Castlecliff, Wanganui

item details

NameCastlecliff, Wanganui

ProductionHaruhiko Sameshima; photographer; 1994; Castlecliff

Classificationlandscapes, black-and-white prints, gelatin silver prints, black-and-white photographs, works of art

Materialsphotographic gelatin, silver, photographic paper

Materials Summaryblack and white photographic diptych, gelatin silver prints

Techniquesblack-and-white photography, toning

DimensionsImage: 564mm (width), 446mm (height)

Registration NumberO.027372

Credit linePurchased 2001 with New Zealand Lottery Grants Board funds

Overview

This black and white photographic diptych was taken by Haruhiko Sameshima in 1994. The title locates the image, which is a panorama of Castlecliff beach in Wanganui. The photographs were created using a large-format camera with four by five inch negatives.

The missing photograph
Unlike Kowhai Park, Wanganui, another Sameshima diptych in Te Papa's collection, Castlecliff, Wanganui does not join up to create a seamless representation of its subject. There is a gap in the landscape, and in this way Sameshima identifies the point of this diptych. The missing photograph is by Laurence Aberhart, a famous image in which a tiny Taranaki is visible in the centre of the sweep of the beach. Sameshima's two photographs frame Aberhart's original image.

Taking the view
Castlecliff, Wanganui was created after Sameshima saw an exhibition of Aberhart's photographs at the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui. He sought out the location of one of Aberhart's photographs, and then photographed the landscape on either side. Castlecliff, Wanganui is one of a series of large-format photographs that Sameshima produced as part of eco-Tourism, an ongoing photographic project that he began in 1994. He had returned to Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University in order to develop his knowledge of New Zealand photography, and his Master of Fine Arts proposal involved visiting museums around the country with significant photographic collections. He would view these collections, familiarising himself with the history of New Zealand photography, and at the same time take photographs of the museums and galleries in which the images were held. In this series, Sameshima deliberately engages with the characteristics of the photographs he was viewing in institutional collections, as well as making reference to his contemporary photographic colleagues. Aberhart, a well-known New Zealand photographer, is singled out for attention here, and Sameshima makes the wry point that it is Aberhart's image of Taranaki, rather than the mountain itself, that casts the most shadow in this instance.