Handboek: Ans Westra Photographs

Blair Wakefield Exhibitions 2004, Reviewed by JEREMY ROSE

Handboek is the catalogue of an exhibition by the same name which has been touring New Zealand since 2004. The exhibition has reached its final stop and will be on show at the Calder and Lawson Gallery in Hamilton until October 26.

On the second-to-last page of photographs in this magnificent collection there’s an image of a Maori man taking a digital photo of four children in front of the lighthouse at Cape Reinga. It’s far from a typical Westra image: it’s in colour for starters and its dimensions are those of a 35 millimetre negative rather than the square negatives of her usual camera of choice the Rolleiflex. If it had been the final photo, it would be tempting to see it as a metaphor for the death of documentary photography or, perhaps, Ans’s way of saying that with Maori now at the forefront of documenting Maori it’s time for her to bow out. But, thankfully, it’s not. The final two images are classic Westra: black and white, square images of the foreshore and seabed hikoi.

The first captures a tender embrace between two of the marchers framed by policemen and the pillars of Parliament building. The next is of the haka party that led the hikoi. The infectious grins on the faces of the party are as good a riposte to Helen Clark’s outrageous “haters and wreckers” comment as one is likely to find.

They’re fine photos and like all of Westra’s images their negatives will end up in the Turnbull Library where future generations are likely to make use of them and interpret them in completely different ways. (There are currently around 50,000 of Ans’s negatives stored at the library.)

The book includes a couple of self-portraits, but for me the photo in which I can see Westra most clearly is one of the riot squad during the 1981 Springbok Tour. Westra isn’t in the photo, but she’s close enough for us to see that the paint has been worn off the tip of a long-baton and the perfectly creased trousers of the grim-faced policemen. It’s easy to imagine the middle-aged Westra, in a long coat, bent over her Rolleiflex seemingly unaware of anything other than the image in her viewfinder.

Being photographed by Westra is a far more subtle experience than being “shot” on a standard SLR camera. There can be few photographers as physically defined by their camera as Westra. Her slight stoop seems purpose-built for the head-down posture, required by a Rolleiflex.

My earliest memories of being photographed are of Westra visiting our home to take family portraits. She also took photos at Matauranga, the alternative primary school I attended in Wellington in the 1970s.

In the early ‘90s I visited Westra in search of photos for a book on Matauranga and was stunned when she quoted the negative numbers off the top of her head. She not only gave me permission to use the photos without payment but presented me with a large format photograph of my two brothers and me that was leftover from an exhibition from years before.

It goes without saying that the proof-sheets didn’t include the names of those photographed – something I only mention because of an essay in the book, by Cushla Parekowhai, that, unfairly in my view, takes Westra to task for failing to record the names of all the pupils she photographed at Parikino Maori School in the 1960s.

It wasn’t a difficult task finding Matauranga teachers, parents and pupils from the time to identify each of those featured in the photos – a small price to pay for the dozens of exquisite images of children at play.

The selection of essays that open the book, with their overly academic, post-modern take on the world, will, I suspect, age far more quickly than Westra’s photos – which in many cases become more striking with every passing year.

Possibly the only words in the book to match the simplicity, honesty and elegance of Westra’s images are those of poet Hone Tuwhare:

“Ans’s works are seedlings of a quiet joy, of hope; and smartening-up,
the human sense of: Hey Mate! You’re me!”

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington journalist and the editor of the Scoop Review of Books.

LINKS

Handboek website