This shot was taken out in the cobblestone yard of the big old house in Wallonia. The white background came courtesy of an old wooden barn door and the hat was a treasure recently found by Alysha at the Waterloo Market.
She used cosmetics on her eyes but that was it. What the light did with her skin, was nothing short of miraculous. I was stunned, once again, by the magic of eyes.
We had such fun. I'll put up a gallery of this shoot, and the shoot with that lovely Australian bloke, soon.
One of the wildcards, in terms of my photography, is that I have no set way of doing things ... there is no structure or formula.
Each person ... each portrait shoot, is a new journey. A setting off into the unknown
Sometimes I think about being terrified in these unfamilar settings, working in unknown or ever-changing light, with a person who may or may not trust me in my attempt at capturing them. But then I remember ... this is the space where the magic happens.
And so it was with the American ...
I didn't realise how much I love a bunch of flowers in a new place ... not just in Genova but in anyplace new. They are surely a way to arrive ... a way to feel 'at home'.
The Sweetpeas have been abundant in the garden herein Wallonia. They remind me of my childhood back home in Mosgiel. My mum loved them.
We were up early out here in the country this morning, a pavlova made from freshly-laid eggs went into the oven straight after breakfast. Gert whipped up a batch of his sultana and frangipani bread ... Welcome home gifts for the family who gave us their beautiful house for a couple of weeks.
Now to clean and leave for 't stad. Meanwhile, my beautiful flowers ...
This morning, we were first up and active here in the big old house in the country ... as is mostly the case but I decided I would try releasing the hens and their rooster.
It's a process. You find all the scraps from the previous day, add some dry bread, find the big stick and then venture forth. You walk the course to their water trough, and drop the bulk of the food there, then wander back to the big door and prepare yourself ... not unlike the prep required for an Olympic 100m dash.
I threw the door open and took off ... sprinkling bread as I ran. Laughing because, for-goodness-sake, they're just little creatures.
I looked behind me, the little brown hen, nicknamed Curious Chicken, was right there on my heels but the others were nicely distracted by all kinds of things. I may have thrown the food container aside as I sprinted. They recognised it.
Gert and Momo, the dog who protects all his humans, stood up near the outdoor dining table ... I believe they were both laughing too.
Mission accomplished, I returned to the table and we sat there a while to watch them ... as you do.
I noticed a little black hen climb into the sweetpeas. She didn't come out. I pointed it out, suggesting we might have solved the mystery of the rest of the missing eggs. We waited until she came out then found the big stick, called Momo ... was distracted an attack of the giggles as he played sillymomodog around my feet ... then set out.
Hot on the heels of Sabine discovering 7 missing eggs at the base of the Livingstone Daisy last night, we struck paydirt again this morning. ELEVEN eggs had been laid at the base of my beloved Sweetpeas.
I must say, the hens have good taste. The Livingstones and the Sweetpeas would have to be two of my favourite flowers.
In the space of 12 hours we have gone from the bizarre situation of hens and no eggs to hens and 18 eggs, just in time for the big happy family returning from France.
Anyway, meet Himself and his Women.
Gert and I have twice enjoyed one of the Europe's top 10 markets ... the Waterloo Market, in recent days. We first heard of it via BBC's Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is and loved the idea that we could rummage around, with the possibility of finding both genuine antiques and quirky collectables there. As a New Zealander, from a country young in collectable material history, I loved the age of everything ... and the European flavour too.
The market is held every Sunday, in the carpark of the Carrefour supermarket in Waterloo. There are so many small stalls that it took us 3 hours walking to explore them all today. Last weekend, unprepared for the heat and having left the house without breakfast, we gave up our exploration as heat exhaustion set in.
This Sunday we were ready. A good breakfast, sunhats, a bottle of water, comfortable shoes ... no worries, mate. We were off and wandering with relaxed intent.
And I came home with a few small treasures. I couldn't afford the beautiful 19th century travel writing desk at 40euro, nor could I justify the darling old 1960s opera binocular glasses 10euro, or the exquisitely-shaped whisky hip flask but ... I did buy a pipe-rack for 7 euro. The quote on it will make a pipe-collector of me. And I picked up my first, a clay-pipe, for 3euro.
But it was the little blue leather coin purse pictured below, by Neiman Marcus, that I loved best. The woman gave it to me for 1euro when she saw I only had a 20euro note. I wasn't even haggling because she had only wanted 3euro total.
It works like a pelican's beak perhaps. The silk-lined leather pouch expands as you fill it with coins. I love it.
Parking isn't usually a problem, there are clean toilets in the Carrefour complex, and there is a range of places to eat. The market itself is laid out in an easy to explore grid too - so we backtracked to a couple of retailers, just in case the traveling writing desk became justifiable ...
Highly recommended.
I wandered downstairs, still bubbling with joy after two back-to-back, rather successful, photoshoots and I saw this from the first floor window ...
The American and the Aussie prepared dinner tonight. The sun has returned and yes, we all ate outside. It was lovely.
I love people. Each person I meet seems like an interesting, richly-textured book and I do adore reading.
I love the parties we give at our house, enjoy bringing all the people we know together in one place but one of my ongoing works of fiction is about a woman who lives alone in the mountains with her dog. In the second storyline, she lives alone in Italy ... with her dog.
When I wandered out into the world, I was surprised to have people describe me as 'empathetic and sympathetic' ... immediately upon meeting me. I didn't recall that happening back in New Zealand. Obviously not everyone out here feels this way but it happens often enough to startle me.
Recently my psychological boundaries were described as porous which fascinated me because yes ... The definition was a relief, in a way, because it could be said I don't come from a culture that is famous for its sensitivity. It was mock or be mocked while I was growing up. You had to learn to be fast to avoid the witty verbal slapping that is the affectionate norm.
I learned to laugh off my sensitivity, excusing it as a writer's imagination however when it comes to photography, I am finally learning to be grateful. Those same senses I wish I could dull down a little in my everyday life come into their own during a photography session.
Photography, for me, is all about being completely and utterly engaged and present. You need to be able to sense your client's needs. If you're on a documentary photo-shoot it's more about disappearing completely while working but in portraiture, it is all about the attempt to capture the relationship between the photographer and the subject. It's about trust and respect. And there is that magical moment when you just know that they're with you.
I photographed these guys as part of the 24 hour family photo-shoot I recently completed and I think this was 'that moment' ... the moment when they relaxed into the shoot. When they saw my respect and decided to trust me as their photographer.
This morning, I emerged from a nightmare at 5am and I fell straight into one of my anxiety attacks. I've been under a lot of a pressure these last few days. So many stories that don't get told here but that weave their way into my life and bite me anyway.
To come back from one feels like making my way back down from Mt Everest without oxygen ... everytime. I know the way down but, quietly, I'm never sure I will find my way because lordy ... I'm having an anxiety attack.
I love this sensitivity. I don't ever want to lose it because my work needs it but I'm learning to recognise and manage these funny little traits of mine. Let's see how it goes.
It's 10.46am and I'm back from the mountain ... ready for the day now.
Tonight, laughing some, my Rwandan friend and I decided to try and cook dinner for the vegetarians sharing this big old house with us ...
You need to know that she had been studying and I had been working all day long ... that we're not vegetarians, that we have a ton of zucchinis and eggs that need eaten and well ... yes, these are disclaimers.
So I found a recipe that seemed like a rather delightful zucchini patty, using eggs too... as a bonus. The hens are all laying. There is this constant egg avalanche going down here.
We didn't take the excessive watery nature of the zucchini into account and ... the recipe didn't mention it either. So we grated zucchini, broke eggs, realised we were going have to take a hit because we didn't have baking powder in the house, chopped onions, smushed garlic, added chilli (to their batch) and cumin.
And I whipped up the little cherry tomato and feta cheese salad thingy that appears, quite oddly, in the middle of the recipe.
I can't even think of tonight's zucchini fritters without giggling. The excess of water made it seem like we'd added cheese AND as I cooked them, I had another of those 'recovered memories' of cooking in a previous life ... in a previous marriage ... in another country. I remembered that I used to squeeze the excess liquid out of the potatoes when making potato fritters, or pre-cook them ... never mind.
The vegetarians, the charming Aussie bloke from Melbourne and the lovely woman from Long Island, soldiered on and took second helpings.
I quickly wandered off and made a 'ohmygodi'msorryhere'sapavlova' dessert and all is good, here in this Wallonian world, that region where we completely lost touch with anything resembling summer. Tonight the house smells of woodsmoke and food. We had to bow to the weather gods and light the fire.
But last night's dinner ... now that is worth posting a photograph. This is what happens when a vegetarian cooks vegetarian food. It was stunningly good.
It's not happening this year ...the rain keeps returning, the grey skies reappear again and again.
We've had glimpses of a glorious summer but no, it disappears and is replaced by weather so foul that you forget that you had those warm and promising days.
On the bright side, the garden continues to thrive. The rhubarb, back home, has been prolific. Here in Wallonia, the zucchinis are going crazy too. We fight our way through a reasonably abundant supply of fresh tomatoes and beans. The hens are all laying, so we 4 are dreaming up things to cook with those eggs.
Peach clafoutis and pavlova are at the top of the list, quiche too.
I have set up a work station at the dining room table, here in the light-filled kitchen, keeping company/kept company by the lovely Rwandan woman studying for her examinations. I think we have given up on summer. She mistook this morning's drizzle for snow. That it didn't seem impossible probably tells you how we feel about summer these days.
Anyway, here's a glimpse of the house where I'm staying ... just a corner for now. I have to work out how to photograph it, in all its hugeness, and I need to learn the story of it more precisely. There is a Nobel prize winner involved in its history ...
It's taken me years to understand this thing about me ...that for me, the journey truly is the destination.
It goes like this ... it's not that I simply want a cup of coffee and any old coffee will do. It's that I want a coffee that tastes good, and I love it even more if it comes in a cup I adore.
My parents didn't raise me like this. I suspect their preference might have been that I was the complete opposite, simply because they didn't intend raising princesses but there you go ... it happens to the best of families.
But journey doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing, nor the destination. My favourite house was a fairly grotty little one-and-a-half bedroom cottage that sat on the edge of Otago Harbour. Everything about it was run-down and make-do but I loved the wall of old-fashioned wooden floor-to-ceiling-windows that gave me a view out over the lawn and the harbour.
I loved the drive home ... the twisting-turning kilometres between Dunedin city and Broad Bay, the narrow confines of a road that ran along the harbour-edge and tat was framed by a steeply-rising hillside in places.
I packed my Nespresso coffee-machine for this time in the Wallonian countryside but told myself not to be silly about taking a cup too ...
Yesterday, we wandered over to Lille, France. A car full of internationals and voila, what did I decide I might do. I thought I might quietly keep an eye open for a cup for my coffee while I'm out here.
Voila! I found this and it works. That first coffee this morning was just so veryvery good in the red cup.
There is not much better, I believe, than waking up out in the country.
Wandering down the exquisitely substantial staircase this morning, unpacking my Nespresso machine once in the kitchen (well, yes I did bring it), and the bread, butter and peach jam, I realised I had really done it. I had moved to the country ... just for a few days.
The family surged in and around and out and then were gone ... in their car packed full of people and laughter, heading for France. I waved them goodbye, with the Wwoofers - a lovely Australian and American couple - and the veryvery sad dog.
The roof guys arrived ... Eastern Europeans I've been told. And I wandered back up those stairs to create some desk space for me and my boxloads of research and work.
Here is my space. I look down on a small forest from my first floor window. The set-up is not ergonomic in any way, shape or form ... in fact, I suspect it runs more along the lines of one of the top 10 ways to deliberately destroy yourself. I'll work on it over the next few days.
Meanwhile, 29 celsius is expected today. The sky is a deep blue, as I sit here at the window. The garden is full of courgettes, tomatoes and all kinds of other delights waiting for dinner tonight. The hens are rumoured to be laying well. I may have packed some of my favourite Spanish red wine ...
Now, to work.
I have a new screen for my laptop !
It sits here, next to my trusty and much-loved 14 inch laptop screen ... dwarfing it, at 22 inches.
How have I suvived until now???
Gert talked me into the screen.
Me, the sometimes wandering woman, who doesn't want to load herself down with or even get used to a mouse ... I just make do with my laptop's touchpad thingy. It drives others crazy when they borrow my laptop.
Sigh. I'm already in love with this massive screen. 5 minutes after test-driving it.
My photographs ... they look so damn good on the big screen.
Hmmm, I need to think how I can incorporate this into my wandering life. Milan ground staff already give me trouble when they weigh my equipment hand-luggage. The same hand-luggage I fly to Italy with is too heavy toleave with. A 22 inch screen ... and maybe even I wouldn't dare to be outraged about that.
Mutter mutter, I shall have to practice driving on the wrong side of the road, and work on being far more aggressive. I'll drive to Italy from now on ... shan't I.
Bliss... problems problems but BLISS.
Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.
C.S.Lewis, from Till We Have Faces
Yesterday ended in a frenzy of activity around midnight ... after a long 2 days of processing a few hundred photographs.
A few weeks ago I had fallen while carrying my laptop. I was lucky and only the cd player was broken but it has taken until now to replace it with an external setup.
Last night was 'the burning' of images - onto cd and dvds.
In the end, there are only 600+ images - flying off to various friends in Madrid and Brussels, and sitting here on my desk for Antwerp too.
But yesterday wasn't all about photographs. I did stop periodically. I listened to this tv interview with Carl Jung. And, at some point, I had a craving to search for an old old favourite of mine ... Harry Chapin.
I have Mr Tanner playing as I write this, reminding me of those long-ago days, back in Christchurch, when Trevor first introduced me to Harry.
In days past, I emerged from a beautiful book by Yasmin Crowther - The Saffron Kitchen. Absolutely recommended. Also, from the same secondhand bookshop, I have just started A Round-Heeled Woman, by Jane Juska. It makes me smile. Who can resist a back cover that states, “Before I turn 67 – next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”
I'm loving the way it turns the notion of aging on its head.
"Do not go gentle into that good night"
We mustn't. We must live until we die. Mustn't we.
Expecting 32 celsius today ... before the thunderstorms come, around 21.00, and if the Buienradar is to be believed, they look impressive.
Now ... back to the to-do list with Harry.
Leaving facebook has taken me out of the news-loop. I know some interesting people over there. There were the real life friends and the faraway friends, the new friends too but there were also the journalists and professors and peace activists.
I didn't want to sleep in life. I had done that in New Zealand, where discussions about the situation in the Middle East and the history of oil and colonisation didn't really happen in my worlds. Even later, at university, I opted to wander between literature and anthropology. Always seeking a kind of beauty as opposed to cold hard facts and sciences.
I'm going wandering next week. Stepping out of this everyday city life and into another kind of life. One that will involve living out in the country, eating freshly-laid eggs, and picking vegetables from the garden.
Did I tell you, I've been dabbling with becoming vegetarian. I'm liking it so far, although still only dabbling.
And out there, in the peace of the countryside, I'm planning on writing like I haven't written since I reached 27,000 words in a novel back when I lived on that airforce base in New Zealand.
I'm thinking of early mornings, with coffee. out on the verandah. The kind of early mornings where I get to see sunrises outside in a good way again. And tasty coffee ... I'm packing the Nespresso machine because kidnapping a barista would just be rude, and taking their high quality coffee machine would be theft.
And everything I have on Genova is going in too.
Meanwhile I've been playing in Photoshop, with one of my favourite Istanbul photographs. Beginning again ...
I have just completed post-processing the 50th wedding anniversary photographs and, yet again, I realise just how much people trust me with themselves ... whether they realise it at the time or not.
I ended up with almost 220 images that told the story of a couple who have been married for 50 years, of their son, extended family, and their friends.
I was pleased with the results but there was one more job that had to be done. One of the comments most made about my style of documentary photography is that people forget I am there ... that I disappear and, therefore, they are often stunned by the results ... by the ways I captured them or their event.
That final job is going through the results and taking out those images that reveal too much. An emotion, a conversation, a sadness.
It's done. My new tally is 197.
Now ... to show them.
Miss 8 and I have been gadding about lately ... ignoring the fact that we have had no weather that resembles summer weather and just getting on with the summer holiday thing.
Sunday was a big day. I was off on a 24 hour, more or less, documentary-style family photo-shoot. She was coming as my assistant, although she was soon distracted by her new best friend, as per the picture below.
The family were located in a big old house way out in the Belgian countryside. It rained so hard, on Sunday, and the temperature dropped so low that ... the fire was lit. Now tell me, is there any sweeter smell than a wood-burning fire?
No, I don't think so either.
There I was, out in the middle of nowhere, taking a gazillion photographs of a most beautiful family, absolutely delighting in all those delicious scents and events that reminded me of long ago, in a far-away land ...
Just as I was getting used to the house being empty ... it filled up again.
Miss 8 was offered the chance to come back from Germany, with Mimi, and we all agreed it would be a grand idea. Then Gert's children arrived too, 2 days into that visit, and we had dinner guests last night.
I had been mad-busy processing a beautiful series of yoga photographs for a friend. Meanwhile Anna and I contine to fine-tune the itinerary plans for the 2 and 5-day photography and video workshops for women in Genova, Italy.
Suddenly life flipped again, and became all about cooking and cleaning, entertaining, expeditions, and long periods of reading Harry Potter aloud in the evenings. Sahara and I have been retiring upstairs to read after dinner ... we're up to Book 4 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I had never read the books or viewed the movies and so, we're both having fun.
Our book-reading sessions are often interspersed with long conversations about all kinds of things. Little Miss 8 is a wise woman indeed.
There has been a juggling act going on with the laundry and getting it dry around a multitude of thunderstorms and torrential downpours ... summer in Belgium has been 'interesting' so far, although Gert's garden is thriving.
This weekend continues with busy. Gert's kids leave but I'm photographing the 50th wedding anniversary of a friend's parents, and then there's this fabulous documentary photography experiment coming up. The one where I move in with the family for 24 hours and create a slice of life family portrait ... capturing formal through into informal moments. The children at play, bedtime stories and breakfast. Dinner, with everyone staying there at the moment, and the quiet times too.
It's exactly the kind of photography I adore and I'm so looking forward into exploring the feasibility of offering people this very intimate kind of documentation of their family life.
And then we have been gifted the use of a rather special house later in summer and it is there that I hope to finish up work on THE BOOK. Writing is often why I disappear to Genova simply because I fall off the world and into my writing, when I write. It's so often not an option here ...
And that's how it is here at the moment.
I have to share this beautiful moment in New Zealand's history ... I wanted to put it someplace so I can go back to it sometimes.
We were so proud of him, that country of mine.
Anyway, let me quote wikipedia, to get the story right: David Lange was the 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989. He headed New Zealand's fourth Labour Government, one of the most reforming administrations in his country's history, but one which did not always conform to traditional expectations of a social-democrat party.
He had a reputation for cutting wit (sometimes directed against himself) and eloquence. His government implemented far-reaching free-market reforms. Helen Clark has described New Zealand's nuclear-free legislation as his legacy.
Lange made his name on the international stage with a long-running campaign against nuclear weapons. His government refused to allow nuclear-armed ships into New Zealand waters, a policy that New Zealand continues to this day. The policy, developing in 1985, had the effect of prohibiting United States Navy ships from visiting New Zealand.
This displeased the United States and Australia: they regarded the policy as a breach of treaty obligations under ANZUS and as an abrogation of responsibility in the context of the Cold War against the Soviet bloc. After consultations with Australia and after negotiations with New Zealand broke down, the United States announced that it would suspend its treaty obligations to New Zealand until the re-admission of United States Navy ships to New Zealand ports, characterising New Zealand as "a friend, but not an ally".
Erroneous claims sometimes suggest that David Lange withdrew New Zealand from ANZUS. His government's policy may have prompted the US's decision to suspend its ANZUS Treaty obligations to New Zealand, but that decision rested with the U.S. government, not with the New Zealand government.
The Oxford Union debate shown below, went out live on New Zealand television in March 1985 showcased Lange, a skilled orator, arguing for the proposition that "nuclear weapons are morally indefensible", in opposition to U.S. televangelist Jerry Falwell. Lange regarded his appearance at the Oxford Union as the highest point of his career in politics.
His speech included his memorable statement "I can smell the uranium on it [your breath]...!"
Life has been busy, with days tumbling over one another and to-do lists that seemed impossible. The knowledge of things left undone was pressing down on me.
I knew that I had to wait. That there were things to be done in those weeks leading up to us taking my daughter and granddaughter to Frankfurt. And we had the lovely Australian called Jobe staying with us in that last week. A Tasmanian, and a friend of Jessie's, he ended up helping her with the packing and cleaning here in this Belgian life, in-between visiting Bruges, Brussels and Antwerp.
Saturday rolled round and exhausted, we 3 New Zealanders and the Belgian packed ourselves into the car and began negotiating the roadworks that hugely delayed our 4-5 hour journey between here and Frankfurt.
It was hot. The rental car didn't have A/C. One series of roadworks saw us take 30 minutes to crawl 3kms. We were stuck in it for 45 minutes ...
But Frankfurt is beautiful. It's not my beloved Genova but the city planners have bowed to Nature, seemingly respecting her. It's clean, it's pretty and it was okay leaving my people there.
Home again, and the itinerary for the 2 and 5-day photography workshops is done. I have projects and plans all over my working desk here, forcing me to move my book work upstairs to the now spare big bedroom. The step children have gone home ... it's just about me and my work. Well, there is 3-storeys of quirky Belgian house to clean and reclaim but that can be baby steps.
Summer comes and goes here, on a daily basis. We can go from an ordinary 15 celsius kind of day up to 29 celsius, almost in the blink of the eye. Gert's rhubarb is going crazy ... actually his garden is. There are parsnips and silverbeet seedlings, raspberrys, and the herbs are ferociously wild. My Jasmine and Lavender are pleasing me ... actually, it's not bad outside, in the tiny pocket-sized Belgian backyard.
And I have a title for my book on Genova that is so unbelievably perfect that I shall keep it completely secret until publishing.
I'll leave you with a photograph of Miss 7 and I messing around with the camera in Central Station, here in Antwerp sometime last winter ...
I do believe I shall be miserable without my little soulmate somewhere close by ...
