Portsmouth Motors Ltd

item details

NamePortsmouth Motors Ltd

ProductionHaruhiko Sameshima; photographer; 1980; Otago Peninsula

Classificationgelatin silver prints, black-and-white prints, black-and-white photographs, works of art

Materialsphotographic gelatin, silver, photographic paper

Materials Summaryblack and white photograph, gelatin silver print

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

DimensionsImage: 132mm (height), 183mm (length)

Registration NumberO.003146

Credit linePurchased 1983 with New Zealand Lottery Board funds

Overview

Portsmouth Motors Ltd is the name of the petrol station in this black and white photograph by Haruhiko Sameshima from 1980. Located in Anderson's Bay, Dunedin, Portsmouth Motors was one of the places Sameshima would stop to get petrol for his car on his way to his flat on the Otago Peninsula. The photograph was taken at night, using a 4 x 5 inch Linhof camera which Sameshima had purchased around this time.

Night photography
By photographing the petrol pumps at night, Sameshima was able to reduce the complexity of the subject, suppressing details that were swallowed by the darkness. This is also the reason that Sameshima chose a symmetrical composition. By simplifying the image, and working in a pre-determined manner, Sameshima, who had only recently taken up photography, was able to grapple with the photographic process more easily, coming to terms with technology and a way of representing the world that was still unfamiliar.

The symmetrical buildings series
Portsmouth Motors Ltd belongs to a series of photographs in which Sameshima was exploring the aesthetic possibilities of photography. The point was not social information or the production of documentary images of industrial areas around Dunedin, but the pursuit of an aesthetic particular to photography, and particular to the large format camera that Sameshima was using. In Portsmouth Motors Ltd, and Coolstore, another work from this series in Te Papa's collection, Sameshima's question is: how do you make a subject look interesting or beautiful in photographic terms? What is the camera capable of? These photographs could be called the Symmetrical Building Series - a description of the subjects and how they were photographed - but this is not a title that Sameshima would have used in 1980.

Acquisition
Portsmouth Motors Ltd was exhibited in a group show at Red Metro Gallery in Dunedin. The dealer behind Red Metro presented a folio of work to Luit Bieringa at the National Art Gallery, who purchased Sameshima's photograph along with some of the other images in 1983.