Listening to a wet land - review
Kate van der Drift
Listening to a Wet Land
Pah Homestead
3 November 2022– 12 February 2023
Reviewed by Andrew Clark for PhotoForum
It’s difficult to talk about the history of photography in New Zealand without addressing the idea of landscape. In 1839, the same year that British colonial rule was declared in Aotearoa, Louis Daguerre announced his newly developed photographic process at the French Academy of Sciences. Over the following decades, as the difficult and temperamental daguerreotype was replaced by the more accessible, portable and fast wet plate collodion process, photography was used to document the “new” country, and was an invaluable tool in advertising the benefits of emigration to people in Britain. Many of these early photographers, such as George Valentine, Josiah Martin or the Burton Brothers firm, were best known for their landscape views, which helped to define Aotearoa in the European popular imagination as wild, romantic and, crucially, empty of human inhabitants.
Kate van der Drift’s new exhibition at the Pah Homestead, viewed in this context, becomes all the more relevant and interesting. Listening to a Wet Land consists of seven large-format colour photographs and a video work, Dazzled (Numbed?) by a Myth. To create the still works, photographic negatives inside light-proof containers were immersed in the waters of the river Piako, which runs from the Hauraki plains into the Firth of Thames. Van der Drift’s work explicitly deals with the idea of land use, and the issues around ownership, pollution and mana whenua that are inextricably bound to the history of that land. However, the work can also be seen as an attempt to de-colonise the medium of photography itself, by inverting or subverting the relationship between photographer and subject. She describes these images as being “made in collaboration with the Piako awa,” suggesting that the river be given a measure of creative agency alongside the artist.
The photographic diptych displayed on the landing, New Moon to New Moon, February 37°17’01.2”S 175°31’02.9”E, consists of two such “river exposures.” These large, glossy prints evoke the language of abstract painting in their emphasis on scale and colour, and in the way the composition is structured around the edge of the picture plane, in this case because of how the edge of the film negative interacts with the river’s water. Photography, already historically a disposable medium, is presented by van der Drift as though disposed of already, the negative discarded into a river to organically decay. Here, photography's capacity to be the art of chance and kismet is seemingly carried to its logical conclusion, allowing natural happenstance to take the upper hand.
In the main photography gallery, a series of five further photographic works have been printed as colour transparencies and give the illusion of being illuminated from behind, creating an eerie, immersive experience. By inviting the viewer into a pseudo-darkroom, van der Drift positions these works as in some way inconclusive, still being processed or generated. Like the un-illuminated works, these images are watery, flowing and estuarine, inundated by sedimentary drifts and rivulets. However, due to their presentation, they also strongly suggest starry skies or nebulae, the pitting and damage to the negative becoming scattered points of light. The works’ titles, such as New Moon to New Moon, August 2019 II, 37°20'33.4"S 175°30'30.5”E, reference the phases of the moon during which they were exposed, likewise reinforcing this allusion. There is thus a double - or even quadruple - reflection at play here, the sky reflected in the river and both reflected in, and transposed by, the negative, which is itself flipped into its photographic positive. Again, by repositioning the photographer as a collaborator or even facilitator to processes that are, ultimately, beyond human control, van der Drift seems content to allow her authorial hand to become lost in this alluvial hall of mirrors.
The accompanying video work, Dazzled (Numbed?) by a Myth, does little to dispel this sense of a photographer not anxious to occupy the spotlight. While there is voice-over narration, a glance at the accompanying wall label indicates that the person speaking is not Van der Drift but Geva Ngapō Downey. The content of the narration, too, contains an element of reflection or doubling, quoting from and referencing texts by Geoff Park and Barbara Hurd. The video itself is a meditative journey through the Hauraki plains, first the areas that were drained to create farmland, followed by the remaining rivers, streams and wetlands. Eventually, the viewpoint becomes a downwards-looking pan over plants and water, a claustrophobic procession reminiscent of certain scenes in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker, in which flowing water becomes a metaphor for the passing of past into future and life into death. Rather than impermanence, however, the theme that this imagery evokes in van der Drift’s video is that of ambivalence. The narration reinforces the liminality of wetlands and rivers, noting that “there is no better place than a swamp or bog to learn about uncertainty.” In draining swamps to create arable land, colonial settlers pushed back the ambiguity (and attendant anxiety) of the existing swamps, but, van der Drift seems to suggest, these moist zones are metaphorically and literally lurking just below the feet of the contemporary world.
Listening to a Wet Land suggests that, in analogy to the physical landscape of Aotearoa, there is an uncertain morass lurking beneath the terrain of photography, waiting to bubble up when least expected. In retrospect, the title itself perhaps offers an important clue as to van der Drift’s thesis: as a visual medium, the photograph is equipped to explain, to show and to tell, but not to listen. What does it take for a photograph to be able to listen, respond and reciprocate with its subject, especially when that subject is as quiet as a river?
All in all, this is an intriguing and worthwhile exhibition, even for those who are perhaps less interested in the technical and structural elements of photography than in its content. Despite their unusual method of production, these prints are visually rich, and engage with ideas that are current and vital, especially in the context of contemporary discussions around the value of water and who should have a say in its use and guardianship.
Andrew Clark is a writer and editor based in Auckland. He has a background in fine arts and a PhD in English. His areas of interest include art, photography, literature, film and science fiction.
Kate van der Drift, New Moon to New Moon, February 37°17'01.2_S 175°31'02.9_E , collection of the Wallace Arts Trust, Wallace Art Awards 2020 finalist
Kate van der Drift, Waning Cresent to Waxing Gibbous, June, -37.429838, 175.510886
Kate van der Drift, Waning Gibbous to Waxing Gibbous, September, 2020 I, 37°17’41.6”S 175°31’35.7"E
Kate van der Drift, installation view of the main photography gallery
Kate van der Drift, still from the video Dazzled (Numbed?) by a Myth
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