PHOTOBOOK NZ
I recently flew across the sea, with a suitcase full of books, to Photobook NZ, a festival that connects New Zealand's photobook community with the world. Held in Wellington at the Museum of New Zealand: Te Papa Tongarewa and the College of Creative Arts at Massey University, the second biennial festival welcomed high calibre international guests from around the world.
Throughout the lectures I was fortunate enough to attend, the act of returning again and again to a place, and the weaving of poetic words with photographs reverberated. I sadly missed Carolle Bénitah’s talk, who’s work literally strings together photographs, using “beads, coloured threads and scissors to alter her family photographs and albums to explore the memories of her childhood, and as a way to help her understand her current identity.” I was also devastated to miss presentations by Teju Cole, in town for the New Zealand Festival, although he did make an appearance at the opening of Photobook NZ.
I listened to Bryan Schutmaat (whose photobooks Grays the Mountain Sends and Islands of the Blest borrow their titles from literature) articulately locate his photographic work in the both the history of America and the American west, and the history of images and words about the American west. In Islands of the Blest, I found a kindred spirit to my own archive-mining photobook practice, it’s "photographs depict various places in the American West, and were taken over a one hundred-year period, from the 1870s through the 1970s. All of the images were sourced from digital public archives.” I observe a rising trend of archive-mining, enabled and compelled by the exponentially growing sea of images we swim among. Despite legal blessing to use public archives, I have often felt like I’m stealing, taking credit for work that I did not make, instead fishing for photographs and serving only what I deem worthy. The recognition Bryan has achieved legitimises this practice in my conscience.
Esteemed British photographer and academic, Jem Southam walked us through work he made in an attempt to answer a question, a practice which often generated new questions about the world, new paths to photograph – "What is a river?" "What is winter?" "What a swan is, or might be?” These seemingly simple questions give depth to his work, but also stem back to bigger question all creatives must ask, "Where do ideas come from?” His approach is intelligent but not overcomplicated or pretentious, he spoke of the basics, asking questions, observing, notating and thinking.
Katrin Koenning, an Australian-based, German-born photographer, uses photography as a sense-making tool. Sharing her photographic journey, as well as her work, in an overflowing lecture theatre, it’s clear Katrin’s work is deeply personal, work no other photographer could make. She describes her process as work she’s making “in, and with, the world,” although (unlike many photographers) she prefers to “suggest something rather than describe it.” Katrin also shared photographs by her father, “I have his whole archive, which he wanted to chuck out one day – which is crazy.”
Photobook as Object / Photobook Who Cares, a live book making exhibition held at The Engine Room, allowed the audience to watch Michio Hayashi, Ryo Kusumoto and Tammy Law as they made various iterations of dummy photobooks, overseen by Yumi Goto, Curator of Reminders Photography Stronghold in Tokyo. The focus on hand making and materiality, was underpinned by concept – even the edition size was subject to align with the story of book.
I must also mention fellow my Australian photobook aficionados who made the trip – Libby Jeffery of Momento Pro (who has a gift for connecting people who should know each other), antipodean photobook historian Doug Spowart (who reccomended I look the research methodology he developed for his PhD) as well as Dan and Justine of Perimeter Books.
See you in 2020 Photobook NZ!
