Summer’s Lease: Clive Stone’s The Hibiscus Coast Project

Parts III and IV: Campers & Lifesavers, 1973–1986

Essay by Nina Seja for PhotoForum, October 2019

It’s easy to romanticize the past. Summers, in the years of long ago, were unending and majestic, out there, on the far reaches of the city. Maybe they still are but the haziness of memory casts a languid hue. Some of my own memories are of Auckland’s Hibiscus Coast. Back in those days, the Hibiscus Coast was seen to be a holiday town on the outer edges of Auckland. Venturing out there was a significant trip, with its sandy beaches, baches, and slower pace. Along with sand left in the suitcase and foam bed roll, seashells and sunburn, it was the photographs that also captured the feeling of summer. Maybe there was a separate developing process back then: developer, fixer, toner, and summer balm.

Clive Stone’s extensive The Hibiscus Coast Project, Parts III and IV: Campers and Lifesavers offers a front-row seat to watch the seasonal tides that shape people’s lives. The Hibiscus Coast Project consists of four chapters: Parts I and II: Residents and ANZAC Day Veterans, and Parts III and IV: Campers & Lifesavers. The first two parts focus on the local residents, and the latter two on those who are beckoned to the area for their leisure time. Campers looks at the seasonal influx of holidaymakers, and Lifesavers at the surf carnival convergence of mostly young men. In total, there are around 150 photographs, with the whole series donated to and housed in the Auckland Art Gallery.[1] Stone saw the historical value of the project, even when he was photographing it. Writing in 2019, the significance of The Hibiscus Coast Project is apparent. Auckland is going through a population boom, the entire topographical and residential landscape has morphed, and even leisure time is being refigured. It’s not uncommon for work now to bleed into personal time.

Stone grew up in Henderson, West Auckland, in the 1950s before his family moved to the Hibiscus Coast in the summer of 1963–64. Before his family moved there, they spent holidays at the Orewa Domain camping ground, the site of the Campers component of the Hibiscus Coast Project. The project began in 1973, while Stone was a Diploma of Fine Arts Honours student at Elam, and continued to 1986. Deciding to document his habitat, he set about recording a large-scale project, ethnographic in nature. There were also nostalgic inclinations mixed with curiosity, with Stone saying his

primary goal in revisiting the Orewa Domain Motor Camp with my camera was to compare the camping experience of 30 years ago at that location with that of the present (1980s) day. I also wanted to create a set of images that would serve as a kind of mirror to those in the Part 1: Residents collection.[2]

To live in a place that you’re photographing means firstly an ability to cultivate trust with those in your community. It also means to denaturalize the environment that is second nature to you.

The social history imbued in The Hibiscus Coast Project is an invaluable record of a community and its customs at a particular period of time. It also documents the particularities of the campsite as it existed then, as a microcosm of society. The photographer’s modus operandi included being “alert for different types of people in an attempt to provide a cross-section of the population of the camp.” Campgrounds can be, he notes, “very egalitarian, great equalisers of classes.” [3] There’s no façade – only the quiet rhythms of daily life supplanted to a campsite. It also offers a testament to ordinary life: a woman in nightie and jandals, off for her morning wash; a man caught mid-cleaning with a tea towel and chopping board. In Man with Barbeque and Shadow (1984), dad is languid near the barbie, occupational health and safety far from his mind as he grills bare-chested and in Stubbies.

In the campground, there are long-time regulars who have ventured to the same spot for over thirty years. Temporary enclaves of summertime residents where holiday rituals are as important as those that mark the patterns of the working day. The campsite photographs are remarkable because of the subtle way they capture the upspringing of a transitional community, united in their desire to relax. As in the aforementioned examples, we see traditionally private, domestic activities occurring in public space. Even the woman in the dressing gown regards the photographer with openness, indicating a form of self-revelation often constrained in a workplace.

Being on holiday is both a physical and psychological respite – an undoing and neutralizing from being at work. The body loosens and the mind starts to do away with the rigid patterns dictated by the 9–5. By contemplating Stone’s photographs, we share in this feeling. It’s prominent, with his subjects sunk in holiday oblivion. There’s the lounging Man with Eagle Tattoo (1983) (a nod to Diane Arbus). Of the encounter, Stone says,

I thought that in the interests of balance I should approach the toughest, scariest individuals as well as the more conventional people. These two men were covered in tattoos, unusual at the time, and looked decidedly tough. When I explained what I was doing, they were interested and friendly, very happy to have their photograph taken. [4]

It’s as if the exhale of relaxation has left no one in its wake – tough guys included. There’s an exhale, too, in the voluminous Large Woman in Tent (1984). There’s a visual humor here, though not a mocking one. The entire image seems to swell. It was a moment of synchronicity coupled with a wide-angle lens, with Stone becoming aware of a breeze moving through the tent and waiting until it reached its capacity. [5]

Foremost visible in the project are the apparent social bonds, both between the photographer and the subjects, and between the subjects themselves. We spend so much time in work that vacations are opportunities to rebind ourselves to others. It happens not only in the traditional activities like feasting, but also in creating new rituals. In Stirrer and Mouth of the Year (1983), the triumphant winners of a family award display their trophies proudly. The Mouth of the Year is known, by the end of the summer, for having the loudest mouth. Ceremonial pomp and circumstance are turned on their head with a wink. Relationships were also built through reciprocity by way of Stone giving complimentary prints to the campground subjects – a professional photograph turned holiday memento. Stone says,

I had a lot of fun with people getting them to pose in the best location: people were in holiday mode with lots of spare time and probably welcoming of the distraction. We would often try several locations around their campsite, and I was very open to suggestions. I even got invited to a number of barbecues, which I also took the opportunity to photograph. [6]

However, he does note that wrangling needed to occur for group shots, especially if they had been drinking. The group dynamics show how much the photographer seems to become a welcomed ad-hoc family member, as in Group at a Barbeque (1984). While the photograph has a casual air, it’s important to note the implicit dimensions of the photographer–subject relationship. This is also apparent in the Lifesavers component of the project, with the sea warden grinning openly like at an old chum.

Wanting to perform for the photographer does still happen though, such as in the multi-layered Body Builder with Two Sons (1984). The good-humored exchange between dad and Stone is made even more playful by the level of nonchalance and embarrassment the sons are showing. They’re not impressed by the dedication inherent in dad’s body builder physique, so Stone steps into the role as appreciator. Though Stone notes that he’d asked the boys to feign the embarrassment, it’s easy to read it as authentic.[7] Dad’s boyish enthusiasm is further buoyed by the irony of the sons’ polar opposite T-shirts: Ferrari and EDUKAYSHIN IS A WUNDAFULL THING.

The kinetic energy ricocheting in the composition is a reminder that holidays are small, cumulative experiences producing memories. It’s the tea towels forming a backdrop to dad striking a pose. It’s the oversized glasses that are likely put on for every photo op. It’s the bumping into campground inhabitants in the shared kitchen. And it’s the crunchy gravel underfoot and the shadows lengthening behind us as the sun joins you in a lazy ascent into the day.

Nina Seja is a writer based in Auckland. There are extraordinary photographs of artistic, cultural, and social value in archives. Researching in this space is a team effort, and the author extends special thanks to photographer Clive Stone for his support of this essay. Appreciation is also given to Caroline McBride, Acting Research Library Manager at the E. H. McCormick Research Library at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

Footnotes

[1]The project has featured at two locations. Parts I & II: Residents and ANZAC Day Veterans showed at Auckland Art Gallery June 24–August 2, 1981, with sixty prints being exhibited (fifty Residents and ten ANZAC Day Veterans). Parts III & IV: Campers and Lifesavers was shown at the iconic Real Pictures Gallery (then at 300 Richmond Road, Grey Lynn, Auckland) from September 25–October 15, 1988, with twenty Campers and ten Lifesavers being exhibited. To see more photographs from the series, please visit: https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/search/artworks?keywords=clive+stone+campers+and+lifesavers&artist=Clive+Stone&undated=undated&sort=title&size=108

[2] Clive Stone, Notes on Photographs in the Hibiscus Coast Project Parts 3 and 4 by Clive Stone, May 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Stone remembers that the woman in the tent was becoming more and more impatient. He recalls, “I found it interesting to work with people’s unease and impatience; did the same with the photo of the guy standing next to the BBQ with his shadow projecting out behind him. I was very aware of him standing in the smoke from the barbie (his eyes were watering) but I wasn’t going to shoot until I had the everything lined up, including his shadow, which he was of course completely unaware of.” Clive Stone in email conversation with Nina Seja, September 30, 2019.

[6] Clive Stone, in email conversation with Nina Seja, September 9, 2019.

[7] Clive Stone, Notes on Photographs in the Hibiscus Coast Project Parts 3 and 4 by Clive Stone.