A CHAT WITH... ANDRIS APSE
Many years ago, on Rakiura/ Stewart Island, I met a local who told me that if you travelled south there was “nothing between us and Antarctica”. Acclaimed landscape photographer Andris Apse would beg to differ. After a 30-year career that has seen his work appear in the New York Times, National Geographic, Time and Newsweek, Apse has released a new book:
The Deep South, capturing some of the most remote places scattered between the lower South Island and Antarctica, including the usually inaccessible Subantarctic outposts of the Snares, Auckland, Antipodes and Campbell Islands. His first book in eight years,
The Deep South also contains essays by Laurence Fearnley, Dr Hinemoa Elder and the late Keri Hulme. Now 79, Apse lives with his partner Lynne at Diamond Harbour, near Christchurch.
Apse tells Grant Smithies how he can no longer go to the extreme places he used to photograph.
Where did it all start for you?
I was born in Latvia. My father fought on three sides during World
War II – in the Latvian Army, the Russian army and the German army, after they forced him to, as a prisoner of war. He got me and my mother on a boat, and we spent four years at a refugee camp in Germany before we made it out to New Zealand when I was 5. We learned English in a refugee camp in Pahiatua. Years later, after I left school, I moved to Nelson and trained as a woodsman.
You did a lot of work in the bush and the mountains. Is that where your photography career began? It was. I ended up in all these obscure places around Fiordland and on Stewart Island during the 60s, and we walked great distances there, building huts and so on. The scenery was so wonderful, I had tears in my eyes. I thought, what can I do to show people what we’ve got down here? So I bought a camera and it took me the next 20 years to learn how to use it properly. I worked as a commercial photographer in the early days, doing weddings and babies and animals, but I always wanted to photograph landscapes.
A much harder way to make a living, I imagine. Hard on your body, too. I camped for more than 500 nights in Fiordland to get the photos I wanted, and those photographs turned into two early books. Financially, it was a disaster. I might as well have stayed in Canterbury and photographed cute lambs. I would have sold a lot more! But it was a labour of love. I love isolation and wilderness and extremes of weather on the landscape.
How did you end up photographing the Subantarctic Islands?
I photographed those islands for the Department of Conservation, over about six trips. It was exhilarating, to be in these places people hardly ever get to. I made three trips to Antarctica, too. I was right in my element in these cold, harsh climates where a lot of rain and wind has helped create really dramatic scenery. And no other people. If you look at my photography, you’ll see very few people, and on the rare occasion you do see them, they’ll be way in the background, for scale.
Do you think images of such remote wild places help the viewer to care more about protecting the wilderness?
Definitely. Some of these places are usually only seen by scientists, and it’s great that they’re there, researching the animals and climate and vegetation. But to get sympathy for the wildlife there, photography is a lot more effective than a scientific paper. A good image creates an emotional connection where all those facts and figures do not. And it’s so lovely to be trusted by the wildlife in these places. There’s all these birds and seals that have never been harassed by any human being in any way, so they are curious and walk up to investigate you. Really, what we’ve done to wildlife over many generations is truly terrible, all these birds and animals becoming extinct because of our greed or carelessness.
What next for you?
I haven’t got the physical ability to go to the most extreme places anymore. I have worn out my bones doing this. I need two new knees, for example. I’ve made eight or nine books now, and I’ve still got another book in me, but I can’t carry all my gear up to some of the harsher wild places anymore so I’ll be looking elsewhere. I search so hard for locations where I can say in just one image how I feel about a place. I’ll try to figure out what’s making me feel emotional then try and isolate that with the camera. I get no greater pleasure than when people come into my gallery out here and look at images, then just start to quietly cry. Here’s a thing I’ve put a lot of emotion into creating, and it’s transmitting that, somehow. That’s very satisfying to me.
“Really, what we’ve done to wildlife over many generations is truly terrible, all these birds and animals becoming extinct because of our greed or carelessness.”