日志
???????John B. Turner??????Te Atatu?
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Abundance Art Gallery and Gift Shop Mo 707,Te Atatu Road, Te Atatu Peninsula
We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.
? Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1952.I had never set foot on Te Atatu Peninsular until my wife Mala, who grew up in Titirangi, took me house hunting there in 1996. Ultimately, we were seduced by the view from a 1950s bungalow in Renata Crescent that overlooks a mangrove swamp and the Henderson Creek. Experiencing the tidal cycle and river traffic in this quiet location, and occasional kayak and fishing expeditions, have become an appreciated part of our life away from the city.
During our first six years on the Peninsula I would only occasionally take some photographs while walking the neighbourhood with or without our dog. Accustomed to working in black and white photography and the habit of completing the cycle of exposing and processing my own film and proofing, editing and enlarging my prints while the purpose of the images were still fresh in my memory, without a darkroom in our new home I found myself shooting colour film simply because I could get it processed at the chemist shop.
My familiarity with the Peninsula dramatically increased after my doctor told me on 11 September 2002 that I had type two diabetes, and needed more regular exercise. But it wasnt until early in 2005 that I discovered the delights of digital photography with a semi-professional 35mm camera (a Canon 350D)and started to take my photography of the Peninsula more seriously.
I am colour blind (in the red-green spectrum)so had largely shied away from colour for my serious photography, which consists of photographing everyday events, family, people and places mainly, in the time-honoured tradition of the amateur photographer. I like to photograph what I like to photograph, in other words, rather than be told what to photograph by clients. But because I have a particular interest in history and the history of photography I am particularly aware that so many aspects of our lives and times do not get recorded photographically, or do not get photographed as well as they deserve. Its the small everyday encounters that make up so much of our lives, rather than the big public events that tend to hog the news, that I am thinking of. Hence I came to take more seriously the task of trying to capture aspects of the look and pulse of Te Atatu Peninsula and its inhabitantsin colour. (In the late 1960s I had documented the main street of Johnsonville, where I had earlier been brought up, but only in black & white.)
Because the land mass of Te Atatu Peninsula is so clearly defined by the Henderson Creek and its Waitemata Harbour boundary, and everything on the Peninsula is within walking distance, it lends itself to the possibility of something approaching a full photographic documentation of its physical character, at least, if not the diversity and complex social interactions of its inhabitants. As a photographer, I am interested in both the place itself, and the people who make it a unique community with its own distinctive history and character.
But so far I have concerned myself mainly with what I consider as Phase One of my self-assigned project, and have already amassed over 20,000 digital photographs for the record. These are photographs more or less of and from the street; of shops and shopkeepers, old buildings and new, and just interesting people Ive encountered. They include coverage of key events like Anzac Day and the Christmas Parade, school fairs, garage sales and the like, the Pony Club, the Mud Run, music entertainments and the like. Infil housing is another aspect I am recording along with the often rapid changes to business premises that can change hands and their function almost overnight, over the dashed dreams of their short term underfinanced occupants.
For Phase Two my hope is to photograph a wide range of people in their homes and offices, and to work with oral historians to record the life stories of a diverse range of people on the Peninsula.
CAPTIONS:
FIGS 1 & 2: CAPTION 1: The changing use of buildings. Te Atatu Meats, 540 Te Atatu Road, photographed on 12 March 2005 was Ebony Flowers by Mothers Day, 14 May 2006. I also photographed the full frontal facade of this building before and after the yellow butchers shop was repainted black. The lady in Ebony Flowers on a very busy day, is Tanya Brown, manager and owner of the flower shop. Te Atatu Meats, I was told, was the oldest butchers shop on the Peninsula, and used to have an unencumbered view of the Waitemata Harbour in the old days. Intrigued by the crisis of identity humourously acknowledged by its own signage, I was not surprised to learn that the butcher, despite his high reputation had become bored with his trade and wanted out. (Original photographs in colour.)
FIG 3, CAPTION 2: Magicians rabbit, Christmas Parade, Te Atatu Peninsula, 2 December 2005. The juxtaposition of objects inside the frame is one of the photographers chief means of expression. The rabbit, having jumped out of a top hat for the kids show, had taken a Council chair for a breather, and I couldnt resist linking it to the fluffy candy floss disappearing a couple of chairs along. Later I was told that the rabbit had pink eyes and ears to match the sugar. (Original photographs in colour.)
FIG 4, CAPTION 3: This is the cover of my second 9 x 7cm booklet of photographs of Te Atatu Peninsula that I show to strangers (usually after I have photographed them)so they can see the kind of photograph I am after. I also give them my business card with the Cartier-Bresson quote shown at the head of this article, and offer to send them a print or two. Most people respond very well when they realise my purpose, and in this way I have started to get to know of lot of local identities. The New Zealand written on the cover of this booklet was hastily added when I showed it to many people that I photographed during a three week visit to China in April-May 2007. When the opportunity arose, like on the train from Beijing to Tianjin, after showing a selection of photographs of China made in 1956 by the late Tom Hutchins, I also showed some photographs of Te Atatu on my laptop computer. (Original photograph in colour.)
FIG 5, CAPTION 4: Yin, Bo, and Theresa Ye at M&M Takeaways, 694 Te Atatu Road, on 6 March 2005. Yin and Bo run perhaps the busiest and best Chinese takeaway on the Peninsula. They were born in Canton and here their daughter Theresa, who was educated in New Zealand, is translating for Bo the purpose of my request to photograph them at work during a brief lull in trade. In turn, theirs is one of the photographs I include in a little booklet (see image ....) to show strangers the kind of photograph (spontaneous rather than posed)that I am seeking.(Original photograph in colour.)
FIG 6, CAPTION 5: This photograph, which I like to call Youth Group was taken outside M&M Takeaways on Te Atatu Road, on 5 March 2005. I met and photographed one of them with his girlfriend in M&Ms, and started to photograph others arranged around their cars in the parking area. I was challenged by the central character in the picture who quickly picked up my historical intention from the Cartier-Bresson quote on my business card, and conveyed that to his mates who duly arranged themselves to show how they wanted to be remembered. Perhaps fortunately, I still dont understand the meaning of some of the hand and body signals they are giving out. (Original photograph in colour.)
FIG 7, CAPTION 6: Anzac Day ceremony at the Te Atatu Peninsula Memorial Hall, 25 April 2005. I covered preparations for the march, the march itself, and ceremony as well as the lunch at the RSA in Pringle Drive, several hundred photographs in all. (Original photograph in colour.)
FIG 8, CAPTIONs 7 & 8: The shops in Neil Avenue, linking Taikata and Matipo Roads, have changed hands at least four times over the past four years. The top image shows the dairy frontage, and below the previous occupants signage, Hangi Tu Ora, at an early stage of renovation, on 20 August 2007. The traditional Maori food shop took about six months to open, but, unfortunately lasted only a month or so. The interior photograph was made on 25 April 2008, about the time the shop closed its doors for the last time; another victim of commercial realities. As I write (early September 2008)the dairy has also closed and the auction signs are up for the whole building which offers four shops (or offices) facing the street.(Original photographs in colour.)
FIG 9, CAPTION 9: A motor home carefully parked in Taikata Road, opposite Ramlea Park, on Anzac Day, 25 April 2008. (Original photograph in colour.)
FIG 10, CAPTION 10: A sign of greener times, perhaps, what was the Compass caf, and formerly Cup Cakes, at ____ Te Atatu Road, is now used by the Waitakere Council to promote reusable nappies. Anzac Day, 25 April 2008. (Original photograph in colour.)
FIG 11, CAPTION 11: One is so used to seeing the Colombia Bakery,___ Te Atatu Road, open all hours and days of the week that it came as a shock to notice it closed for several days in a row. Much to my relief, when I read the sign next to the door, it did not say the shop had closed permanently, but that the Cambodian owners were apologising to their customers for going overseas to attend a relatives wedding and would be away for four weeks. (Original photograph in colour.)
FIG 12, CAPTION 12: A new and much needed Laundromat was opened at 574a Te Atatu Road about early April 2008 without any fanfare. The tumbler dryers seen here cost $1 for 10 minutes, and large and smaller clothes washers cost $5 or $3 dollars respectively. This photograph was made on 25 April 2008, and on the far right of the picture can be seen a bagpiper hurrying to take part in the Anzac Day parade. (Original photograph in colour.)
John B. Turner: Self-portrait with Ron Treneary, The Peninsula Barber Shop, Harbour View Road, Te Atatu Peninsula, Sunday 18 April 2005.
JOHN B. TURNER 15 May 2010
Senior Lecturer in Photography
Elam School of Fine Arts
Brief biography
John B. Turner (b.1943) is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the Elam School of Fine Arts, at The University of Auckland. His serious involvement in photography began in camera clubs in the late 1950s, when he was a pupil at Petone Technical College. He trained as a compositor in the printing trade in Wellington during the early sixties, then became a news and commercial photographer.
He joined the then Dominion Museum (now part of Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand)as photographer in the mid-sixties, when he also began writing about aspects of practical photography, criticism and the history of photography. He has taught numerous workshops throughout New Zealand, and curated landmark exhibitions including Nineteenth Century New Zealand Photography (1970) and Baigent, Collins, Fields: Three New Zealand Photographers (1973).
As editor of PhotoForum magazine from 1974-1984 and later from 1990 to the present he has produced over 60 issues to date. In addition to teaching photography at Elam since 1971, he was Director of the Elam Fine Arts Printing Research Unit from 1985-1995.
In 1991 he studied the History of Photography with Van Deren Coke and Bill Jay at Arizona State University at Tempe, U.S.A. Co-author with William Main, of New Zealand Photography from the 1840s to the Present (1993) he edited and designed PhotoForums printing industry award winning books Ink & Silver (1995) and Eric Lee-Johnson: Artist with a Camera (1999). A resident of Te Atatu Peninsula since 1997, he has been intensely photographing the community, its people, shops and events since 2005.
Growing out of his work with R.D. (Tom) Hutchins (1921-2007) to recreate Hutchins seminal 1956 photo essay on China, Turner visited China in 2007, and is today focussing his own camera on Chinese communities in Auckland. While continuing his research into various aspects of historical and contemporary New Zealand photography, his research now includes the history of photography in China and the contribution of New Zealanders to picturing that country.
The Director of PhotoForum Inc, since 1993, Turner was a member of the Global Nominations Panel for the 2009 Prix Pictet Prize, London, and for the current 2010 round.
