Park up

Catherine Russ

Te Manawa Museum of Art, Science and Heritage

19 September – 21 March 2021

Reviewed by Mary Macpherson for PhotoForum

(All images copyright Catherine Russ)

From commercial studios whose portraits become revelatory to later generations, to art photographers who want to make causes visible or to show lives in context, there’s a long tradition of photographers documenting communities, often with public service motivation intertwined with personal drivers.

Examples on this website include Edith Amituanai’s multiple projects that record her Pacific communities, seen in her 2019 survey show Double Take, Anna Rutherford’s deliberately upbeat portrayal of Masterton, and Saynab Muse’s portraits of her Somali Muslim family highlighting her culture and religion in a positive way. The list, both on and off the site, is extensive.

In the case of Catherine Russ’s Park Up at Te Manawa, the photographer describes her intention as ‘to document another candid slice of life’. (1) In other words it’s less about cause than a curiosity to see how we’re looking these days, particularly if we were everyday people parked at the popular Palmerston North lookout Te Motu o Poutoa, known locally as Pork Chop Hill, in the summer of 2019/20. (2)

It’s the second time that Russ, a long time Palmerston North photographer, and director of the Thermostat gallery, has created an on-the-spot portrait series at this place and the exhibition features an excerpt from her first work made in the late 1990s. In the ‘90s portraits Russ established the portrait style of people facing the camera, often standing close to their cars. Her method hasn’t changed between the series, so provides an interesting duality about ‘how we looked’ in the two eras and the effect of different photographic presentation.

The shifts in people’s attire and style are subtle between the two series. The older series features a few more examples of formal dress, for example the young tripod-wielding photographer, dressed for the occasion in a grey suit, and the white haired couple with a print dress for her and shirt and trousers for him, whereas the seniors of the 2020 series both wear casual attire. The two series feature their subjects in leisure wear, but there’s just a sense that in the ‘90s we were neater, or less exuberant; certainly there’s less evidence of tattoos or ripped jeans and no-one like Olivia who stands calmly facing the camera, in her cuddly blue dressing gown.

But perhaps the biggest contrast comes from the way the photography looks in the gallery. While the reprinted early work is modest sized prints, matted and framed, the latest series has exploded to large-scale eye-popping prints pinned to the wall. Although the decision to keep the reprints small was for practical reasons, the two styles of presentation provide a sense of how we’ve chilled and up-sized in our age of digital cameras, huge TVs, giant billboards, public live screen events and larger-than-life artworks. (3)

The portraits are mostly front-on and there’s a strong connection between photographer and subject. This means we as viewers can look intently, interpreting gaze, body language and attire. It’s a way of getting a sense of other human beings, through the sensibility of the artist, and there’s a kind of intimacy to these public portraits. Occasionally the subjects play up for the occasion like the pretend spanking between Rose and Shaquana, or Russ captures something visceral about car culture like the portrait of Paul and Brendon clutching bottles in the open doorway of their van, but mostly it’s just engagement with the camera, and it’s enough.

Russ has provided Christian names for the portraits, which lifts the photographs to being of actual people, but leaves enough space for the imagery to work. An October 2020 Stuff article quotes Te Manawa programme manager Imogen Stockwell saying of the lookout “It’s still being used for the same reason it was 20 years ago – people driving up with their KFC, there’s still drugs and alcohol and sex. Really, the only marker of social change are the cars.” I was pleased that Russ hadn’t provided statements about why people were at the lookout, or more information about who they were; it made the pictures and their subjects more full of possibility and closer to the fiction inherent in all photographs.

The other major player in the 2020 series is the rubbish that people leave behind. Interspersed with the portraits are close ups of items like a condom wrapper, bubble wrap, a disposable glove, a knife, plastic tubing, and much more. The images run through the series like a deadpan commentary about human presence, making the viewer like an archaeologist coming across evidence of an earlier more careless civilisation - except, of course, it’s us. Formally it’s also a useful counterpoint to the portraits, which might become overwhelming if they were an unadulterated bank of faces.

The Stuff article identifies the hill as the site of fortified pā belonging to Rangitāne, the mana whenua of the area, saying “By 2003, the Palmerston North City Council reckoned it was forking out about $1000 a month to clean the park. Rangitāne, for whom the area was wāhi tapu, or sacred ground, had seen enough of their whenua being regularly trashed.” The council and the iwi have signed a treaty for future co-management of the motu, which might lead to a change in use for the site.

I’d thought this might be the reason Russ might have made the second series but she says, “The recent Treaty settlement wasn’t the reason I choose to re-visit the project. It was more a case of people always talking about the original portraits (three of which are on display in a little shop that I co-own) that inspired me to do it all again. The location is the perfect backdrop for capturing the kind of images that appeal to me. There’s such a lively cross section of people who are not expecting to be part of such a project. Candid, unpretentious, colourful and casual....” (4)

Her motive for documenting the rubbish was “It’s always there! Unfortunate as this is, it is part of the experience you’ll have if you visit the car park. While there are bins provided, by the end of the day they are often full to overflowing due to the amount of fast food consumed at the park up! The (rubbish) detail added another layer of information, recorded in my downtime, between vehicles.” (5)

This documentary impulse of Russ’s has led to a strong and engaging series of portraits and a sense of the lookout in its current existence as a car park. The portraits and the concept behind them also reminded me of Edith Amitaunai’s The End of My Driveway series, (2011 – 2012) where she photographed the teens passing her driveway, although Russ has actually stopped her subjects and had them face the camera. David Cook is another major documenter of people whose work has parallels with Russ’s, particularly his New Urban Forests series where he made on-the-spot portraits of the shoppers visiting The Base in Hamilton, New Zealand’s largest shopping complex.

Russ’s love for the candid, casual and unpretentious shines through in her work and it’s well worth a trip to Palmy North to take a look.

Footnotes

(1) Artist’s statement.

(2) The full range of names for the site is: Te Motu o Poutoa, known also as Anzac Park but generally referred to by a different name: Pork Chop Hill. Source Te Manawa website, accessed 9 November 2020.

(3) The original series of around 27 prints was exhibited in 1999 as A3 photocopies on backing board in a community art gallery. Some of the work was also included as photographic prints in exhibitions at the McLeavey Gallery, Wellington and the Mahara Gallery, Waikanae. Email from Catherine Russ 13 November 2020.

(4) Email from Catherine Russ, 5 November 2020.

(5) Ibid.

Mary Macpherson is a Wellington photographer, poet and art writer. She is also Reviews Editor for the PhotoForum website.