In Theatre Country: Essays on Landscape and Whenua Park explores at
length the drivers for Pakeha New Zealand’s current relationship with this country’s conservation estate. He considers its foundations lie in European modes of seeing that understood landscape as scenery, and which both organises the scene ‘onto a flat plane’, and also ‘empties the landscape’ of active content.130 It was the subsequent style of tourism that the picturesque
125 Molloy and Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand., 1983, Wilderness recreation in New Zealand : proceedings of the FMC 50th Jubilee Conference on Wilderness, Rotoiti Lodge, Nelson Lakes National Park, 22-24 August, 1981, p46.
126 See, for example: Salmon, 1960, Heritage destroyed : the crisis in scenery preservation in New Zealand. ; Molloy, 1972, Conservation in the Wilderness. ; Hay, 1974, On remoteness. ; Hooper, 1981, Our forests ourselves.
127 See Molloy and Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand., 1983, Wilderness recreation in New Zealand : proceedings of the FMC 50th Jubilee Conference on Wilderness, Rotoiti Lodge, Nelson Lakes National Park, 22-24 August, 1981.
128 Cessford and New Zealand. Department of Conservation., 2001, The State of wilderness in New Zealand. ; Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand., 2003, Freedom of the hills : unlocking high country recreation, a Federated Mountain Clubs vision for pastoral lease lands.
129 http://www.craigpotton.co.nz/products/published/books/bookgeneralnonfiction/zealandswildernessheritage accessed 14th Dec 2007. See Molloy, Potton, Morris and Martin, 2007, New Zealand's wilderness heritage. 130 Park, 2006, Theatre country : essays on landscape & whenua, p116,119.
engendered, of hunting for new vistas in search of landscape’s ideal image, that led to New Zealanders continuing “preoccupation with scenery, their possessing it ‘preserved’ in reserves, and their dogma that it’s a necessary ingredient of a painted landscape, [which] trapped them in a particular sense of beauty.131
Park considers it is the picturesque aesthetic of 19th Century Britain and
Europe that continues to underpin the values of the conservation estate into the twenty-first century and define Pakeha New Zealand’s relationship with indigenous flora and fauna.132 By seeing “nature as a picture”133, the
picturesque continues to cast ‘lake, mountain and tree’134 in the imaginary as
pristine, remote and timeless. And it is this particular genre of landscape, of ideal scenes that frame nature as a spectacle, of people as its admiring patrons, and of the conservation estate as Park’s Theatre Country, that continues to dominate New Zealand’s sense of itself.
Perhaps it is for this reason that neither international tourists nor New Zealanders find strange the often hyperbolic descriptions of Fiordland National Park that began this chapter. Certainly there is nothing unusual in claiming New Zealand’s conservation estate is ‘vast’, ‘isolated’, ‘elemental’, ‘ancient’, ‘monumental’, ‘unconquerable’, ‘fortress-like’ and a ‘last refuge’ for endemic plants and birds135. Or that Tourism New Zealand’s campaign to
attract visitors to the country uses appeals of awe, wonder, exhilaration and escape against a backdrop of unspoiled nature – 100% Pure no less.136
This image of the conservation estate reveals what art critic Francis Pound calls a “pictorial attitude to nature”137 – one that is embedded in artistic
methods of representing landscape that were developed in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Hence the photographic images either made or purchased by
131 Ibid, p58.
132 See also Pound, 1983, Frames on the land : early landscape painting in New Zealand, p26. 133 Ibid, p24.
134 This phrase titles the following anthology: Temple, 1998, Lake, mountain, tree : an anthology of writing on New Zealand nature & landscape.
135 See Temple, 1982, Fiordland pictorial.
136 The link between 100% Pure New Zealand campaign and landscape is explicit. The Marketing Manager for Tourism New Zealand discussing the development of the 100% Pure campaign states ”the brand is New Zealand, its brand essence is landscape.” Morgan, Pritchard and Piggott, 2002, New Zealand, 100% Pure. The creation of a powerful niche destination brand, p347. Elsewhere Tourism New Zealand states “New Zealand’s landscape is the primary motivator for visitors to come here”. Tourism New Zealand, 2006, Give it 100%: an introductory guide to marketing and devloping your tourism product, p15. See also Tourism New Zealand., 2001, Tourism New Zealand, p3-4. For further material see http://www.tourismnewzealand.com/tourism_info/about-us/100-pure-campaign/100-pure- campaign_home.cfm : accessed 24th March 2008.
today’s tourist echo the picturesque traditions of travelling from scene to scene “to provide evidence that [their] eyes had been there.”138 While these
images purport to act as faithful transcriptions of what is there they are, according to Pound, neither “transparent windows … to the land”139 or
faithful images of a nature out there. Rather they are images created, whether intentionally or not, to direct certain readings of nature based on a certain typology of visual aesthetics.
Discussing genres of landscape painting Pound states “what we see is painted on the metaphorical glass (which is in fact opaque paper or canvas or board); we look at it, not through it – the painted surface is a system of signs, not a transparent medium. Try as he might, the painter does not paint on the surface the landscape he wishes to celebrate. Invariably the painter paints the ‘picturesque’ – that in nature which reminds him of pictures in paint – invariably what is painted is the already painted, the paintable.”140 While
Pound is describing the painter it can readily be translated to the photographic work of Apse, Bishop and Potton: invariably the photographer photographs the ‘picturesque’ – invariably what is photographed is the already photographed, the photographable – as the familiarity of Mitre Peak as ‘the image’ of Milford Sound would attest. (See figure 4.1d)
Nor are the photographers of wilderness landscapes cited in this chapter ignorant of the cultural rubric within which their image making is undertaken. For example Craig Potton states “I’m convinced that time-honoured practices such as dividing the picture frame into thirds (horizontally and vertically), placing discrete objects or blocks of colour within the resulting grid, using a strong foreground subject to anchor the image, relating all elements within the frame, and even finding geometric forms such as figure eights and triangles in the composition…are more important to good composition than many contemporary practitioners will acknowledge.”141 Similarly in Apse’s
images, such as in figure 3.3a, can be found elements relating to elevation of viewpoint, horizon, ‘side-wings’, contrasting planes of sunlight and darkness, and their relationship to the picture plane, that belong to the ‘grammatical
138 Park, 2006, Theatre country : essays on landscape & whenua, p124.
139 Pound, 1983, Frames on the land : early landscape painting in New Zealand, p13. 140 Ibid, p12. (Pound’s emphasis)
rules’ of the ‘Ideal’ landscape first espoused in Europe over two hundred years ago.142
Figure 3.5a: “Photographing the entrance to Dusky Sound has been a long term project. After determining where I wanted to take the image from, I used a GPS to calculate when the sun would be setting down the middle of my composition, then returned at the right time of year and camped for a few nights on the spot”.143
In discussions of these images can be found sentiments that also strongly belong to a nineteenth century Romantic tradition.144 Brian Turner writes of a
‘wild’, ‘non-human nature’ that has intrinsic values and “the possibility of numinosity”.145 Bishop states, “all plants and animals have a right to live and
evolve undisturbed”.146 It is this separation from people that gives wilderness
its ‘special aura’ and which, as Potton argues, lets wilderness act as “a powerful antidote to the controls of civilisation, a place and state of mind where the individual’s imagination [can] soar beyond its social conditioning”.147 As a result wilderness is a ‘gateway’ to ‘deeper values’ that
challenge you to ‘reflect on the enigma of existence’ and connect with ‘ancient impulses’ that have resonated for ‘thousands of generations’.
However it is the pictorial qualities that have priority. Dennis, Potton and Turner note their written perspectives are merely supportive commentary for the visual images they introduce. Turner’s essay on wilderness is a ‘warm-up act’ for Scott Freeman’s New Zealand Photographs. Dennis finds words struggle to convey what is “an intuitive emotional response” to Apse’s
142 See Bowring, 1997, Institutionalising the picturesque.
143 Apse, 2007, Exhibition Notes to Mainland: Landscapes by Andris Apse.
144 For a discussion of the links between the Romantic tradition through to modern environmentalism see: Dunlap, 2004, Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest.
145 Freeman and Turner, 2000, New Zealand photographs, p18.
146 Bishop, 1989, Untouched horizons : photographs from the South Island wilderness, p8.
147 Cullen, Harland, Potton and New Zealand. Tourism Policy Group., 1994, Collection of essays on equity and access to natural areas, p4.
imagery.148 Potton asks that the reader reads the photographs “entirely apart
from the words; indeed if the latter become a problem, they should be ignored”.149 According to the writers and photographers the value and
appeal of the visual image of wilderness is intrinsic and self-evident. Rather than words it is the ‘lingering gazes of landscape photography’ that are most effective in opening “the eye and mind to nature”.150 It is the visual image
that generates the opportunity “to wonder at the thread of life which runs through all things and to capture a few fleeting moments of this wonder, not in the language of words, but of light”151 – a light whose qualities might be
‘beautiful’, ‘dramatic’, ‘sombre’ or ‘melancholic’.
Turner writes how in Freeman’s “absorption, concentration, we become absorbed ourselves. And, I, personally begin to feel as if the objects in the image are drawing me into the point where I am in rather than outside them”.152 The photographs tell Turner to “have regard … for goodness sake.
Concentrate, pause, let the shapes, forces, colours – let life seep and pour. Look, listen, touch, and be touched.”153 “The hope is that the image’s essence
will become a collective perspective”154 and that suitably motivated people
act to protect and preserve the wild.155
Like Logan’s description of the Okuru Wilderness Area, the conceptualisation of wilderness being pursued by the photographers and writers cited here does not belong to the specific sites in the conservation estate where each image is taken. Instead they belong to the craft of careful image making whose roots are culturally embedded in artistic genres like the Sublime, Ideal, Topographic and Picturesque. Potton, this time reflecting on the cover image of his retrospective monograph, declares “and … if Colin McCahon had not painted his black waterfall series; Van der Velden not journeyed to his place in the Otira Gorge in the heaviest storms; Turner not painted his deluge series; Shelley not prefigured Romantic awe on Mont Blanc’s storm-covered slopes – would I have seen this moment so vividly.”156 Pound discussing the
148 Apse, 1994, New Zealand landscapes, p14.
149 Potton, 1998, Moment and memory : photography in the New Zealand landscape, p6. 150 Bishop, 1989, Untouched horizons : photographs from the South Island wilderness, p151. 151 Ibid, p151.
152 Here Turner is talking more of the images of Freeman and Potton rather than perhaps the images of Apse. Freeman and Turner, 2000, New Zealand photographs, p19.
153 Ibid, p16. 154 Ibid, p32
155 See the discussion of Potton’s motivations and career in White, 2004, In the Wild. 156 Potton, 1998, Moment and memory : photography in the New Zealand landscape, p28.
different genres of nineteenth century landscape painting considers each “reflects and codifies the intention and effect of the artwork it includes. It tells you what the artist means, and what you, the spectator, are meant to feel”.157 Hence the order Potton ‘divines’ in the rocks and trees comes from
his cultural reference points. Any ‘sense of coherence’ is developed in the different styles of the photographers rather than the land being imaged. This is why Turner can find value in Freeman’s and Potton’s images while the landscape images of others he finds ‘sterile’ and unfulfilling’.158
Pound states “no visual experience of nature – whether in New Zealand or elsewhere – can exist outside the frames of the genres: there is no innocent eye, no possible access to a ‘real’ and pre-existing New Zealand nature”.159
Even the “very idea of landscape is a European import to New Zealand”160
that is as introduced and imposed as the gorse bush or survey line.
In both the photographic imagery of wilderness and also bounded wilderness region is constructed an aesthetic separation between culture and nature. Apse’s image of the kotukutuku tree in Fiordland’s Kaipo valley that began this chapter evokes similar qualities to that found across his extensive collection of Fiordland photographs.161 On the page is presented an image of a timeless,
remote and untouched forest in which there is no trace of people or society.
Yet such an image is the result of careful construction. Imagine for a moment what the image would see if it was it to return the gaze of Apse. For just where our point of view is located when reading the image is where Andris Apse and a host of activities associated with this image can be discerned. Absent from the photograph but nonetheless an implicit part of the image are the physical activities undertaken by Apse here: the setting up the tripod; of firmly imprinting the ground with its spikes to steady the camera; of setting up a large umbrella to ward of the imminent drizzle; of altering the composition by shifting about and perhaps also pushing to one side an overly intrusive plant; of selecting the types of films, lenses and cameras with which to work; the taking of a number of bracketed images; of waiting patiently for the light to
157 Pound, 1983, Frames on the land : early landscape painting in New Zealand, p13. 158 Freeman and Turner, 2000, New Zealand photographs, p6.
159 Pound, 1983, Frames on the land : early landscape painting in New Zealand, p14.
160 Ibid, p11. Pound also argues “Nor did the Polynesians capture the ‘true’ New Zealand: they too applied a culture to the land (a culture that did not include landscape).” Pound, 1983, Frames on the land : early landscape painting in New Zealand, p16. (Pound’s emphasis)
161 For Apse Fiordland is is his favoured subject. Recently he has produced a three volume study of the region which retails for NZ$4000.00 the opus. See http://www.andrisapsefiordland.co.nz/ : accessed 21st March 2008.
‘come right’; of shooing away the sandflies while waiting; snacking on food while still waiting for ‘the light to come right’; of the specific click of the shutter in which this particular image is from; of dismantling the equipment while shooing away more sandflies; of packing up; and of leaving on the site assorted marks from tripods, boots and backsides. Or as Tom Griffiths, discussing the role of photography in shaping perceptions of landscape, states “modern photographers enact this vision in their choice of frame, omitting the eroded path that led them to their view”.162
Because the image is not intended to return the gaze of the photographer – to question or identify their frame of reference – both they and their stance is rendered separate to the content. Because they neither offer, expect, nor challenge any change in the viewer such images of wilderness are undemanding. For the nature this aesthetic understands, and consequently makes, is a nature that is only sensible from a position outside of that nature. Hence what is constructed is a nature separate from culture that, as Cronon describes, is “profoundly a human creation … all the more beguiling because it seems so natural”.163.
Earlier it was noted Corner’s discussion of conservation parks frames them in terms of their pictorial and scenic values. Hence they are merely ‘dead events’ that lack consequence and hence relevance.164 Similarly Cronon notes this
image of nature, such as the type Apse produces, offers at best a nostalgia for “the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world”,165 and that, while continuing a utopian hope that such a state
might return to us or us to it, offers no credible path for such a change. Instead it is a nature whose qualities, and therefore whose position in relationship to people is also ambivalent and ambiguous. In such a nature, separated by the imagination from the culture it is made in, it becomes easier to imagine a place for dinosaurs, moa,166 hobbits167 and other other-worldly fantasies but not a
162 Griffiths, 1991, History and natural history: conservation movements in conflict, p20. 163 Cronon, 1995, The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, p69. 164 Corner, 1999a, Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes, p156.
165 Cronon, 1995, The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, p80. 166 See, for example, Focus, 2008, Hunting Mythical Creatures.
167 There many examples in the popular press: for example Orcutt, 2004, Frodo in Fiordland: Saved from poor planning by Hobbitesque natives in New Zealand. ; Warne, 2000, Fiordland: New Zealand's Southern Sanctuary, page 76. Also now many maps of New Zealand that now include the film locations for Lord of the Rings. See, for example,: Kiwimaps Ltd. and Boot, 2006, New Zealand travellers road atlas with 15 regional touring guides & 32 city & town centre maps.
lived and also indigenous place within which a more connected future might be established for people.168
According to Cronon, rather than being the essence of a nature without culture, this unspoilt and remote wilderness made, appraised and belongs to a ‘Narcissus-like’ projection. “As we gaze into the mirror [wilderness] holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires.”169
Such a pictorial understanding of nature delivers a spatial and temporal detachment that places the viewer beyond the scene. Whether from the various pages of a book of Andris Apse’s panoramic images, or a viewing platform in the conservation estate, this pictorial conception of wilderness and the conservation estate casts people as outsiders and as ‘visitors’ whose place is edited out of the image they are regarding.