.

Placards outside explained that local Maaori had erected the church on the site of a significant battle between 615 British troops led by veteran officer Henry Despard and opposed by around 100 troops led by the local chief Te Ruki Kawiti. When the British attacked after bombarding the paa (fortification) for a week, the defenders responded with musket fire. Within a matter of minutes, 40 British troops were dead and another 70 wounded. When the British tried again, the Maaori had withdrawn and left an empty paa.

Local Maaori built the church as a symbol of peace and a tribute to the Paakehaa who died in the battle. It was dedicated by the Bishop of Auckland, William Cowie, on 21 April 1871. A local Maaori chief subsequently obtained permission to rebury the British soldiers in the churchyard. A burial service was conducted on 1 July 1872, and a memorial cross was erected. If you are interested, you can read more about it here.

The church's interior is clearly loved and carefully tended. I had not intended to use my camera, but it seemed the right thing to do when I realised where I was. The church was bright and airy and filled with light and hope.

I could understand why Morrison was drawn to them. You see, Northland does not have the spectacular and glorious scenery of the South Island, with its deep lakes, hard-edged mountains and rich colours.

No, Northland is a series of soft flowing folds, a quilted landscape, with layers of history and mystery concealed in the undulating creases. It is a place that seems to be all about whakapapa, connection to place, a place where present and past intertwine.

Knowing that his time was running out, it was little wonder that Robin Morrison would come up north and wander among the joyous, gentle headstones of history.

Mahi Toi-Making Art

On finding the Magic in Tonal Pictures (again)

Once upon a time, in a life before my last life, I made my work in a darkroom.

For nearly 15 years, I laboured away, attempting to master the film and darkroom chemistry process. At that time, black-and-white photography was affordable and accessible, and I was determined to take my technique as far as possible. I reached a point where I was mixing my own darkroom developers from their component chemicals in an attempt to refine my vision and its realisation.

One night, I went out into the darkroom and worked until the early morning hours. When I got up in the morning, I felt distinctly unwell, with a splitting headache and fingers that had swelled into sausages. I drank plenty of water over the next few days, and the problem disappeared.

The following Friday, I went out again to my darkroom and printmaking. Again, I worked into the night and early morning and then went to bed. When I awoke, the headache and sausage fingers were back.

For a time, I could not understand it. Then I remembered a comment by the famous English landscape photographer Faye Godwin, who commented that if we stayed in a darkroom long enough, we could reasonably expect to develop (pun intended) an allergy to the chemistry.

I walked out of the darkroom, switched everything off, and never returned.

Anyway, I was well on a journey to understand colour photography and its language, so it was not that much of a shock.

As I progressed into colour photography and seeing in colour, I found that there was more to learn and experience, a new language to master and that I no longer saw tonally.

Here is the difference between black and white and colour photography. One involves seeing in terms of chroma (colour), while the other is all about the tones between no-light (black) and all-light (white). In many ways, the tones are a visual equivalent of the musical scale; however, unlike the notes on a piano, which are evenly spaced, visual tones tend to blend into each other, and therefore the points of separation are arbitrary at best. In many ways, it is like stretching pizza dough. We can hold them apart evenly or emphasise particular tones or groups of tones, folding them closely together or stretching them further apart. It is interesting to note that one of the great masters of black-and-white photography and the darkroom was Ansel Adams, who was also a very gifted concert pianist. I suspect he saw the tones in his negatives and prints as notes in a concerto. I sometimes wonder what would happen if a composer were to write music in response to the tones in an Ansel Adams print.

In addition to the technology of darkroom photography, there is a beautiful archaeology stretching back to the very beginnings of the medium. As they evolved, each darkroom technology gave rise to a particular way of doing and seeing things. Perhaps, in their ways, they are dialects or subsets of the language of darkroom photography.

This image arrived when we were exploring the church at Ohaeawai. While it was an Anglican church, it was somehow different. Sarah pointed out the carved pou by the alter rail, which is unusual. Conventional Christianity has tended to stick to its exclusive traditions and avoid what it sees as pagan. The monotheistic nature of the one contrasts in many ways with the many gods (>96) of the old Maori traditions.

I could not help noticing that, from where I was standing, the intricately carved and tattooed pou occupied the foreground, visually at odds with the plain and simple wooden cross in the background against the back wall.

Of course, when you recognise something that resonates with you, you make a picture of it even though you may not understand it at the time.

When I was sitting at my computer, pondering where to place the tones on my tonal pizza, I began to contemplate why I had made the picture. What drew me to the scene in the first place?

I have long maintained this truth at workshops: all our pictures are self-portraits, windows into our souls, which, if we have the wit to recognise them, will tell us more about ourselves and our unique journey. Even the most banal images (if there are such things) will give us clues as to who we are, where we are, what we are, and perhaps why we are.

Who. Where. What. Why.

I grew up in the shadow of my mother's strong Anglican tradition. At one point, I took a four-year course to prepare me for ordination.

Only later did I embrace the ancient traditions of my father's Maaori heritage.

It is a poignant piece for me, which is, in some ways, a self-portrait.

With the image realised, I wanted to reference the tradition at the time (1841) when this image might have been made. For a long time, prints have been made using platinum rather than silver salts, which lend a subtle warm tone to them. By shifting the tones towards warm rather than cold and using a roughly painted border, I would be referencing the technology of the time.

Enough.

The pizza was ready to go into the oven.

Waiata Mou Te Ata-Poem For the Day

I suddenly realised that the inspiration for my waiatas of late comes from my early morning walks in the neighbourhood, at the change time when night is crossing into day and the day is on the verge of rising above the horizon.

It is joyous to stand among trees holding up the sky and watch the last of the stars being slowly absorbed.

Windfinger Song

And

in the blacklit backlit night,

when the warmreigned rain

has sliversliced the furled dark apart in fronded shards,

I venture forth and out from beneath the quilted quivers

of  sleeptossed restless  dreams,

to stand and feel the restless ferrous core of my mother’s iron heart

turning relentless and remorseless beneath my pinioned feet.

I join the shadow trees in the space and time between

the sacred circle breath of the restless, anguished wind

looping and loping and twisting,

in search of the eyes it cannot find.

On a relentless global journey to find peace,

it plays a startocked tune on the piano fronds

of the palm trees beyond my door.

I raise one finger and approach

a single dripdrop clinging to one shadowed key,

slip onto my fingertip

and gently allow an inverted waterverse

to floe onto my upraised tongue.

Endpapers

Koorero Whakamutunga

On the tick-tock of time and the leitmotifs in our lives

When I was studying the Austrian writer Franz Kafka at university, our lecturer introduced us to the idea of leitmotifs, which, put simply, is a recurring theme, melody or fragment in music. Of course, it can also be applied to literature. Writers know it well, and, used carefully and intelligently, it can add pace and weight to a body of writing.

I began to wonder if we do not have leitmotifs in our lives, recurring symbols that come and go and act as for the journey of our lives. It may be that the same things occur repeatedly, from time to time, the tick-tocks that mark the metronome of our existence.

The koru is, in many ways, a form of visual leitmotif. The koru, the juvenile fern frond, is highly symbolic in our Maaori tradition. For Maaori, life is a spiral outwards (and inwards) rather than a linear progression along a timeline. If we trace our life journey from the centre outwards, we can see we pass through the same plane of experience repeatedly, only better informed by experience and the wisdom of hindsight. Language is like that. At the beginning of our journey, we make sounds. Gradually, we learn to combine them and attach meaning to them. From sounds, we progress to words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and eventually complex language structures. We stop that growth when it no longer serves us to grow.

So, what are those recurring symbols in our lives? Is it the stuff we acquire? Is it a lifelong passion for the photographs that record our journey? Is it a desire to leave mile markers on the side of the trail to mark our passing? Will we face the future with our eyes on the past?

What are the tick-tock moments that tell us we have been here before?

Looking through the back catalogue of my photographic work for pictures to include in this issue of Breathing Light, I was reminded that the medium is all about light, time and moment. Perhaps each time we pick up our camera, we reach, consciously or unconsciously, for another leitmotif. Perhaps laziness draws us to make the same images repeatedly; however, it may be more profound than that. It may be symbolic.

Looking through my Lightroom catalogue, at 18 years of work, I suddenly became aware of being drawn to make images of angels in graveyards and light pouring in around doorways and through windows. I am sure there is a Freudian reason for that.

So, what are the leitmotifs in your life?

Wherever you are on your path as an expression of IO Matua Kore, the Master of All, may your days be filled with wonder, joy, and a celebration of life's eternal and infinite cycle.

Much love to you all,

Tony/Te Waenga