War photos capture manly energy

BY T.J. McNAMARA

This I saw." The great artist Francisco Goya wrote this on an etching in his series The Disasters of War, which bore witness to the horrific nature of the guerrilla war against the French invaders of Spain in the 19th century. In the 20th century, bearing witness was done by photography.

The fascinating exhibition called Private Paton's Photographs, on the top floor of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, bears remarkable witness to life in the New Zealand forces in Egypt and Syria in 1941-42.

Harold Paton was a 20-year-old photographer at the Auckland Star when he enlisted.

In the Middle East he took thousands of photographs that were published all over the world, but especially he sent photographs back to the Star where, after the war, he became chief photographer. The New Zealand Herald acquired the rights to the photos when Paton retired.

The display at the museum (until August 4) is not war photography in the sense of horrific images from the thick of the fight. Most of these photos show the New Zealanders at rest or recreation or on parade. Even the shots of the celebrated Long Range Desert Group are piratical and picturesque.

What these photos splendidly record is the cheerfulness and energy of men among men.

They exactly recall the boots, the woollen stockings, the shorts, the trucks, the wide space of the desert, and in all of them there is the bright sun casting sharp shadows. In this bright sunlight even the notorious lemon-squeezer hat looks like effective protection.

The outstanding impression, after the sheer cheerfulness and personality of the men, is of the dust. Most of the photographs are deliberately undramatic but there is one striking shot where, out of a cloud of dust, all we can make out is boots and bayonet on attack.

This is a great and valuable record well displayed and, although it is a view of war for home consumption and consolation, it is invaluably honest and straightforward. Only a couple of the photographs are self-consciously arty when ruins are photographed through an arch or a doorway but, self-conscious or not, they are effective.

And there is one piece of completely unself-conscious art that is very moving. It is a simple shot of a man called Joe Mosen propped on his elbow on his bed on the floor at Maadi Camp.

This time a soft light filters through a window and his attitude falls into the pose of the antique statue of a fighter called The Dying Gaul (also known as The Dying Gladiator) of which there is an excellent copy in the museum. Bearing witness can create classics.

Another kind of bearing witness is seen in the photography of Jennifer French whose work is at the Vavasour/Godkin Gallery until May 18.

The exhibition has the strange title Forty Bastards which, we are told, is yachtsman's talk for a storm coming up.

The photographs have been taken from a yacht and also have a classic simplicity. The long format contains the wide sea, the sky and three yachts hull-down on the horizon. The sea is leaden. What Yeats called "the murderous innocence" of the sea and its vastness is tellingly captured. Clouds lower overhead and sunlight is filtered through them.

The photographs are at once intensely real and mysterious.

The prints are large, which adds to their effect and they are printed on textured paper, not smooth photographic paper. They use the best of modern technology as they are printed in permanent pigment by ink jet.

Fascinatingly, they appear to be almost black and white photographs but close inspection shows they are made up of tiny touches of colour which blend to give a richness of tone.

This is a small exhibition but it certainly provides a new experience for landlubbers.

A different genre of photography is on show at the Artis Gallery until May 18. Four photographers show work that has been set up, collaged, arranged.

The aim is not to bear witness to facts but to make a unique image, rich and strange.

They try to do things that are unconventional. Bronwyn Fecteau, who now works in London, places disparate objects in a circle of light.

A marvellous Annunciation by the late Di Ffrench is also circular. It is part photograph, part Italianate drawing, placed in the depth of a dark frame.

Julie Firth and Christine Webster work with symbols and make actors of the women they portray.

The possibilities of photography, now so much in the news, range from their goddesses of fertility to the Homeric tone of Paton's pictures of soldiers at war.