Several years ago at the McNamara Gallery in Wanganui I saw an exhibition of photographs by John Johns, the New Zealand Forest Service’s official photographer for more than three decades.
Johns' photos are just astounding. They reminded me very strongly of Peter Peryer's work, when he sinks you so far into the texture and pattern of what he's showing you that you lose track of what you're looking at and are simply absorbed in the looking.
A selection of Johns' photos feature in Tina Barton's second show at the Adam Art Gallery at Victoria University. 'Primary products' opens on August 11, and "teases out new connections between the facts of New Zealand’s emergence as a modern industrial nation and the history of art that accompanies this, to try to determine the nature of the relationship between modernisation and modernism in this country."
Images: these photographs and more by Johns can be seen on the McNamara Gallery website .
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