Things Found ...

I use Facebook.  It works for clients who want to come along for the ride, it works as a place to escape for a few minutes when I'm alone here at the desk for days on end. 

And I find and share things there but they're lost, quite fast, as that world scrolls through the days, weeks and months.

So I might start noting my best finds here once a week. 

I loved this story about two anonymous artists known as Dangerdust.  Art students who, once a week, sneak in a create a chalk masterpiece at Columbus College of Art and Design.  There's an interview with them over here, one where they retain their anonimity.  

Jaron Gilinsky writes an important article titled When a Kidnapped Journalist is a Freelancer.  Freelancers are often people driven to tell the story, capture a truth, however this was sobering: 'Like most freelancers, Ricardo went into war zones sans insurance. The reason has more to do with cold, hard economics than with bravado.

Photos rarely sell for the price of a train ticket. Videos rarely sell for more than the cost of a plane ticket. Trusted insurance policies that cover death, terrorism, kidnapping, extortion, etc. cost thousands of dollars over the course of a year. For the majority of freelancers who are living hand to mouth, such policies are simply unaffordable.'

I was introduced to the work of Tyler Knott, author, poet, photographer and artist.  A visit to his website felt like a rather lovely gift to myself.

I rediscovered one of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroes, Sophie Scholl.  She was born in 1921 and while she was a university student in Munich, she and her brother, Hans formed a non-violent, anti-Nazi resistance group with several friends.  They called it the White Rose. The group ran a leaflet and graffiti campaign calling on their fellow Germans to resist Hilter's regime.

At her execution, Scholl made this final statement: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"

There's a movie.

And that reminds me, I discovered a website called A Mighty Girl.  Having grown without the influence of strong role models this seems like a gift to pass around.

Then there was the story of The Missing in the Mediterranean.  Every month, hundreds in north Africa and the Middle East leave by boat to seek new lives in Europe. But many vanish without trace.  Immigrants are very much a political football in our time but I suspect that many of those violently opposed to freedom of movement in times of danger and difficulties would be first to flee countries where violence and poverty reign.

The New Zealand Movie, Pa Boys, is finally out on dvd.  I've been desperate to view it but so very stuck on the other side of the world.  I just need to order it now.  They're also running a talent search for unpublished music for the sequel.  I'm rapt.

There is so much more but this is more than enough for a first listing of things I've read and enjoyed. I hope there's something for you too.

 

A Hangi in Belgium

I thought I could be tough on what was 'good enough' with this documentary-style series capturing the Hangi. But I'm finding that I want to include almost everything because all the photographs seem important to the story.

I realised that it's not just about cooking food in the ground, it's about the community that forms as people work together. And it was about the people who came and went during the process - it was kind of tidal, with different folk appearing at different stages.

But most of all, it was about the people who worked on it - those on a tour who saw help was needed and climbed into it with their experience from 'back home in NZ', with their strength, despite wearing boat shoes or white sneakers.

In the end it was all about the feeling surrounding the process ... it was quite staggeringly beautiful.

At the moment, I'm not sure one photograph captures it all. It's a story to be told with many photographs.

A Day ...

I'm off to Norway in August.  There's a photography workshop to run for the rather extraordinarily talented woman who is Ren Powell.

And there was an invitation to a Hangi too, in London.

However there are 137 documentary photographs from this day of labouring, 137 that I a really pleased with ... although there are 'quite some' to go.  I think it might be another night and day here in the chair.

Meanwhile ... I love this image of the Maori flag firmly planted in a Flemish field ...

And now, to cook some Persian chicken for dinner.

ANZAC Day

Today is all about processing the 400+ photographs I took out on Flanders Fields, in the village of Mesen, on the occasion of ANZAC Day. 

My grandfather was at Gallipoli, Turkey ... and later he was out on the Somme, in France, with his horse.  Whether he made it to Flanders Fields with the rest of the Otago Mounted Rifles, I don't know ... he was injured on the Somme and found the experience of war so appalling that he would rarely speak of it.

I went twice to Gallipoli, while living in Turkey.  The Turks have forgiven the invaders and actually take good care of the soldiers who fell there. In fact ...

Turkey became a republic in 1923 and Kemal became the first president. During his 15-year rule, many sweeping changes were introduced to the political, legal and socioeconomic fields. He was an immortal hero to his people and an extraordinary leader and peacemaker. Kemal said in 1933, "I look to the world with an open heart full of pure feelings and friendship". In 1934, he accepted the title "Atatürk" (father of the Turks).

In 1934 Atatürk wrote a tribute to the ANZACs killed at Gallipoli:  Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

This shot was taken in Mesen, as the New Zealand navy greeted Bruce Simpson of Ngati Rana, the London Maori Club.

The Arts, Kurt Vonnegut

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country.

This song, by Ingrid Michaelson, seemed the right kind of sound for the sunshiney, whimsical afternoon this day became ...

Needing the Sea

There's a beach over in Zeeland, Holland.  It's as good as it gets within a short driving distance and so we go, occasionally ... so this kiwi can breathe some sea air and collect some more shells for here at her desk.


On Travel and Reading

Travelling, too, is something you have to learn.  It is a constant transaction with others in the course of which you are simultaneously alone.  And therein lies the paradox: you journey alone in a world which is controlled by others.

Cees Nooteboom, extract Nomad's Hotel, Travels in Time and Space.

This morning I was that woman engrossed in her book as my trams crossed the city.  Those first chapters in Cees Nooteboom's Nomad's Hotel were electrifying. 

I love revisiting the books on my shelves next to my desk.  This one is dated 2008, in my handwriting.  I've been to Venice in years since.  Cees has some truly divine descriptions of that city I didn't fall in love with. 

Zinc light, the painter does not yet know what he is going to do with this day, leave it as it is, add some more copper, a greenish sheen, accentuate the grey, or alternatively flood everything with more light.

This morning, as I read, I realised that I read to travel.  When I can't 'leave', I climb into a book and go anyway.  But when I travel, in actuality, I read too.  I become a devourer of books, on buses, planes and trains, enjoying those quiet alone-spaces and the freedom to read without a long list of must-do things queuing up there in front of me, and people I must give my attention to.

And then, when alone and out traveling, I read myself to sleep.

Returning from the weekend that took me 'home', back to people I understood, shared a humour with, people who reminded me of who I am at my core ... re-entry has been interesting.  There is always so much more to understand about the self.

Life as the journey.  Perhaps that's it.  There always something new.

And my latest 'new' thing was photographing the Hangi, from beginning to end.  Here is the magnificent fire that heated the stones that were later buried with the food and cooked it all.

Lenn

I met Lenn at the Peace Village, out on Flanders Fields, yesterday and asked if I might document the story of a New Zealand Hangi.

He said yes.

And what I didn't know was that it's as much about cooking the food as it is about the people involved ... and those drawn in when it comes time to share the food.

In the end I felt extraordinarily fortunate to be there for those hours and I felt my little Kiwi soul fill up and overflow with joy.

It was extraordinary.

Thank you, Lenn, for putting up with my camera and I.

The Hangi Blokes, Flanders Fields

I captured these kiwi blokes taking a well-earned break after finishing up work on the Hangi.

You really couldn't wish to meet nicer, harder-working, big-hearted, highly-amusing Kiwi blokes than these guys.  They simply impressed me ... and made me laugh more than once.

The Tino Rangatiratanga Flag

It’s been over 20 years since the birth of the Tino Rangatiratanga flag with Rangitaane Marsden citing its launch date as the 6th of February 1990.  Now it has been adopted by many and flies in places of significance across the nation.

Rangitaane Marsden says “the flag in a sense reflects the creation story but if you take it to another level black reflects the potential, red reflects the realities and white reflects the wisdom and illumination that come with a persons own individual being”.

Source: Māori News, the Origins of the Māori Flag.

I spent most of yesterday outside in a field near the Peace Village, photographically documenting a Hangi.

The image below was taken while they were still heating up to tiles used in the hangi pit.  It was a stunning fire ... one that burned so hard and so long.  I was fascinated.

Thank you, so much, to Lenn Krosschell and those helping him for allowing me to hang round and take photographs.

And there in the background, the Tino Rangatiratanga Flag blowing strong in that Flanders Fields breeze.

 

Ngāti Rānana, on Flanders Fields, Belgium

 

Ngāti Rānana London Māori Club aims to provide New Zealanders residing in the United Kingdom and others interested in Māori culture an environment to teach, learn and participate in Māori culture.

The three guiding principles of Ngāti Rānana are whanaungatanga (togetherness), manaakitanga (looking after one another/hospitality) and kōtahitanga (unity).

Source: the Ngāti Rānana website.

These guys were in Mesen/Messines this weekend and they touched the hearts of everyone who saw them perform.

 

Ralph Hotere, New Zealand Artist

He was very gentle but held strong views and was extremely inquisitive and interested in many things.

Jeanne Macaskill, artist, describing Ralph Hotere

I think, sometimes, we can grow lacking appropriate role models.  We assume we fit the world wrong and that we carry the burden to change.  But it's untrue.  I think it is more that the institutions that define and model 'correct' behaviour often have it all wrong.

Rather than exploring the full range of what it is to be human, we are shaped so as to fit the structure already in place.

I wish someone had told that it was possible to be gentle and hold strong views.  That one didn't cancel out all possibility of the other.  Strong views do not a monster make. 

The word most used in describing Ralph is the word generous.  That is how friends and colleagues remembered him and yet, he was a man of strong political views ... a man who believed 'art and politics are not separate things, because life does not allow them to be.'

He was described as a warrior artist.  His greatest works embraced great causes.  He used elegance, power, and beauty.  He was a builder of bridges between people.  These are just a handful of the things I've read about Ralph Hotere.

Source: Mirata Mita's documentary series at the end of this post

New Zealand poet Cilla McQueen, one of Hotere's 3 wives wrote 3 beautiful fragments on the Listener magazine's memorial page to Ralph after his death in 2013.  She wrote of time spent in Avignon as a family, 'We knew these were precious days, of dappled sunlight, warm earth, lavender, grapes, melons, rosé wine. I wrote because a camera was not enough.'

He was a talented artist, a stunningly generous man who gave away more then half of his art - gifts to friends, a silent man who believed that 'there are very few things I can say about my work that are better than saying nothing', a man who understood 'precious days' ... a man I don't want to forget because he shows that it's okay to be everything, to own that character that makes us so uniquely ourselves.

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries, Brussels

Last night was one of those extraordinary nights spent with good people while doing marvelous things.

I had wandered over to Brussels in time to meet Lynette after work.  We met up with New Zealand artist, Wendy Leach and together we walked to Irma's house, where New Zealand photographer, Jacque Gilbert, was arriving fresh from her Amsterdam world.

I cannot begin to describe how lovely it was to find myself sitting there with these women, glasses of wine in hand, food on the table ... just talking.  It was one of those magical moments you experience sometimes, one of those ones where you think about pinching yourself to see if it's real.

But that was only the beginning.  We had come together because we were attending a literary event at the bookshop called Passa Porta.  I had never heard of it before last night but their event was impossible to resist.  Lynette had written, telling us all that she had booked tickets to an event with Eleanor Catton.  The writer who convincingly won the Man Booker Prize in 2013 with her book The Luminaries.  Annelies Verbeke, a Flemish writer, was to interview Eleanor.

We arrived at the shop and the room was already quite full.  I'm sure there were more than 100 people there. And then it began and honestly, sometimes I was close to the point of tears.  Before photography, writing was my great big passion.  I still write but somehow it slipped into the background as photography strode to the forefront in my life.

Last night, there I was, listening to Eleanor and Annelies talk while delighting in the way she was willing to kind of crack open her novel ... revealing her motivations, ideas, goals, and more.

I loved her 832 page novel, The Luminaries, for so many reasons.  It was set in New Zealand but more than that, on the west coast of the South Island in a town I've loved since I was a teenager.  My cousins came from Hokitika. It was a small town with a wild savage beauty back then.  The Tasman Sea still comes roaring across from Australia crashing in on the shore there.  And a few miles inland you can see the powerful outline of the Southern Alps rising up, appearing to trap you between the wild coast and the mountains.

I returned to Hokitika in 2012 and it had changed, so much.  So little, and so much.  The road through the alps to the east coast is a highway these days ... a rugged New Zealand highway but still, simpler to cross than it was back in 1866.  The year Eleanor Catton's novel opens ... goldrush days in that wild place.

She read the opening scene to us before Annelies began with her questions.  The audience became completely silent.  The room was still as she read.  Annelies asked some superb questions and Eleanor answered them, fully, completely.  To the point where I will reread the book because I understand how she intended we use the astrological information.  And while she was clear on the fact that it's not important to understanding the story, it does add another layer or ten to the complexity of the story.

There was a question time and an invitation to stay for the book signing.  New Zealand wine was handed out, courtesy of the New Zealand Embassy.

I'm not really a creature who wants my books signed by authors.  BUT I did want to talk with Eleanor, to tell her how much I had enjoyed both the book and the evening.

I started my university degree in 1998 because I needed to earn two papers before I could apply for Bill Manhire's creative writing course ... way back then.  I lost my way, stayed on at university and never did apply for the course.

Listening to Eleanor brought everything back.  Those days on Stewart Island, a writing workshop with Patricia Grace.  The Otago University's summer writing schools.  Those days of writing.  And so I bought a second copy of the book and waited my turn in the queue.  Somehow, despite the intensity of the interview she had just come through, Eleanor made time to really talk with every person who approached her. 

It turned out that we were wearing the same greenstone necklace.  The same hook.  I explained I had needed some of 'home' to bring back to Europe, to wear close to me, and that it came from a place just along the road from Hokitika. 

Today I wrote, over on Facebook,  that I found Eleanor Catton to be intelligent, gracious, patient, humble ... and you know, everything good.  I didn't exaggerate. If you get the chance to hear her speak, I recommend you do it.

Lynette (on the left in the photograph below), the woman who made it all possible because I would have missed this without her, gave me her camera and I took a series of photographs. 

But you see ...?


Christine Mason Miller - The Conscious Booksmith.

I'm teaching this course because I need it.

Christine Mason Miller,  talking of her e-course, The Conscious Booksmith.

I've signed up to do another workshop in the months ahead.  Like the marketing workshop, this one is absolutely vital for me to move forward into a world I know nothing about. 

And so when a woman I have been 'following' online for years, a woman whose work I love, and whose way of putting herself out into the world fills me with respect, offers a workshop on how to make my book real while fitting it into the flow of my own chaotic life ... then obviously I'm going to sign up.

It helps that it is affordable otherwise I might have been left at the window looking in like a kid longing to join but unable to.  But that's something else about Christine.  Her self-confessed mission is about 'Creating spaces, gatherings, businesses, communities, brands and containers that inspire healing, transformation, and stepping more fully into the truth of the world's relentless need for our unique voice in the world.'

In the months ahead, as I step into the flow with my photography workshops, I will also be hard at work on this book I've been dreaming about for years.  And while it has changed from 'all about me and that city I love' to being 'all about that city', it's an idea that has never disappeared.  Only altered and bloomed into something much more than I expected.  And I love what it is set on becoming.

If you are creating any kind of book, take a look at Christine's introduction to her course ...

The Conscious Booksmith: A Mindful Approach to Creating Your Book // with Christine Mason Miller from Animyst on Vimeo.