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This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
Clere & Clere Architects, the architects of the building designed for the Buffaloes fraternal and philanthropic society in Kent Terrace, Wellington, now Bats Theatre, are likely to have expected photographers to approach this late art nouveau stained-glass dome over the entrance hall from the hall itself, assuming that anyone would be attracted to its ‘best aspect’. Andrew Ross is something of a sceptic of assumed quality, however, and he tends to mooch around to the back of things to see how they respond to gravity instead. This attitude goes against expectations about what art should offer, which is why many people still have a problem with photographic imagery in which the subject matter seems ‘ugly’ rather than ‘beautiful’. One of the great gifts of the medium in its long and honourable documentary tradition is the suggestion that we might profit from reconsidering this dichotomy.
From below, the glass dome was calculated by its architects to look beautiful — an intention reinforced by the weird panoply of lights hovering around it. But Ross’s aim is to show that even beauty needs propping up. His quietly affectionate image serves as a tap on the shoulder, reminding us that Icarus-like soaring towards the ideal is underpinned by the realities of physics: the heat of the sun and the inexorable forces of gravity.
In this he’s not a narrow iconoclast, because he offers a viable alternative. It’s the alternative of the car sales yard. In whom, ultimately, would you place your trust: the suited salesman out front with his patter and stylish haircut, or the grease-monkey out the back in stained overalls, tinkering under the bonnet? Photographs tend to be more interested in facts than fancies, and in this medium Andrew Ross is New Zealand’s poet laureate of facts.
Peter Ireland