T. J. McNamara: Snapshots lifted to captivating images

Opinion

The eye, the opportunity, the difference: these are three factors that lift photography towards art.

The annual festival of photography is running in Auckland and the hundreds of photographs on display can claim to be art. Yet why are they different from the shot you take with your mobile phone?

A photograph may become art if it reflects a special eye that sees something others don't, an opportunity to record something special or shows things in a different way that widens the experience of the viewer.

Sending a group of photographers to Antarctica may provide a special opportunity. The chance was seized by three technically accomplished photographers whose work is on show at the Gus Fisher Gallery.

It is not all still photography. The most compelling imagery in the show comes from Connie Samaras whose four-minute video loop is direct nature photography without the usual Attenborough style of commentary.

At the beginning we see a hole in thick ice, with still water at the bottom. There is a tense sense of expectancy. Then the water is disturbed - rising through it, the head of a seal fills the hole. The seal's eyes look warily around, intensely aware of the photographer.

It is there to breathe deeply and oxygenate its blood and so the loop is accompanied by deep breathing sounds. Its nostrils open wide and the animal breathes. The nostrils close, sealing the breath in. The eyes of the animal close with an expression that is tempting to see as ecstasy.

It continues to breathe, sometimes dipping its head just under water and surfacing again. Then it descends and is gone and all that is left is turbulence in the water and a hint of a shape vanishing into the depths.

It is an extraordinary experience, an encounter with what the artist calls "Valis": Vast Active Living Intelligence Systems.

Other works in this fine show include three tall photographs by Joyce Campbell.

Unlike the other works in the show, they are not framed but are big hangings. The shape matches the height of the tall ice cliffs. Their massy whiteness is interrupted in each case by a dark folding womb-shaped cavern.

The effect is that these vast structures appeal like primeval earth mothers, somehow preserved in ice. At the end of the world in Antarctica there is a frozen hint of the beginning of all things. It took a good eye to see it.

In Goethe's great poem Faust Part II, Faust descends beneath the earth and visits giant figures called The Mothers. When the poet was asked the meaning of these figures he merely shook his head and said, "Ah, the mothers, the mothers". These big photographs evoke the same inexplicable mystery.

Similarly it is the shrewd eye of Anne Noble that sees the unexpected contrast of the deck of a cruise ship - with everyday tables and chairs, table cloths and water jugs - against the uninhabited, eternal masses of the ice of Antarctica across the water.

In the other room at the Gus Fisher, an exhibition is like an eye at a keyhole. It is a show of circular photographs by Ann Shelton who likes to investigate sites that have historical resonance.

These prints show the rooms formerly occupied by women on Rotoroa Island in the Hauraki Gulf where they were sent for what was is now called dependency and was then called alcoholism.

The facility is now disused but these round photographs are poignant because of the way each room is painted a different colour and the way mattresses, leaning against the wall or still on a bed, have a variety of coloured ticking. Even the door handles evoke melancholy by suggesting shutting in and shutting out. The show is called room room. The repetition is important because the show needs all of the 12 circular photographs to make its full impact.

At the John Leech Gallery there is an exhibition called Against the Day by Patrick Reynolds who is well known for the excellence of his architectural photographs.

These images are very different. They are not made sharp and clear for an architectural magazine but are shot against the light so they become hazy, rim-lit with a halo of light around their edges. The effect is to make them more romantic as they lack definition.

In No 11, an immensity of sky interrupted only by the green light of a traffic light says something special about the interaction of the city and the space of the sky.

A group of tall cypresses look as though they have stood from everlasting to everlasting.

In No 3, foliage is dissolved in light so it looks like a manifestation of something truly spiritual. Not many of the rest achieve this level.

Up at Whitespace in the annex at the back, a group of portrait photographs by Layla Rudneva Mackay is called Green with Envy.

Portraits are usually so specific about features they are no more than studio photography. To make a difference, these unnamed portraits have thick coloured make-up. The colour suggests something personal and emotional.

One work features a handsome man with a dark beard who looks proud and arrogant. Above the precise line of his beard is a white mask of makeup. This man has two sides to his personality.

Another face is of a striking woman with a tall forehead in a robe with striking patterns. Her makeup has a hint of yellow with a pink glow around her mouth, eyes and ears. The robe she wears is torn and through a rip we can see the dark brown flesh of her left arm. Face and reality are different.

Most magical of all is a work called Blue. Striking eyes look out over the top of a translucent blue shape, above a brown dress that sits on a fluid blue base. It is a remarkable evocation of masks, Venice and mystery.

At the galleries

What: Antarctica, by Joyce Campbell, Anne Noble, Connie Samaras; room room, by Ann Shelton
When and where: Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, to June 20
TJ says: A brilliant video and still photographs by three artists who avoid the conventional and convey new experiences about visiting the ice.

What: Against the Day, by Patrick Reynolds
Where and when: John Leech Gallery, cnr Kitchener St, to June 19
TJ says: Photographs shot against the light, hazy and pale, in an effort to confer poetry on the ordinary.

What: Green with Envy, by Layla Rudneva-Mackay
Where and when: Starkwhite, 510 K Rd, to June 20
TJ says: A photographer who specialises in colourful paradox turns her attention to portraits and the emotional effect of colour.