Overview
This recording was created for Te Papa’s in-gallery audio tour.
Transcript:
Athol McCredie
The man and woman in this picture are seen in a moment of some kind of intimacy. She’s looking at him, probably speaking, perhaps trying to persuade him away from the evils of drink.
It’s as if they were alone, but of course they are not. The photographer is there too, probably no more than a few metres away.
It’s easy to imagine the documentary photographer as the ‘eye of God,’ all seeing, everywhere present, and invisible. The reality is that the photographer, John Daley, practised again and again how to be unobtrusive. How not to be noticed.
The reason, he said, was so he could, ‘create a cross section of a city community going about their life.’
Daley was a shy man. He confessed that he didn’t know very well how to talk to people. For him, photography was a way of observing the world, and working out how other people related to each other.