A pōwhiri for Bob Marley at the White Heron Hotel, Auckland, 1979. Pic Murray Cammick.
A pōwhiri for Bob Marley at the White Heron Hotel, Auckland, 1979. Pic Murray Cammick.
The accidental publisher is now the accidental exhibitor.
Okay, that's how Murray Cammick would tell his story, but then if self-deprecation was a sport, he'd have a string of Olympic golds to his name by now.
So let me start again.
Murray Cammick, the man who turned a time waster into Rip It Up, New Zealand's most seminal music magazine, before championing and recording such acts as Upper Hutt Posse, Shihad and Head like A Hole - then becoming a sought-after DJ - is once again proving himself to be one of our great cultural chroniclers.
He started with Flash Cars, a photographic celebration of 70s, street-level, petrolhead culture, which came about when an old friend felt it was time to repay an old debt, and now he's back with AK 75-85.
Music journalist and photographer Murray Cammick. Photograph by Jason Oxenham.
This time, he's on a musical bent with live punk gigs, live punk crowds, then-alive music legends (RIP Bob Marley), and the odd shot of Graham Brazier (again, RIP) taking a slash in a sink.
It's all rock'n'roll baby and an awful long way from running around with his trusty Instamatic taking photos of the girls next door or school sports days, even if the underlying sentiment remains the same.
"Well, it was kind of what you did to collect memories, wasn't it?"
Iggy Pop finds something funny in a copy of Rip it Up, 1979. Pic Murray Cammick.
Except that it's now clear he ended up collecting much more than he knew.
As with his favourite photographer, American Stephen Shore, what he did was capture the essence of a time in all it's unflinching banality.
As he says with regard to a candid shot of famously difficult guitarist Johnny Ramone, he saw a punk legend when many others now can't see past the wall-mounted telephone he's hanging off.
I went to Elam and have an approach to photography that's in some senses art-based, but I've always been cynical about even using the term 'art'
So sure, stone-age technology and all that, but the underlying point here was that a man who seems hellbent on talking himself down was even there to take the picture.
Which may be why it happened.
Stuart Broughton, who runs Black Asterisk, the gallery exhibiting 46 of Cammick's photographs agrees. "We've included a fair number of portrait shots and they are all very confident, everyone is completely at ease, and I think that is because of Murray. He wouldn't have strutted in as some brazen sort of photographer-as-artist man, he'd be very casual and I think that puts people at ease straight away. So yeah, the success of those images relates back to him really well."
Toy Love at Mandrill Studios. Pic Murray Cammick.
In a roundabout way, Cammick's view of his work bears this out. He might have been backstage on assignment, but regardless of how intimidated he was by the visiting rock star (think George Benson, Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sue), his approach remained as down-home as that employed with his neighbours: "I mean, sure, I went to Elam and have an approach to photography that's in some senses art-based, but I've always been cynical about even using the term 'art'.
"Of course, if I travel, I'll go hang at an art museum, I love to see photographs being presented at their best with beautiful prints and frames and all that. But I also love the art of baking and I'll try to find the best doughnut, croissant or whatever, so yeah, that's where you get confusion over what is art and what isn't.
"Like if you see food made by an amazing chef, people may not call that art, but if I see an exhibition in a flash gallery where someone has draped a banana skin over a chair, some might say 'look, art', but I don't think I'd be a great fan of their work."
"As I say, I just love his work, so I sat down to watch one of his lectures on YouTube, and it was all these intellectual justifications for why he was doing what he's doing and, well, I almost like his work less now."
So it may be that it's the reality or, more accurately, lack of artifice in real life that grabs Cammick first and foremost. After all, he first fell in love with music through a live soul album - despite the punk connections, he's a soul man at heart - but there is an irony in being enraptured by live spectacles with all their movement, unpredictability, noise, and energy while seeking to freeze them into silent stills.
Yet that's the lot of a documentary photographer.
No matter how chaotic the goings on, the job is to capture a moment in such a way that, hopefully anyway, someone looking at an image anywhere and at anytime will feel something of what it was like to be there.
The effort leaves a mark too. Cammick now finds that his memory of a gig comes down to quality of photos he took. If the lighting was good, he'd likely get good pics, therefore it was a good gig, regardless of how the band performed. Which is why he doesn't think all that kindly on the Split Enz gigs he's seen, and there were plenty.
As for the best lighting? Easy, Bryan Ferry at Sweetwaters.
Louche Rock stars aide though, he would like to think someone might see enough in his everyman approach to have a crack themselves. What could be more punk?
"Yes, there's the big concerts, Bowie at Western Springs and all that, but really I'd rather be at a noisy suburban gig, some band playing their first gig and you're having to brace yourself in the mosh pit.
"I mean I wasn't the right age, but I really hope someone got amazing shots at something like The Checks, having a great time playing to their mates at their local pub.
"Because you don't have to go out looking to discover some deep, universal truth, just saying "it's good to be alive and it's good to dance ", nothing more profound than that, and there's nothing at all wrong with that message."
The AK 75-85 exhibiton runs at the Black Asterisk Gallery 10 Ponsonby Road until Sunday, August 27.
