Nature Boy: The Photography of Olaf Petersen

Exhibition:

Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira

7 April 2022 – March 2023

Book:
Published by Auckland University Press with Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Nature Boy: The Photography of Olaf Petersen is edited by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins

PhotoForum Online is pleased to publish this essay by Shaun Higgins, Curator Pictorial, Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira.

Out on the west coast of Auckland you can very easily find yourself surrounded by sand, with nothing but the sound of surf and sea birds and the water as it makes its way from streams to the sea. This is the place in which nature photographer Olaf Petersen (1915-1994) found never-ending inspiration. As he once said ‘every time, provided you look for it there is something new.’

Petersen grew up on a dairy farm on Tram Valley Road in Swanson, where he lived with his five sisters. One of his first views of nature is repeated in Morning Mists, showing the farm shrouded in the mist. His Danish father and Swedish mother would sell mash to locals such as the retired photographer Henry Winkelmann, who would photograph the family in return. Petersen’s mother, Ester, learned photography from Winkelmann, borrowing his camera and processing glass plates in her pantry while little Olaf watched in fascination. At school, aged seven, he met William Ingram, schoolmaster and amateur photographer.  

By the time Petersen was twenty photography had become a serious hobby. He had joined several camera clubs. At the Auckland Camera Club he would meet one of his lifelong friends, Frank Hofmann who would encourage experimentation and new approaches to photography. In 1943 Petersen took the club on a special nature outing to his favourite place and took the photograph Te Henga. This was the first of several such trips led by Petersen. He was also publishing his photographs in the New Zealand Herald and Weekly News when he could. Both nature and documentary photos were in demand at the time and it was this push that made him decide to go professional in 1952. A year later he was covering the royal tour in Henderson.

When not taking commercial portraits as primary income, Petersen would still return to the coast to make photo studies of the endangered spotted shag, only accessible by rope down the cliffs at Te Henga. For several years he photographed them and even wrote a news article in 1952 about habitat and population, and illustrated with some of his spotted shag images. His interest in nature and the outdoors was a perfect match for the Auckland University Field Club, who, as it happens kept a hut next door to the Petersen Farm in Swanson. When he was invited to join the club he found a group of nature enthusiasts who would take him all over the country to remote locations including offshore islands like the Poor Knights, where they stayed in 1956. Petersen would observe the practice of scientific recording whilst making a visual record of his own. The Weekly News published a two-page spread on the trip, featuring images such as Me & Pop, then called Tuatara and Young. Petersen had found a way to make a living from his passion for nature photography alongside his commercial work.

Petersen’s photographs were regularly submitted for competitions, winning prizes with the Photographic Society of New Zealand, and local societies. Some of his top prizes were the William Davies Memorial Salon for Natural History in 1956 for I’m late and his Maadi Cup and Gold Medal winners, So Lonely in 1972 and Walkabout in 1976. During this period he honed his style, calling the object he was photographing ‘only a means to an end’ in order ‘to interpret certain moods’. He was known for his patience, waiting for the right conditions and light for a preconceived result. His competition prints show his darkroom practice, utilising the craft of dodging and burning by hand. This process was captured in the 1982 film Olaf’s Coast which features him printing the 1981 photograph The End of the Road in his dark room.

His 1952 photograph I’m Late plays with the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, showing a gull chick at Muriwai in a hurried stride. The title I’m Late was probably inspired by the 1951 silver screen version of the story. The chick appears to fall forward into the frame which is not far from the truth. Petersen had followed the bird in circles trying to move it from the toheroa shells. This took some time and the resulting pose reflects this. The photograph would have been difficult to take trying to frame a moving subject in a Rolleiflex camera with its laterally reversed viewfinder.

The mood of other images sets a different pace. So Lonely, taken in 1970 at Pouto, features a small oyster catcher in a large sand expanse. Taken after wind and rain with a smoothed out effect on the sands, a path of sunlight appears to guide the tiny figure through the endless dunes. The resulting eerie loneliness is summed up in the title of the work. The solitary figure of a bird is similarly found in his photograph The Day’s End taken at Lake Manapouri in the early 1960s. As the lake and surrounding hills are bathed in sun rays through the clouds above, a single bird makes its way through the beam.

Another sandy scene, this time with human protagonists, the 1971 photograph Walkabout shows a scene at Lake Wainamu, Te Henga featuring towering sand pillars that appear like giant trees in an ancient forest. The adventurous Wheeler children and their dog Jasmin make their way across the scene which has been cleverly photographed at a particular angle and distance in order to turn sloping dunes into pillars. The occurrence of this sand pattern lasted only two days, a unique example of the changing landscape in which Petersen found inspiration.

People feature in many of Petersen’s images, often children in their element, such as the race to the top of the dunes in Foto Finish taken in the 1960s. When they are not distant, they are out in the elements. An adorable portrait of two AUFC members taken in 1972 on Aotea / Great Barrier Island shows a couple, Bruce Hayward and Glenys Puch facing each other wearing their parkas in the rain. Paired with Whats Cooking, taken on the same trip, Petersen shows that camping life is not all sunshine and views.

Though Petersen’s photographs often feature a human presence in nature many of his later images show diminutive figures. In Late Afternoon ca. 1970 a giant coastal pōhutukawa tree leaves a tiny figure in awe, a comparison of scale he uses quite often.

A sense of humour is apparent in many of Petersen’s photographs from early to late period. The 1981 photograph The End of The Road shows a falling street sign buried in sand amidst the dunes. To a local, this image is absurd as Tram Valley Rd is nowhere near the coast. The scene was the result of sand stockpiled for work on the railway lines nearby.

Perhaps in keeping with Petersen’s modesty, his humour is used to show concern for nature. His 1976 photograph Go Home! taken at lying on the ground shows a giant taniwha of drift wood, a knot for an eye with jaws open facing a walking figure in the background. The title says it all once again indicating it is time for humans to leave this place. A degree of cynicism is visible in his change in titles, perhaps as he watched many of his favourite places change or come under threat. A photograph of sack cloth caught on a barbed wire fence in a storm in 1978 was given three titles. First titled A Hangover, then Tragedy, and finally The Gallows. From the decline of toheroa shellfish beds at Muriwai to the attempt to build a rubbish dump at Te Henga, Petersen’s role as a documentarian would be relevant.

Olaf Petersen spent a lifetime outdoors, photographing nature was both a passion and a means of living. He was well placed at the intersection of nature, art and science and a valued member of his community. A modest man who was seldom present in frame other than as a deliberate shadow, he preferred to let his images do the talking, it is no wonder that his friend and photographer Alan Warren once called him ‘Nature Boy’. 

About the book and the exhibition

Published with Auckland University Press with Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Nature Boy: The Photography of Olaf Petersen is edited by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins featuring essays by Shaun Higgins, Andrew Clifford and Kirstie Ross as well as personal reflections from Sarah Hillary and Sandra Coney. The book features 100 images taken by Olaf Petersen over his the course of his career and shows some of his influences.

The exhibition features over 60 original photographs from Petersen’s competition set. The show takes the viewer through development, his favourite places, his association with photographic societies and the field club and his interest in people in nature. The exhibition takes the audience into his professional period focusing on his prize-winning nature photography from sandy coastline and seabirds to flora and fauna in the bush. The show includes a look through a Rolleiflex camera, a 1982 film by Karl Mutch, Olaf’s Coast courtesy of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision as well as sound recordings of people who knew him, and an interactive showing a selection from his photograph albums.

Nature Boy reveals a little-known nature photographer who showed us the beauty in our outdoors for over 50 years from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Essay supplied by Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira

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