Karen's Cert Phototgraphy: Term 2: Week 5 Digital Tech Joyce Campbell Response

Uxbridge Arts Joyce Campbell Te Taniwha & The Thread

Research:
Te Taniwha is an ongoing project, drawing on the mythology, history and ecology of Waikaremoana and its many tributaries and outlets, it traces the search for two great, serpentine water species: the Taniwha and the giant longfin eel.

Joyce Campbell has been working onsite in a field darkroom to produce ambrotypes and daguerreotypes at Te Reinga, home of the Taniwha Hinekörako. Contemporary cameras do not lend themselves to the depiction of mystery. Digital cameras have made photography an increasingly descriptive medium and also one that is open to greater manipulation than ever before. By contrast, the nineteenth century techniques of ambrotype and daguerreotype provide the photographer with extraordinarily detail, depth and richness while also having an innate tendency to produce artifacts from silver and ether that are spontaneous, open to interpretation and often extraordinarily beautiful. Campbell has taken photographs of caves, gullies, pools and cascades but her hope is that in the silver we might catch a glimpse of the Taniwha as well.

Te Taniwha, like Campbell's two previous photographic series, Crown Coach Botanical and Last Light:Antarctica, is a meditation on gothic and sublime aesthetic traditions, nineteenth century spiritualist photography and ecosystems in a state of crisis. With these latest photographs Campbell 's attention was drawn homeward, to the waterways between Te Urewera and Wairoa, the region where she grew up and to which she has deep personal connections.

Te Taniwha is an ongoing project, of which this exhibition is the first manifestation. Spun from multiple threads, drawing on the mythology, history and ecology of Waikaremoana and its many tributaries and outlets, it traces the search for two great, serpentine water species: the Taniwha and the giant longfin eel.

Uxbridge Arts Te Taniwha & The Thread by Joyce Campbell

Curated by Balamohan Shingade 15 May - 16 July 2015

Joyce Campbell: Artist Statement

My research lies at the intersection between academic specialties within creative practice, science and philosophy. My recent, ongoing research project Te Taniwha, extends this interdisciplinary reach to encompass Maori mythology, while my doctoral research anticipates a further extension from photographic practices into visionary literature and film. Underlying my interest in these divergent disciplines is a persistent questioning of the function of visual art during a time of rapidly accelerating global environmental crisis. My aim is to produce research that is simultaneously rigorous and true to several paradigms; that is both objective and opinionated, and that functions as documentary, as activism and as divination. I am a photographer who makes images of landscapes and of objects within landscapes. Recent theorization of such photography has been dominated by assertions of the sublime as a quality of both Nature and art. At a time when Nature stumbles and fails, this analogy is becoming distended to the point of collapse. I am attempting to theorize and visualize an ecology that is no longer overwhelming beyond imagination or speech, but rather is limited, damaged, injured and defiled, or resistant, volitional and responding with fury. To further my research goals, I have found myself turning to the sacred, the visionary and the mythological, and to primal images and experiences of the maternal body becoming animal.

Toru-rau-iri (2010) 16 mm film Eel

Tomo II (2010) fiber-based silver gelatin hand-printed photographs (from ambrotypes)

Te Taniwha series (these prints are fiber-based silver gelatin hand-printed photographs, 48″ x 67″ and 42″ x 60″)

The spring (2010)

Fiber-based silver gelatin hand-printed photographs

The roto (2010)

Fiber-based silver gelatin hand-printed photographs

The falls where the Taniwha Hinekorako resides (2010)
Fiber-based silver gelatin hand-printed photographs

The Tread

The Thread follows on from Joyce Campbell’s exhibition Te Taniwha, a project drawing on the mythology, history and ecology of Te Reinga, and is a further expression of her collaboration with Richard Niania, He Kaipupuri Korero o Ngai Kohatu – a holder of the stories of Ngai Kohatu.

Ngai Kohatu are kaitiaki of Whakapunake maunga, the sacred mountain that rises above Te Reinga to dominate the landscape of the Wairoa region and to which the tribal groups known as Te Tini-a-Maui affiliate. The mountain’s name is derived from the word pÅ«nake meaning receptacle, and it describes the mountain as the metaphorical container for the fish hook of Maui, who is said to have foul-hooked and dragged Te Ika a Maui to the ocean surface at this site.

Eighty years ago the mountain burnt in a hunting accident from which the vegetation has never regenerated. During the first photo shoot the mountain was enveloped by dense cloud and Campbell struggled to orient herself in a field of skeletal trunks that are the remnants of the virgin forest destroyed in that disaster. When those images were developed Campbell discovered that her film had been damaged – by age, heat or radiation – so that the images already obscured by fog were further clouded by the disintegration of the material surface of the film.

The centre piece of the exhibition is The Thread, a sculpture cast in sterling silver from the roots of the Nikau Palm. Knotted and split, the thread embodies an analogy- between living systems, genealogies, and the entangled trajectories of conscious thought. Between this thread and the surrounding photographs, which are also rendered in silver, an idea emerges – to do with disorientation and reorientation, loss and connection – with the mountain as its locus.

E hui ana nga wai Water gathers

He Miro The tread

Ko (Whaka) Puna The receptacle

Response: Joyce Campbell
Evaluation:
Joyce Campbell develops her film in a darkroom large format. The rich and contrasting effects are produced from this method. Very time consuming. Campbell put a lot of love and care into her photos. This is shown in her work. A lot of research and time is spent getting to know her environment, history and people. The black and white images have a lot of depth and character. I feel this would be lost if they where presented in colour. The presentation at the Uxbridge Art Centre curated by Balamohan Shingade has a very tranquil and inviting layout. This has being done very well not overpowering one or the other art works displayed by Joyce Campbell. The right amount of art has being displayed telling the story of each image. Good and very informative intro to her work by Balamohan.

Contextualisation:
The photo taken of the The Tread are based on the mythology, history and ecology of Te Reinga. The sacred mountain and beautiful landscape burnt in a hunting accident. The vegetation has never regenerated. Campbell photographed the mountain while dense with smoke and fog from the fire. Some of the film was damaged by the heat. The image are created by the events that surrounded the distruction of the forest. From the disaster amazing and beautiful images where successfully created for the viewer. Documentary genre. The viewer is definitely captured. She has being successful in leaving the viewer with question to go away and do some research.

Experimentation:
Looking at Joyce Campbell's work I decided to go out on a foggy morning and capture the bush. Trying the create the same look. Documenting the Cascades stream under the bridge.

• Natural light • Originals in colour • Photos manipulate in photoshop to created mystery and question for the viewer • 3 images

Original Panorama Colour

Misty effect black and white. Not quiet what I wanted not enough contrast.

This looks much better misty and more like the film and black and white effect. I am happy with the outcome of these photos. Manipulated in photoshop. Creating a soft and hazy looking effect. This reminds me of Joyce's work.