Frontispiece

This picture has fascinated me ever since I made it.

It also terrifies me because it reminds me of the day I made it and what was going on in my life at that time. A relationship had ended, and I was back in the Maniototo, wondering what had happened, what to make of it, and what to do next. It was the middle of winter, and I was lucky to be able to spend a week or so with one of my friends in Ranfurly, who was quietly sympathetic and left me to get on with my own pain.

One afternoon, in a half-hearted attempt to quieten the warring voices and recrimination inside my head, I went for a drive with no particular plan other than to be doing something.

I wandered along one of the back roads behind the town, looking for something to photograph. It was a bitterly cold July day, and even if it was just after lunchtime, the hoar frost decorated the grasses and tree branches with carefully applied icing. With the truck heater on full, I crunched my way slowly along the yellow clay road, lost in misery and thought.

Then, a small break in the fog illuminated the road ahead. On either side, the frost-clotted grasses held my gaze on what lay before me. The austere line of power poles marched away down the left side of the fenceline like the crosses on Golgotha.

In the distance, the road vanished into the mist.

I saw the metaphor instantly.

I have often said that every picture we make is a postcard we write to ourselves, a kind of visual entry in the diary of our life. However, we need to be able to recognise and decipher it.

And some can be more discomforting and disconcerting than others.

Ironically, I made the following picture the day before, near the small village of Sutton in Central Otago.

I haven't been able to bring myself to process it.

Until now.

Again, the metaphor seems obvious.

/

Koorero Timatanga

Atamaarie e te whaanau:

Good morning, Dear Friends,

This issue of Breathing Light is more of a paanui (information email) than a newsletter.

I have a lot to share and tell you about.

Last weekend, after 11 years, I resigned from my ambassadorship with Fujifilm New Zealand. There are several reasons for this.

Fujifilm is heading in a new direction and looking to shrink the number of its ambassadors from 12 to? The target market, as they see it, is millennials and Gen Z photographers, and they want to pitch their products to those people rather than photographers and artists like myself. They are looking for people willing to shoot more videos, Instagram stories and reels and to be engaging "content creators". I realised the writing was on the wall and departed before being pushed.

So, in the coming weeks, any references to my Fujifilm ambassadorship will gradually be removed from social media and my website.

However, all is not lost. You may have noticed that several of the images in recent newsletters have been shot with Nikon's Z8 and Z9 and either Nikon or Tamron lenses. I have had the opportunity to test drive their current crop of mirrorless cameras, and I am deeply impressed by what they can do.

In the foreseeable future, I will focus on using Nikon equipment. The perceptive amongst you will have noticed that across the years, I have shot on all sorts of different brands except Pentax and Hasselblad (who can afford those?). But I know more about this towards the end of this post.

I must tell you that my current personal relationship is ending, and I am in the wind again.

And I have a mad idea.

I have the option to move into a wee cabin and sit there. It would have been safe and mildly comfortable, but what would I have done then? I may be 71, but I am not prepared to roll over and wait for the Grim Reaper quite yet.

Sometime in the days after Christmas, I intend to go on the road and work on a project that has popped up from time to time across the last 20 years. At the time of writing, I intend to live in my car and travel around the country, documenting the wisdom of trees and/in the natural world. I realised that I have been focusing (pun intended) on trees, plants, and flowers and their unique and special energy for the last few years. I plan to go on the road and hear what they tell me.

It is also an opportunity to do something I have not done in this lifetime, namely, to answer the question of who I am. Quite frankly, the journey scares me, yet all the signs point to my need to do this.

I imagine the project is going to take me some months, if not longer, at the end of which I may have found somewhere to live so I can begin to work and develop a book of pictures, poetry and text to honour my lifelong journey with trees and forests, a gift given me by my father, who was a senior ranger in the New Zealand Forest Service. I grew up amongst trees and on the edge of forests, and I want to tell the story.

The project's title is Hikoi. For those who do not know, Hikoi is a Maori word that means a journey with purpose, of moving forward with an aim.

This means travelling and following my instincts and the promptings of my tupuna (ancestors) and kaitiaki (guardians/guides).

Of course, as the English poet John Donne put it, "No man is an island." We are all connected to every aspect of the natural world, and quantum mechanics tells us that.

So, I would love to take those among you who are interested along with me on this journey.

This will be the last issue of Breathing Light as it has been.

However, I have begun a new newsletter called Hikoi, and I invite you all to subscribe and come along for the ride. Sometime in the hours after publishing this issue, you will probably receive an invitation to subscribe to it. Because of Beehiiv's rules, you will need to accept the invitation. If you are interested, please accept. It will be interesting to see how many of you choose to do so.

I imagine the issues will be somewhat sporadic because I will be travelling, often out of range, and reliant upon finding a suitable Internet to publish on. I do not know how it will evolve since this journey will develop its own life. If only 10 of you accept the invitation, then that is enough. It will be great to have you along.

The New Zealand Nikon agents have agreed to come along for the ride and supply me with the equipment to make the images.

If you are in a position to support me, then I will be very grateful for any assistance you can give me. Every little bit will help, including any offers of calling by and maybe staying for a night or two. At this stage, I intend to live in my car and am hopeful that something more comfortable may be possible. There may be times when the money runs out, and my faith will be tested (it is a journey of faith), but I will cross that bridge (pun not intended) when I get to it.

You may feel that you want to help materially, psychologically or spiritually. I welcome any offerings you may feel you want to go.

I would welcome any  $$$ donations you may be willing to give. If you are in New Zealand, then you can deposit it to:

Anthony Bridge

38-9022-0737143-01

or, if you are offshore, then please use PayPal

[email protected]

Even better, you might like to order artwork. I can have it printed by the highly capable Ruapehu Printshop and shipped to you.

So enough of that.

Here is the preamble to my project.

Hikoi.

May Christmas bring you peace, good food and company, and rest after what has been a troubling year for most of us.

Much love to you all

Hikoi

In Search of Tane's Children

My journey with trees and the natural world goes back a lifetime, 71 years in fact, to my birthplace of Naseby in Central Otago. My father, employed by the New Zealand Forest Service, was the officer-in-charge of the forest, a meandering wander of pine trees loping over the low hills beneath the Hawkdun Mountains.

I would go to sleep at night in the whispering arms of the trees as they gathered stories blown down the wind and passed them to me. While I did not understand them then, I felt them, and they soothed me. There was always something new to hear.

After some years, my father earned a promotion to Ashley Forest on the outskirts of Rangiora in Canterbury. At that time, in New Zealand's public service, you had to be prepared to move to another place to gain a promotion. Again, my bedroom backed up against thousands of acres of pine forest. Again, the trees would feed me stories at night. Whenever I needed peace and tranquillity, I would wander up into the comforting arms of the trees, find myself in a small, comfortable place, perhaps in a sunlit clearing, and simply be.

Again, our family moved into Christchurch due to my father's promotion to a senior position. Again, when he went out to visit this particular forest or that, he would often take me with him. I would sit quietly in the back seat and listen to the conversations he held with his staff. I absorbed lessons about silviculture and the process of growing timber. I learned by parental osmosis to judge whether a plantation had been well planted and maintained.

Occasionally, he would take me into the mountains on trips focused on conserving our native forests. Again, I would listen to the trees. They spoke a different language and had other stories from the exotic forest. These were ancient stories of old and distant times, of timeless wisdom that had been millennia in the making and perfecting.

My father found a varsity holiday job for me, working in the mountains for Environmental Forestry. I learned many things: track clearing, bridge building, hut maintenance, and using explosives. I also learned resilience and that my physical limits were far more than I had let myself believe. I learned to survive and thrive in an environment that did not tolerate fools or the weak.

In my second season, I worked for the former deer Culler, Gordon Roberts, and then a forest ranger. Although he was an incredible hunter and a crack-shot, he had swapped his rifle for a camera. I would watch him making pictures of the landscape and the animals, and I fell in love with the medium.

Two decades later, when I began making my own mark as a photographer, Gordon reappeared in my life. He often called by and shared the pictures he was making for his iconic book Game Animals of New Zealand and would ask my advice. We became firm friends, often trading ideas and comparing equipment.

One day, he came by, parked his four-wheel drive in the driveway and took out a box of books. He explained that his marriage had ended and that he needed to shrink down his possessions while he began his journey to find a new home. Among them were two books I have held in my ever-shrinking collection. One was a copy of his book; the other was Japanese Rivers in the Four Seasons by the Japanese landscape photographer Takashi Komatsu, who had spent a year and 300,000 km travelling the length and breadth of his native Japan, making large format pictures of the rivers in the style that only Japanese photographers can. His earnest hope was that in dedicating himself to this cause, he would awaken his countryman's awareness of the need to preserve the rivers. What struck me at the time was that rather than point to the ugliness and degradation caused by human industry similar to that of the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, he had chosen to document the wonder and beauty of what he saw.

I showed Gordon some of the pictures of trees I had been making. Actually, I had been making them ever since I picked up a camera. He looked at them for a time and then said:

"You know, you should produce a book about trees. Gene would be proud of you." (Gene was my father's name).

Then he went on his way.

We kept in touch over the years until he passed away.

While the idea has come and gone, surfacing for a time and sinking back beneath the water, it has never really left.

Not long ago, as I pondered my next journey in the medium, I realised that for the last few years, my work has focused on the natural world, particularly plants and trees.

I believe that the secret to making great photography, indeed any form of art, is to develop an intense observation of the subject. Lately, and possibly because I have been without a consistent camera, I have noticed myself becoming more intensely aware of the minutiae of the natural world, with plant birds and insects, while becoming acutely aware of their unique and individual mauri and Wairua (energy and spirit). Lately, I have wondered how to document that and make unique works to help others see the natural world's wonder, reality, and innate intelligence.

And perhaps help them become more concerned about protecting and preserving the taio (the natural world).

Now, it is time to wander and honour my lifetime journey with trees and the natural world.

Waiata Mou Te Ata-Poem For the Day

On night, birds and their whispers in the night.

Night Birds Song

The  night birds have been calling,

pecking through the shadow curtains draping my dreams

plucking apart the layered harp strings of the night,

tweeting of hope and recrimination and anticipation,

of potential and possibility.

They flitter between the lightening shades

And draw me up from the well of the night,

to emerge

Unrested and restless with my feathers on fire.

Eager to be up and away,

determined

to fall from my nest and take the mourning path to dawning and day,

I stumble past

the warm, sweet blush brush of night jasmine

and rain-tipped, dew-bowed palm fronds

that comb my hair and psyche,

up the hill

to meld my feet

around my Mother’s revolving core

and be

the tree

that we all are.