Raglan house. Photo / Jane Ussher
David Herkt talks to photographer Jane Ussher about her new book focusing on New Zealand interiors
Jane Ussher isn't buying into the word "seduced" – or the description "erotic", for that matter.
However, her new book of photographs, Rooms: Portraits of Remarkable New Zealand Interiors, is undeniably a luxurious account of an array of contemporary New Zealand spaces, ranging from those with colonial origins, through mid-century modern, to Christchurch earthquake reconstruction. It is a sumptuous and irresistible visual record of the domestic worlds of wealthy owners.
The colour palette is frequently opulent – peacock greens, Morocco reds, distressed whites, Greek blues and waterlily pink. Even deliberate ascetic interiors revel in their austerity. The visible art objects have been selected according to educated tastes with particular care. Collections are pleasurable and sometimes expensive indulgences of personalities. It is an alluring volume, leading the eye into private places, exposing the deliberately curated worlds that exist behind the closed doors of New Zealanders who Ussher admires. It is a rare entrance into created rooms, designed and furnished to satisfy a wide array of desires.
"I wouldn't use the word 'seduction'," Ussher says when asked how she managed to obtain the consent of the owners of these homes to open them to the public gaze in her photographs, often for the first time, just as she isn't quite prepared to concede that her images are erotic.
"I have been a photographer in New Zealand for long enough that most people I approach know me by reputation. It wasn't about seduction. It involved a lot of trusts. So, I didn't feel I was seducing people at all. Once I had explained what I wanted to get out of the book – and basically, it was a book of portraits with the absence of the person but expressing the room – everybody I spoke to understood that concept and were happy for that their rooms to be part of that book.
"I'm interested in why you want to use the word 'erotic', she insists. "I think it is sensual. It is lush and evocative - and it is beautiful. It is unashamedly all of those things."
Ussher began her career as a photographer for The Listener, where her feature portraits of New Zealanders in the public gaze remain a valuable archive of the personalities of an era. Since going freelance, she produced a wide array of award-winning books – including Coast, Islands, and Historic New Zealand Homesteads. For her 2020 collection, Nature–Stilled, she spent several weeks exploring the scientific specimens of Te Papa's natural history department. Homesteads, published in the same year, was a record of the "grand homes" of the past with their situations, aspects, rooms, and gardens.
Her images are contemplative and considered.
"What I think is common, whether I am photographing a person or photographing a space, is that sense of composition. There is nothing accidental about my images. There is nothing accidental about my images at all. I can't help myself. I couldn't take a haphazard photograph if I tried. I get seduced by the framework as much as I get seduced by the objects inside that framework."
Rooms provide an entrance into the world of wealthy and creative people. Occasionally some are referenced in a brief descriptive paragraph at the back of the book which locates the house, names interior artworks and their artists gives the origins of furnishings, and credits architects. However, more often than not, the house owner has chosen to remain anonymous, known only by Ussher's record of their decor. None are pictured.
"There is a sense of voyeurism, don't you think?" she asks. "And I think that is common with both portraits of people and these portraits of rooms. If you can't evoke a sense of mystery, well then people might look at these photos, but they won't come back and re-look at them. There have to be layered within the image for it to resonate – first of all with me, then hopefully with somebody else looking at it."
Voyeurism is an exact word. Ussher enters personal spaces. Her camera eye voluptuously explores and enjoys the process. She discovers people through their possessions. Her photographs of interiors are an archaeology of the present.
To view Rooms is to enter a City Apartment in Auckland which features works by noted artists, Bill Culbert and Philip Clairmont, but also an Elvis Shrine made by a staff member at the house owner's hairdressers, a paper carry-bag painted by Tame Iti, and a sculpture by Don Driver constructed from brightly coloured plastic jerrycans.
A Mount Victoria villa contains a model train set above the fireplace that belonged to the owner's father, lead soldiers made by Wairarapa-based Imperial Productions, and a battered decorative poodle found in a French flea market. A Pirongia house designed by the Group Architect James Hackshaw foregrounds a large sake cup collection sourced over 30 years during visits to Japan, as well as items of Modernist furniture with connections to New Zealand's European emigres.
It is a book of objects arranged according to an owner's will and taste. Shelves are ordered, and corners are curated. Room is a volume of human creations. One thing, however, is missing. There is generally no detritus of living – no mess of the interrupted day, casually put-down phones, TV remotes, or bunches of keys. How involved is Ussher in creating this order?
"When people know that I am coming to their house, they clear all of that stuff away," she explains. "I didn't clear it away. I certainly didn't go around removing a pot of pens or biros – because I personally find those things very interesting. But I think there is a natural inclination when you know that someone is coming into your house to photograph your space, you clear away the things you think are obscuring either your collections or books or whatever it may be, so that wasn't something I did. I didn't do the housekeeping.
"I certainly wasn't creating a room set, tasking things from one place and putting them in another."
Despite the jostle of objects of different times and periods, along with the wide-ranging tastes of the house owners, ask Ussher about the silent, motionless quality of her captured images and you are met by her swift agreement.
"There is a stillness," she affirms. "I love the idea of the noise being removed and you just being able to enter these images and work your way around them… Those are the things that have always been with me as a photographer, they are not a contrivance, they are part of my craft. It is part of how I take photos."
Rooms are also the consequence of her discoveries about herself. "Once I stopped working for The Listener and started working with a digital Hasselblad, my passion for taking portraits was diminished for various boring technical reasons – along with contemporary iPhones and selfies. I found a real interest in discovering that a portrait wasn't necessarily a person but an absence of a person.
"Then, because of my freelance work with various lifestyle magazines I probably had more opportunities than most photographers to be invited into people's houses and I was amazed – and I have not ceased to be amazed – at the amount of personality that people put into their rooms that reflects them. And so about six years ago I thought if I am surprised, well then, I am sure that there will be a readership of people that will also be surprised."
So, how did her "Access All Areas" pass to these homes feel to Ussher?
"'Fun' is probably the last word I would use. I find the process incredibly anxiety-producing. To a man or a woman, in every house I went to, I admired the owners because they were collectors, because of their intellect, or for various reasons. They were very impressive people. They were letting me into their homes, and I wanted to take images they would respond warmly to, and – whether or not they actually liked them – I wanted them to understand why I had taken this direction. It isn't fun at all. I found it stressful, and I kept on being my own worst enemy. I wanted to produce images that resonated with the owners but worked within the confines of the book.
"'Crippling' is a very, very accurate word for when you have high standards."
Rooms: Portraits of remarkable New Zealand interiors, by Jane Ussher and John Walsh, (Massey University Press, $85) is out now.
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1. You have written other kids' books but your characters Little Baa Baa and Quirky Turkey are beloved. What sets them apart, do you think?
Undoubtedly the zany humour and the quick-fire dialogue they share are a big part of it. Being written in the first person makes the books such fun to share and read aloud. The characters are also archetypal in nature, making them easily relatable for all ages: Little Baa Baa playing a classical trickster role, Quirky Turkey, the loveable, gullible sidekick who knows better but just can't help themselves! They are also hand-drawn with such expression and playfulness — I think their faces and body language greatly contribute not just to their colourful personalities but to the storytelling as a whole.
2. Bedtime Blast-Off! is the third in the Baa Baa Smart Sheep series — do you see an opportunity for more where this came from?
As a trilogy I feel like the series is, for the moment, complete. However, the iconic nature of the characters and their growing popularity are spurring me to build upon the current narrative. In this information/misinformation-rich world there is a lot of scope to help educate and expand children's awareness around issues of morality, critical thinking, and the perils of not paying attention! I think incorporating humour is a wonderful way to approach that.
3. As your son has moved past the picture book stage, have you been tempted to expand your publishing offerings to older kids too?
Absolutely, although I don't think Linden's age has a lot to do with that. I have enjoyed writing poetry very much over the past few years and have several YA and adult novel ideas that have languished while exploring the picture book genre. While I plan to publish more picture books, I also wish to turn my attention to something deeper and more literary.
4. You're part of the Writers in Schools programme. What do kids most often ask you?
There are a few questions that come up over and again: "Where do you live?" Mostly in Auckland, also California; "Do you have a pet?" Yes, a Burmese cat called Alfie; "If you weren't an author what would you be?" That's a tough one. Either a transcendentalist light-being who traverses spacetime and alternate realities with ease; or, indulging my more 3D, epicurean nature, a travel/food writer who gets paid to stay and eat in the finest hotels and restaurants in the world. They totally get it.
5. You also make music and write poetry - do either of those feed into your writing and vice versa?
My joy in writing poetry and picture books started with songwriting. I love to mix metaphor and meaning into all my work but also derive great enjoyment from playing with rhyme, cadence and rhythm, which is more prevalent in some of my other titles like Cork on the Ocean and Two Little Bugs. On occasion I have married my music with my books, having explored soundtracks and a song for one of them. I am very pedantic about each and every word I choose and how I structure my sentences. To my mind, melody and rhythm play a vital part in writing so what is being said resonates not just intellectually but at an emotional and often spiritual level as well. As a result, I'm a stickler for grammar. Like Oscar Wilde once said, "I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out." I can totally relate to that!
Bedtime Blast-off! by Mark Somerset (Dreamboat Books, $30 ), the third book in the Baa Baa Smart Sheep series, is available now.
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