Letter to Chris

Kia ora tatou:

As I have mentioned, my blog is about to go under the wing of my mostly-updated website. There are still a few bugs to iron out, which will happen hopefully in the next day or so. Then we will upload to my server, the site will go live, and I will email everyone on my newsletter list( and maybe a few that aren't!). There is a lot of new work on the site, including some stuff I found in the dusty recesses of my hard drives that I had forgotten about! So, as they say, watch this space.

My friend Bikerchris posted a comment last night that deserves an answer. Chris is the type of person who thinks deeply (except when he has been on the Lagavulin, then he becomes quite eloquent) and when he speaks, delivers something finely-honed and precise, like a fine wine, not to be taken lightly. Rather than bury my reply in the comment archives, I would like to make some sort of public response. You deserve the best answer I can give. It also seems like a good place to push the pause button while we make all the site changes.

Bikerchris said:
As you know, I am not great on the comments all the time. I watch out for your postings nearly every day. I do perceive a change in your postings now; I hear the wistful person who is reliving the good old days from years gone by. I hope sincerely you do find all that you left behind all those years ago. I hope you also can bring into your search all the wisdom gained after a lifetime away, and can apply that to what you will find. The wisdom gained will add a new dimension to the memories you are obviously reliving.
Keep up the postings, I really do enjoy them! I am seeing a side of you that I knew existed, but you kept well and truly under wraps!

Chris:
By way of a response...

Somebody once asked me where I got my gift for photography from. Well, the answer is my father. He loved photography, although it didn't have quite the quality of obsession for him that it does for me! It was a hobby, that he talked about and sometimes did. From time to time, when I am out in the landscape, when the wind pauses to draw breath, when I am surrounded by the glow of the first light of day, I could swear he is standing beside me, making helpful suggestions and passing comment.

I have also always enjoyed writing as well, and that derives from my mother, who was a bit of a literary star in her day (well, world-famous in Southland). She is 90 next year, and entertains herself by watching DVD's (she had a player long before me) and texting on her cell phone. (Maybe that is why I am a techno-junkie!) It is just that I have not had the time to really flex those particular muscles. Now I do. Indeed I need to.

Someone once said: Art is not something you do; it is something you have to do, and for me writing is another source of creativity, a way of expressing myself. I have a mentor in San Francisco, Alessandro Baccari, who believes I am really a writer; actually he has said in not so many words that he considers me more a writer than a photographer! Time will tell. It was he who set me out on my odyssey to produce a book on New Zealand. White Cloud Silver Screen kind of hijacked that trip. Only the Proof-Reader-from-Hell (you know who you are) has seen the text. Perhaps one day.

With Time and Alone-ness, the writing bacteria are multiplying, hence the reason for the change in the nature of the posts. I have written on and off for years, largely for myself, but got little traction, largely because of all the other things I have been trying to achieve (master photography, multiple jobs, attempt to be good parent, etc). I also haven't been able to put writing and photography into any sort of common context. Now that appears to be happening for me.

I love writing. It is a bit like making a Fine Print. You start with a raw idea, a kind of Idea negative, then polish it, and tune it and process it until either you or it say: enough! And it is done, or you can't/won't go any further (then you spend the next 10/20/30 years wishing you had done it differently!).

They say all photographers are frustrated painters. Perhaps. Maybe prose writers are frustrated poets? I know that I could not write a novel. I think I would get bored and want to kill off my characters just to get away from the story and bring things to an end. It is beyond me how Tolstoy could stay with War and Peace that long! I like the intensity of the short prose work, of crafting something where each word is precise and can have a multiplicity of interpretations. 2000 words is about my upper limit at the moment.

But wait, there is more.

As you know, I have spent time as a curriculum developer (once a teacher, always a teacher), and got an opportunity to put my somewhat unconventional ideas into practice (I can't believe they trusted me, the fools). The core of Creativity, as I see it, is that each of us is our own best resource, and that all creativity comes from the individual, from the Self. If we take the time (if we have the time) to reflect on what is important to us, what has meaning to us, and then we can make work that is both satisfying and personal. Who we are is the sum total of each and every step we have taken up to that point, and we can draw upon our individual life experience to inform our work.

As an example, whenever one of you who has his/her own blog posts, I always look up your profile (sic. Sammi2U). I want to know where you live, what films you like, what music you listen to. That gives me an idea what drives you. The core of your creativity. Then, should you take a workshop with me or ask for advice or just read my blog, I can be of more use to you.

More and more I find myself drawing upon my own life experiences as a way of informing what I do, both as a writer and photographer (or is that the other way around?). As I mentioned in a previous post, I like hearing stories about people and places. It all feeds into my work as a photographer- and as a writer. I try to read the story in a place, to analyse my feelings at the time and use that to inform my own work. Case in point:

I came home yesterday after a couple of days in Dunedin, and decided to take the short cut home across the Old Dunstan Road, which crosses along the back of the Rock and Pillar Range. It doesn’t look a great distance on the map, but it took me five hours (an hour to go round by road)! You wouldn’t want to take your 500SEC across this road, but it is OK in a car. It is a vast, rolling moor that goes on and on. I knew it was called that because it was the route for the early gold miners in the area.

It flummoxed me for a time. There was so little to grip on to visually. Then, standing out there, I began to imagine what it must have been like for them, laden with equipment, dreams and hope. I could smell the sweat of the horses, hear the creaking of saddle leather, could imagine what it must have been like to be caught out in a storm.

At the summit, 1041 m, (it said that on the sign), I saw a small track off to my right that headed up into the tussock. So I followed and within a couple of minutes found myself in Low 4, remembering all the 4x4 lessons I had taken earlier this year. The track climbed about 500m, and the view from the top allowed me to get a better take on the landscape. Again I seemed to see those weary travellers 140 years ago, straggling gamely across an unwilling landscape.
On the way back down the hill I saw a rock outcrop. I gave the HiLux a welcome break and headed over with my camera, those imaginary thoughts in my mind. From the other side of the rock, I could see back across the Loganburn and the road. How many travellers had this rock outcrop looked down upon? How much hope and despair had it silently witnessed, I asked myself? And the image above was made with that in mind/imagination.

A few minutes later, I made the image of the tyre tracks. They could well have been cartwheel indentations.

As I said, Chris, this is a time for me to expand personally, to really get work done, and to grow myself in all sorts of ways. And to share. My experiences with the willing victims who came to Okuru and with the workshops in Africa is that there is another way to teach photography, and that I need to think it all through, to lock down a new way of teaching that grows you as photographers and at the same time as individuals. The posts are a way for me to keep helping, to be of service. Your comments really help me to see the road ahead (I read and reflect on every one!) and to do better. Kia ora.

Chris, it isn’t easy, taking the wraps off. But I’m getting braver.

Many thanks.