Kerb, Queen St - Wellesley St

The street photographer generally prefers to be the invisible, all-seeing eye. He or she wishes to capture the world as it unfolds uncontaminated by their presence, and without the awkwardness of eye contact, explanations and suspect motivations. Like many others, Max Oettli practiced how to set exposure, framing and focus nonchalantly with barely a glance at his subject, so that when the moment was right he could swiftly and unobtrusively ‘slice out’ a piece of reality.

However, the power of this image is precisely due to the fact that the photographer was not invisible – his gaze is met directly by his subjects. Oettli was photographing a university capping parade, and for a moment turned to face onlookers less than two metres from his lens on a street corner. Despite the photographic licence offered by the parade, he admits he immediately ‘sloped off in the direction of the procession down Queen St’ after taking the shot because ‘it would have been difficult to explain precisely what I was doing, the more so as I felt profoundly ill at ease with my position in such a direct confrontation’.

Images of ‘faces in the crowd’ run through New Zealand photography, with works by John Pascoe, Marti Friedlander and Ans Westra springing to mind. Like Oettli, these photographers have each sought to express something of the New Zealand character as they saw it. They also share a humanist outlook, seeking to create universal statements on the human condition.

Oettli certainly captured a very disparate group of New Zealanders, self-selected by the coincidence of each intending to cross the street just before a parade blocked their path. It’s an image of watching and waiting, of time paused. Each person at this literal and perhaps symbolic crossroads scans the future in their own way: the far distant search of the man with the bow tie; the detached gaze of the man in the hat; the sideways and equally cautious look of the young man in glasses; and most strikingly, through the confusion of her hair, the clear, direct, and haunting stare of the young woman tucked in the centre.

Athol McCredie

This text was published in Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2009)