59read (my copy still has its underlines): ‘Whatever
diminishes constraint, diminishes strength.’ I
embraced this book, read and re-read it, sometimes
only to replace the word ‘music’ with ‘photography’,
a book about the sheer miscellany of the photography
and texts on these shelves, a beacon, a lexicon almost,
for understanding the bounty of this uncommon
library. I wonder what I would think of this book now,
45 years later; it was such a moment of revelation.
When I grasp a project from a simmering pot of
ideas, I try not to over-research. I’m old enough now
to have thought about a few things, and know that no
matter how deeply I might have contemplated, there’s
plenty more yet to be found to confound presumption.
So, the fieldwork is a bounty of bliss, a disclosure
of concealment, as in my new abstract art narrative
(that’s my name for it!) concerning the New Zealand
Wars (New Zealand’s colonial wars 1845–72), a stifled
history still, still poorly known, particularly amongst
Pakeha.
Then I head home with this material, whether
analogue once upon a time or digital, and ask myself
the question, what on earth does all this mean? The
edit period is completely separate emotionally from
the fieldwork. The bond with being in the field has
been disconnected, the door has closed and another
opened, where images play a robust and mysterious
manoeuvre with the mind, endlessly. Is that added-
meaning or merely a flirt, connections between images
taken without thought of the other; stacks of yes, no
and maybe workprints switch between one another.
And then a tight magic pile, and the sequence begins.
By this point, I’m clear whether I must write or not.
Or, as with the New Zealand Wars work, whether
someone else will, a rare occurrence. After the
fieldwork in Burma for On the way to an ambush (1999),
when I became dreadfully ill, it took two years to even
look at the images, then four years to write the text.
With writing, each project has different imperatives,
but I invariably return to the same process to find
my way through in search of the meaning there to
be found. With the New Zealand Wars work, the
process reversed. I sought an essay writer before I
began the fieldwork proper, knowing that my abstract
art narrative approach would be a puzzle requiring
goodwill, compassion, and some soul to determine.
My request of the writer was to ignore my images
completely, and write as you wish, perhaps in a poetic
manner rather than raw history or academic. This is
much the same as my first book South Africa (1987)
where the image series is mine alone, and Vernon
Wright’s text is his (they do not connect directly). In
folded eggs (2018) also, the text does not correlate with
the images, but it is my text this time. More on folded
eggs later.
I Must Behave (2009) has no text. It is a social and
political surveillance work with an inexact narrative, a
line of author’s thought, but not prescribed, although
I have my reading. Each project, in good time, will(opposite) BRUCE CONNEW folded eggs #8, Valparaíso, Chile 2012
Pigment print, 108 x 163 mm.
(below) BRUCE CONNEW
On the way to an ambush #47 and #56, Thailand and Burma 1989
Silver gelatin photographs, each 555 x 372 mm.