A Man Holds a Fish

Glenn Busch

Published by Te Papa Press

a response by Virginia Were for PhotoForum

In his opening essay Peter Ireland traces New Zealand photographer Glenn Busch’s artistic heritage back to the pioneering social documentary photographers Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine who worked in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Jacob Riis photographed overcrowded living conditions in New York City tenement buildings, and Lewis Hine’s photographs of the widespread use of child labour in the United States resulted in legislative change that led to the end of the practice. The social documentary movement reached its peak in the 1930s in the United States when photographers Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Russell Lee and Arthur Rothstein made shocking and unforgettable images revealing the poverty and hardship suffered by farmers and migrant workers during the Great Depression. Busch continues this photographic tradition, and his striking and sometimes confronting black and white images document community life, work and identity in New Zealand and Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. 

This handsome book features 81 of his portraits reproduced as full-page reproductions, which show their striking detail and visceral textures. Busch is notable for avoiding sentimentality and idealisation in his work, and his unflinching photographic gaze shares similarities with that of Diane Arbus who was always on the lookout for oddball and marginalised individuals. Because of their rawness, many of his photographs are seared into New Zealand’s collective visual memory. One of these is “Man at the Waldorf cafe Auckland” which shows a resigned looking businessman in a suit. He sits in a spartan cafe with his left hand gripped resolutely into a fist in his lap and his downturned mouth forming a narrow slit beneath his sad eyes and severe glasses; another is “Labourer, abattoir, pig chain, Christchurch” – a confronting portrait of a man in a strangely spotless white shirt and long apron. Strung up above him is the carcass of a pig, its pale body disappearing out of the frame. The man’s rather threatening stance and the dark splatter of what looks like blood on the concrete wall behind him give this portrait an edge of violence and horror.

In his essay Ireland points out that, although photography had begun to find acceptance in the art world in the 1980s, the social documentary approach attracted criticism for being “condescending” and “something of a cliche in terms of subject matter”. The real problem Ireland continues was that the art world had difficulty “accepting imagery and a practice that, superficially at least, seemed so ordinary”.

Busch’s portraits are far from ordinary.

In 1984, his book “Working Men” was well received by the public. Viewers were engaged by the interviews with subjects that accompanied each portrait. Busch’s collaborative way of working with his participants has contributed to his reputation as a pioneer of documentary photography in Aotearoa. This book will be welcomed by those who know Busch’s practice well – and by people encountering his photographs for the first time.

Virginia Were

Virginia Were is a lens-based artist, and writer. She graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2023 with a DocFA. Her writing appears in many New Zealand literary journals and anthologies. Her work is featured here.

We need your help to continue providing a year-round programme of online reviews, interviews, portfolios, videos and listings that is free for everyone to access. We’d also like to dream bigger with the services we offer to photographers and the visual arts.
We’ve partnered with Press Patron to give readers the opportunity to support PhotoForum Online.
Every donation helps.