61B.C.:Deanis ona crucialmissionforhistamariki
to retrieve his customary right to collect titi/
muttonbirds undisturbed. At our first korero,
I anticipated discussing Maori traditional food
collecting of titi, my interest at the time; he turned
up with a couple of his tamariki, his whakapapa and
papers proving beneficial ownership of a titi island.
I learnt over two hours what had cursed the islands
for 100 years, the fiddling of whakapapa to gain
access, and therefore money, at deep emotional cost
to his whanau. After my initial reluctance to become
involved in what I knew would be an uncomfortable
ride, we teamed up, hired a fishing boat and steamed
a little south of Stewart Island in search of the huge
flocks of migratory titi feeding at sea that Dean had
spoken of, and to peep at the island too. At Dean’s
invitation, my wife, artist and designer Catherine
Griffiths, and I returned to the island itself the
following year for the birding season, to photograph
Dean and his two sons collecting titi.
We were ejected by a taua/war party after 19
hours, some of whom had no whakapapa right to be
on the island, but even so spoke of keeping the blood
lines pure. Dean and I are close, trusted friends from
different cultures. I made a modest, unassuming
artist book of my images and Dean’s extraordinary
oral history, Muttonbirds—part of a story, ‘a bomb in
plain wrapping’ said a publisher friend. I was told
the exhibition would never be shown in the South
Island, and the work seems to have fallen foul of
collection policy at Te Papa Tongarewa. As I prepared
the images, Dean readily agreed to be interviewed,
to tell his story, so this battle would be out in the
open, public, nowhere for anyone to hide. He’s been
in and out of the Maori Land Court, where he’s been
poorly served, suffered an uninterested Department
of Conservation, set upon by those who have no
right to his territory, and right now, 17 years since
we first went south together, he might have some
traction, even if his rights are clear-cut. In what has
turned out to be a bitter struggle, we have retained
hard and digital copies of every piece of damning
correspondence with all agencies, a paper trail others
have tried to delete. Even the Official Information Act
has been invoked. We’re tight.
S.P.: What kind of relationship does photography
allow between you and your subjects? Is it unique to
the medium?
B.C.: Of course, the relationships are all different,
some fleeting, and others so completely absorbing
that they produce a significant bond. Each will be
whatever it becomes; a specific outcome is not sought.
Whatever the trajectory of the relationships, they are
based on serious and sincere proposals. With Beyond
the Pale (1981/1986), I was fulltime over five months,
photographing 17 underground coal mines. The
miners were astonished at the length of time I would
spend with them, seven days in a small private mine,
and three weeks in a large state coalmine. The thing
was, each mine was very different in structure, people
and personalities; methods differed too, even if they
were similarly repetitive from mine to mine. Even
though the series (a touring exhibition, not a book)
focused on coalmining, it leans in at the New Zealand
psyche. I needed that five months underground to
build my album of images, my meanings.
S.P.: You have alluded to the fact that by the end of
the Stopover project in 2007, you felt it was difficult
to continue returning to Fiji. As I understood, this
was rooted in a sense that you somehow began to
take on too emotionally complex (and potentially
burdensome) relationships with the extended network
of friends you built up there. Can you describe the
situation with your subjects there and a bit more about
how this feeling developed?
B.C.: At the start, the fieldwork for Stopover was
unplanned. At the time of Fiji’s Speight coup in 2000,
my two elder daughters each had Fijian boyfriends,
one Indian Fijian and the other indigenous, both
middle-class but, when they spoke of Fiji, it was as
if they were giving voice to two different countries.
Most Indians in Fiji are descendants of indentured
labourers brought there by British colonisers. Just
about everywhere I’ve been seems to have been
another British botch-up. I went there to look at the
country at the time of a coup, without peering at the(opposite above) BRUCE CONNEW
Muttonbirds—part of a story #4: titi near Taukihepa 2002
Silver gelatin photograph, 372 x 555 mm.
(opposite below) BRUCE CONNEW
Muttonbirds—part of a story #2: Dean Tiemi Te Au 2003
Silver gelatin photograph, 372 x 555 mm.
(right) BRUCE CONNEW I Must Behave #13 2009
Pigment print, 398 x 266 mm.