Landscapes that lure you in
Warren Feeney meets a photographer with a commitment and attitude to the medium.
Chris Corson-Scott is an Auckland-based artist and photographer who creates images of the landscape that lure you into taking the time to look more carefully than you may have initially intended.
Not convinced this is possible? Check out the work in We Passed the Setting Sun, his first solo exhibition in Christchurch at In Situ Photo Project.
Corson-Scott is a photographer with a commitment and attitude to the medium – the truths that photography is capable of revealing and its role and position in the history of Western Art.
Corson-Scott uses an ‘‘old school’’, 8×10 view-camera which takes large film, allowing him to print high quality images from larger negatives with a wealth of detail.
This provides some explanation as to why his work sustains our interest. By proxy, his photographs take you through the process of their making and the conception and capturing of each scene. He states that, ‘‘sometimes they take a lot of planning. I use a big camera that is so large and heavy, you cannot not take too many images. Every single part of getting the photograph becomes broken down into a step. You cannot take a lot of pictures hoping one of them is going to be good. You have to decide what is in and what is out and this is about making pictures that people can spend time with’’.
In Cliffs and Rockfalls, Awhitu Peninsula, the detail of tire tracks from a four-wheel drive vehicle assumes a life and presence all of its own. Then, without even realising it, Corson-Scott’s camera draws your attention through a myriad of detail, along the cliffs and shoreline and beyond the Peninsula’s horizon.
Yet, these photographs also bring to mind a history of image making in Western art, other paintings, prints and photographs that seem immediately connected to the subjects and narratives of his work. In images like Undersea Cables, Pink Beach, Whangaparaoa, the composition and attention to the geology of the landscape invites associations with the work of colonial New Zealand painters such as John Kinder (1819 – 1903) or Alfred Sharpe (1836 – 1908). Certainly, there is an identification with the work of both these artists and Corson-Scott’s interest in our complex relationships with the land and its settlement and occupation.
As a photographer, he describes these associations as inevitable. ‘‘How can any artist in the 21st century create images of their world without being conscious of all the artists that have gone before? It is weird to assume that as an artist you can make images after thousands of years of painting and not be dealing with painting. No matter how you point a camera you are dealing with the history of image-making.
‘‘John Kinder, I am particularly interested in, and also Alfred Sharpe. Unlike other colonists, they both understood the crosscultural thing and had a genuine interest in Maori. They were also early environmentalists concerned about the impact that settlement was having, even in the mid-19th century on the land and environment. Sharpe argued that painters should be true to nature, complaining in letters to the editor in the Auckland Herald about the impact of settlement and how the natural world was being lost.’’
For Corson-Scott, the photographs in We Passed the Setting Sun are ‘‘pictures of a young land scarred by people’’. In Last Light, Tokomaru Bay Wharf, the remains of a wharf, reaching into the Pacific Ocean in the far North, was once a booming port for exporting agricultural goods. Closing in 1952, his documentation and revelation of the remnants of wharf and pier speak all too calmly and pointedly about the brevity of human habitation.
‘‘Being colonised only as recently as 1840, New Zealand has subsequently experienced the same journey as the rest of the world through industrial exploitation, and globalisation, with the unsustainable overconsumption with which it is intrinsically linked. But significantly, here, this has occurred within the compressed time line of a mere 160 years.’’
Corson-Scott reiterates that good photography is grounded in the principles of documentary and concerned with confronting realities. ’’The truth claim is important. What you see is not special effects in my photographs, it is real.’’ In Evening, The Frank Sargeson House, Esmonde Road, Takapuna, Corsen-Scott’s interest in the interior of the home of the legendary New Zealand author seems to be, not so much with Sargeson, but the life of this environment since his death. ‘‘It is the truth as it now stands, the meaning is there - at this time.’’
This commitment to objective and often confronting realities has meant that Corson-Scott’s work remains distinct from the more recognisable ‘‘look’’ of New Zealand photography that has dominated contemporary art over the past 30 years. He seems unconcerned.
‘‘I was fortunate to get to know photographer Mark Adams when I got to the point with my work where I was making the pictures I wanted to make. He was really supportive.
‘‘When I started in 2000 I was told to go to art school, because what I was doing was documentary. At that time, people were also looking at Mark’s work but not seeing the overarching things that his work was about. His work has always brought an attitude to it about the world. A lot of contemporary photography in New Zealand does not have much time in it. It is depressing to me to go into a gallery, seeing deadpan ironic stuff. Such work can look impressive straight away, but does not sustain interest for long. There should be time taken in the experience of art.’’
❚ Chris Corson-Scott, We Passed the Setting Sun, In situ Photo Project, 120 Hereford Street, until September 16.