Ans Westra, interviewed by curator Athol McCredie, 2012

‘If people didn’t want me to take the photograph they would chase me away.’

– Ans Westra

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Transcript

Ans Westra: I’ve never been particularly interested even in photographing people because they’re famous. It doesn’t work for me.

Athol McCredie: So what are you looking for, then?

AW: The communication between people and the right moment. Catching a moment in full swing.

AM: But a moment that says what?

AW: That sums up an emotion. That one in the pub was very poignant [Public bar, Trentham Racecourse, Upper Hutt, 1971]. They were crying, or one of them was crying. And the other one’s comforting her. Whether it’s a personal crisis, or whether she’s just lost all her housekeeping money, I don’t know. Could have lost a bet at the pub in Trentham. And I caught the moment.

Nobody minded that I used them for a photograph. I mean, some of these things are a bit harder to do nowadays.

AM: So did you exchange any words? How did these things operate?

AW: No, I just wandered, I took a photo, I smiled, and I walked away again. If people didn’t want me to take the photo, they would chase me away. I didn’t do it obtrusively or secretly. 

AM: So you didn’t check with people if it was OK to use their photos?

AW: No, I didn’t. And I found when I did do Whaiora, Katerina Mataira felt that everybody in the book should be asked permission. And I started with the old Solomon lady who was leading an action song in Parliament grounds, and she said, ‘God no, you can’t use that, I look fat.’ And I thought, well, I’m not going further on this one, that’s crazy.
And also I photographed Sophie Carr for instance up on the coast in her vegetable patch, that’s in Maori, and when the book came out, her neighbour Bentley came running and said, ‘You’re in a book, you’re in a book!’ And then she said, ‘Why didn’t you take your apron off?’ Sophie said, ‘Hmph.’ 

AM: In 1972, your book Notes on the Country I Live In was published by Alister Taylor. How did that come about?

AW: I had the idea pretty soon that I would quite like – because Maori had sold out – I wanted to revive Maori and add some more pictures to it, to carry on with that project. And the main thing was, because Maori was printed in gravure, they said at the time, that book sold at 3 guineas or whatever; to do it now would cost at least 150 dollars or guineas or whatever, and it couldn’t be done. It priced itself off the market. That was the end of that idea.

Then when I took some other work to Reed’s, I met Alister Taylor, who was there still working as educational editor, I think. And he said, ‘Well, if you’re doing a book, I’ll publish it, because I’m going on my own.’ And I applied for a grant, which had then become a possibility. So I got Creative New Zealand money, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council.
And Alister worked with … Basically, we had the layout of double page, and people around his office would put their signature whether they liked the picture or not. So it became a book done by committee, which I didn’t enjoy!

AM: So was that happening while you were still shooting?

AW: I was still shooting because there are a few pictures in there that are very late additions. Gradually as I was working, and I’d done the first installment, I came home and processed it all. And Eric came along. We had a month on the road together, and he would sit in the back of the Volkswagen and have Lego all over the back seat, behave himself while I went into the freezing works, the paper mill in Mataura. He was very well trained, he was a good kid. He would ask me endless questions as I was driving. It was endlessly the same at that age!

AM: The title, then. Your working title had been ‘The New Zealanders’. Did somebody suggest this [Notes on the Country I Live In] from [James K] Baxter’s essay?

AW: I think Alister and I came together on that.

AM: Why did you pick that?

AW: Because it was right. It works as a title. The pictures are notes or whatever. No, I’m perfectly happy with that.

AM: ‘The New Zealanders’ is a big grand statement, isn’t it? It’s like Brian Brake.

AW: Yeah, I know. And this is much more intimate. But that’s what the book was.

AM: Because I do contrast this with Brian Brake’s Gift of the Sea, just in the size of the book, and the grandeur if you like. And his has a lot of expansive landscapes.

AW: Every picture on the pedestal. I simply didn’t want to do that. I wanted it to be intimate, a book that people would leaf through and gradually the images would work on them. But if you have a coffee table book, it’s much more prestigious. But I didn’t need that any more. I’d done Maori, and even Maori is not directly that sort of a book.

AM: The other thing about the title is it’s kind of tentative. It’s not ‘This is New Zealand,’ it’s ‘Here’s some notes on the country which I live in.’ That’s what it’s sort of saying?

AW: Yeah. It’s my world and whatever.

AM: You’re photographing where there are people. In the suburbs, there’s nobody really to photograph. It’s quite hard to photograph the suburbs?
 
AW: I’ve heard from [author] Noel [Hilliard] that there aren’t enough public servants, and I said, ‘Oh, but they’re boring!’ – exactly that.
I wasn’t trying to do a comprehensive book. No. Even including the races, I did go there, because they were places where lots of people were, but that was the only reason. There are some workers, but I wasn’t trying to include enough.
Well, I went to the commune specifically because I was interested in that whole development.

AM: But you weren’t a commune convert yourself?

AW: No, I didn’t ever live in one. But OK, now you go and you hear about their life, the good of it usually. If you’re trying to list what should be in, then maybe you need the freezing works and this and that. But it didn’t develop that way.

This excerpt is from a conversation for the book, The New Photography. Purchase this book from the Te Papa Store