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Reviews: Derek Henderson - The Terrible Boredom of Paradise
Derek Henderson - The Terrible Boredom of Paradise |
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With text by Hannah Scott and an interview by Magda Keaney
O Te Rama Marae, McKinnon Road, McNab, Derek Henderson's book is the result of three and a half months spent travelling New Zealand by road with a 4 x 5 large format camera. Sixty-three richly printed colour plates take us from January to April 2004 and from Westport, South Island to Hikurangi, North Island, a journey of 13,000 kilometres. In taking the photographs Henderson would often pull up by the roadside at a scene that caught his eye. He would compose each picture as spontaneously as he could and take just one or two frames. The photographs, however, are far from snapshots; they have a sense of grandeur that is balanced with banality. Henderson's large format camera has captured minute detail so that everything is given the same attention. His considered compositions are still and quiet. The absence of events and sensationalism give the viewer space to look for themselves. Most often we look from a distance and the horizon line is visible under a sweeping sky. There are rarely people in the photographs; a fact not of the photographer's editing but a record of a lack of community. We are invited to stare hard at clues that tell us about the absent inhabitants. |
In King Country off State Highway 4 at 12.50pm on 3rd March 2004 the bright midday sun shines down on a farm, beneath forested hills. A herd of cows graze on arid ground beside several shack-like buildings. Paint is peeling. A gate slopes, tipped off its hinge. Henderson says of New Zealand, where he spent his childhood, 'It's beautiful but there are things wrong with it'. Paradise has become a place where there is boredom as well as diverse social tensions and a troubled socio-economic climate. There is a loss of vitality and a sense of lament. The Te Aroha Youth Club, Ward Street, Raetihi, Rangitkei, Wanganui at 7.10pm on 10th March 2004, looks desolate. Henderson has monumentalised this solitary building with its face-like frontage. The golden evening light shines through a tree pouring long shadows onto the road.
Settlement Road, Henderson's road trip and democratic way of photographing pay homage to several American photographers working in the latter part of the twentieth Century. His 'ready-mades' are the result of looking, choosing and recording. And, like Robert Adams's 'New Topography' of the 1960s and 1970s, Henderson highlights human impact on landscape. The power lines against the sea, the rusting train carriage that frames a mountain, the dilapidated shack incongruously boasting a blooming hydrangea show a country where beauty is everywhere but often ignored and invariably damaged. Evidence of this intervention builds through the book. The aspects of unsightliness shown against the dramatic backdrop of vast landscapes make the photographs both beautiful and compelling. Available in bookshops, distribution by Artdata. Clare Freestone |
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