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B.C.: I have photographed my family forever, right
from my first box camera to the now ubiquitous
mobile, but never as a project. Why not? Who knows?
Maybe too busy living our lives to see it as art.
S.P.: Your work displays a striking range of subject
matter. You are also drawn to such disparate and
difficult to access locations! Why do certain subjects
and field-sites especially captivate you? Does one
project emerge out of another, or would you say that
each new project is somewhat uniquely motivated?
Is it typically the social dynamics of a situation
that attracts you, or are you drawn by more visual
(perhaps even formal) considerations?
B.C.: You know, I think that in my young life I
unwittingly collected mental images, which fixed into
my mind. When I was 12, I had a remarkable teacher
(Dee Twiss, the wife of the high-ranking New Zealand
artist Greer) who told our class about apartheid and
the Sharpeville killings in South Africa. Was that
part of what tugged me to that country in 1985? Who
knows? LIFE magazine used to come into our home
in the early 1960s, not National Geographic or the New
Zealand Listener, and while LIFE magazine’s home
world view would become clear later, the content did
give me a peep at a world difficult to grasp, from my
teenage New Zealand sensibility, or some sensibility:
the Kennedy deaths, Martin Luther King, Muhammad
Ali, civil rights, Vietnam, the events of the time,
trying to work out what those events meant. I figure
it was an important period learning to question what
I might see. I’m not trying to change the world, just
trying to understand why. Why do people vote for a
government they must know will do them harm? That
continues to confound me.
S.P.: Your work often seems to shed light on narratives
defined by dual perspectives. I’m thinking of how you
see a victor’s memorial as a monument to resistance
in the case of the New Zealand Wars gravestones, or
your interest in Fiji as related to the fact that two of
your daughters were dating Fijian men from different
ethnic groups at the heart of the political conflict in the
country. Is this something that you are conscientious
in setting out to explore? Do you think photography
has a special ability to investigate such complexities
and tensions?
B.C.: Photography is my discipline, as dance is my
youngest son’s, and music or writing is someone
else’s. You make the best of your discipline, you
explore your discipline to find ways to say what you
might mean. There are myriad ways to say anything;
look at the best novelists or poets or composers. Life
is rich with layered perspectives and, in my better
moments, I can understand this and see this and
become excited by some light before my eyes, the
layers of life. You are duty bound to figure out these
perspectives and have them become part of your
narrative. With the New Zealand Wars project, during
the fieldwork I was surprised to find that there were
almost no Maori memorials or gravestones scattered
across the North Island other than those of Maori who
at some time or other had allied with the army of the
British Crown and settler military against other Maori
(the reasons are complex), and were seen to merit a
memorial. While I was driving to another location
quite late in the fieldwork, it struck me that if you
turn around in your mind these victor’s memorials
180 degrees, revealed is a glimpse of resistance. It was
a special moment to fathom; it put forward another