First Contact Revisited at Two Rooms

In 1995, four photographers who had a deep interest in antiquated camera technology and a passion for the history of Aotearoa New Zealand made a trip with to Tamatea, also known as Dusky Sound, in Fiordland.

The location where they landed was the site where Britain’s Captain James Cook first encountered the country’s indigenous Māori inhabitants in 1773.

Several years after taking their exposures of the distinctive coastline and botany, they created prints that form the basis of the exhibition Tamatea – Dusky Sound, 1995 now showing at Two Rooms in Auckland.

Mark Adams’ triptychs of butted-together (but separate) framed panels depict Astronomer’s Point. These overlapping long exposures reference the works of William Hodges, a painter Cook brought with him, and the activities of William Wales, an astronomer who was tracking Venus. Adams also alludes to Russell Duncan, a photographer who visited the site in 1910.

Haru Sameshima‘s series of framed images of Pickersgill Harbour are spaced apart on the wall. Taken from around the same spot on the beach, they deal with the impact of light on the water, particularly the dramatic effects of elongated shadow and inverted reflection.

Darren Glass’s pinned up horizontal bands are made with a thrown ringlike pinhole camera that simultaneously opens seven apertures. The end of each exposed, pulsing, looping strip repeats the beginning.

Ian Macdonald‘s photographs of the local vegetation on Heron Island are different from the rest of the show in that they are coloured. He merges smaller images together by digital means, and the overall dappled serrated foliage is dense in texture.

The show is both semiotically mediated and mysterious by virtue of the location being a very remote part of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Main image: Ian Macdonald, Heron Island Cove (1995) SureColor Inkjet on Hahnemuhle Rag Paper. 100 x 182 cm. Photo: Sam Hartnett.