BNZ, Father Christmas

Wellington photographer Peter Black works within a tradition of 'street photography', stalking the streets and other public places, seeking to capture life in its constantly changing flux. In particular, he follows the approach established by Englishman Tony Ray-Jones and the Americans Gary Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, who were interested in the sorts of visual juxtapositions often picked up only by the camera. By placing a frame around a scene and then freezing it at a particular moment in time, absurd, bizarre or ironic images that demonstrate that 'camera reality' is different from our everyday experience of the world can appear. Winogrand suggested this phenomenon when he once famously said that he photographed things in order to see what they looked like as photographs.

Detail
In this photograph Black's eye was probably caught by the Father Christmas sitting incongruously in an armchair in what appears to be a shopping centre. There are no Christmas trees, presents or children nearby, only a tired looking figure who was probably taking a break. It seems likely that automatically-opening doors were in front of Santa, for he is revealed in a narrow gap between two panes of glass (with Black's own reflection in the right-hand pane).

Timing
The timing of the photograph was everything, as Santa raised his arm to wave just as the doors were about to obscure him (or perhaps just as they were opening). Such a movement would most likely have been too fast for Black to know exactly how the photograph would turn out, but he nevertheless chose to take it, knowing that something interesting might result. Indeed, the photograph shows a person we normally associate with human warmth and generosity looking defeated in a sterile environment of shopping mall reflections, strip lighting, and corporate-style seating, though he just manages to meet our eye and raise an arm to us through a narrow gap in this world.