Simon Buis (1927–1980)

Photographer and writer Simon Buis was involved with PhotoForum from its very early years. He was present during the 1973 founding meeting, when the Constitution was formally adopted. His alter ego Tiny Grey wrote a meandering column in PhotoForum called Offshoot, which offered a beat-inspired interpretation of New Zealand photography. His early photographs of Auckland hippies at “Jumping Sundays” were reproduced in the 1969 book The Brutus Festival (with a foreword by Tim Shadbolt). His work was included in the collaboratively published 1970 Photography: A Visual Dialect. 10 Contemporary N.Z. Photographers, and was also featured in New Zealand Photography, The Active Eye, and PhotoForum. Buis was murdered in a Sandringham, Auckland park in 1980. His biographical note in New Zealand Photography gives insight into his approach to life and photography.

“Simon Buis is not a photographer’s photographer. He reads a lot but doesn’t bother about the latest photo magazine or book. He prefers to spend his time with people, loafing around, playing records, warming up on sherry, talking, more sherry, more talk—a casually generous host. Photography is important to him but his family and friends come first—most times. He sees the world flooded with millions of visually attractive images. He catches his with a long quick thumb. ‘It’s rather pathetic that we want to go around with a black box and add to the confusion,’ he says. ‘Photography is like fishing. You have to chuck out most of what you catch because it’s undersize. (I don’t really believe in the big ones.) You try to smuggle in a few undersized ones because you don’t want to go home empty handed.’”1

1 Simon Buis, Biographical Note in “Notes to the Photographs,” New Zealand Photography 10 (May/June 1972): 2.