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A Decade of Days Revisited: Robin Morrison
PETER SIMPSON
I never had the pleasure of meeting Robin Morrison (1944-93) – my near contemporary – in person, more’s the pity, though when I returned to New Zealand in 1976 after nearly a decade abroad I soon became aware of him through his memorable photo essays in the New Zealand Listener.
I eagerly acquired Robin’s New Zealand books as they appeared from 1978 onwards, including Images of a House (1978), The South Island From the Road (1981, recently republished 2023), A Sense of Place (1984), Homeplaces (with Keri Hulme, 1986), Auckland: City and Sea (1989), A Land Apart: The Chatham Islands of New Zealand (with Michael King, 1990), At Home and Abroad (1991), Coromandel (with Michael King, 1993), and (posthumously), A Journey (1994). All these titles, with the exception of the first and the last, consist largely of colour photography, but it is noteworthy that Robin began and ended his career as a black-and-white photographer, saying in A Journey at the end of his life: ‘I wanted to get back to black and white…strip away the glories of colour…Colour explains a lot more. I think that’s why I wanted to return to black and white…to leave some things unsaid’ (A Journey, p. 3). It is interesting to learn that fully half the 100,000 images bequeathed by Robin to Auckland Museum are in black-and-white, the medium which dominated the first half of his career and is the focus of the present exhibition.
Included in Robin’s bequest was a folder headed ‘A Decade of Days’ – a selection from his photojournalism of the seventies and eighties. Recognising the authority of this selection, Auckland Museum made it the centre of their second exhibition from the bequest: A Decade of Days – Auckland through Robin Morrison’s Eyes (2013-14). A further winnowing of this selection forms the basis of A Decade of Days Revisited. The photographs range in date from 1970 (the year Robin and his wife Dinah returned from the UK) to 1985.
In the Judith Fyfe/Tony Hiles television documentary From the Road (1981), Robin was filmed taking photographs for a book on New Zealand ferns. In an on-screen interview he contrasts such nature photography with his ‘usual photo-journalistic work’, which he describes in typically straight-forward and unpretentious fashion as: ‘photographing people, telling a story in pictures, of events, people doing things, so you get the story through the pictures, without having to use words’. He speaks, too, of his enjoyment at engaging with people involved in activities significant for them and the country such as Gallipoli memorials, Bastion Point protests or the controversy surrounding the Clyde Dam and the drowning of Cromwell, and of seeking emotional and intellectual engagement with what he is photographing: ‘There’s too much photography around that gives no impression of any thought, any feeling…I wanted to do something that had a little bit more to it, to show a bit of what was going on, not with a message, I don’t think I wanted to show that, but with a certain amount of…can’t think of the word…integrity? No, that’s too big a word…’ Perhaps ‘engagement’ or ‘authenticity’ is the word he was seeking – certainly both are consistently manifested in his work.
Within the exhibition I discern three broad categories of image. First (though not in any hierarchical sense) are portraits, generally of prominent or accomplished people, such as Māori advocate Dame Whina Cooper, American musician Stevie Wonder, New Zealand writers Frank Sargeson and Sam Hunt, and Samoan/ New Zealand painter Teuane Tibbo. A second category concerns notable public events such as the police invasion of Bastion Point in 1978, and the demonstrations (and police response) against the 1981 Springbok tour. A third somewhat looser category is recording ‘decisive moments’ involving everyday people and places around Auckland.
Robin’s portraits are notable for his empathy and rapport with his subjects whether old or young, male or female, internationally or locally celebrated – all appear at ease with and trustful of the photographer; they seem to present their true selves. For example, veteran novelist Frank Sargeson is pictured relaxing after labour on a shady bench under a grape vine, sharing the dappled space with a black cat, a capsicum and a cast-aside sunhat – the benign light of a bright day under shade beautifully captured. In the portrait of Teuane Tibbo, the remarkable octogenarian Samoan-born artist clad in her pristine painting smock is seated staunchly beside a lively painting on an easel of a remembered village ceremony, with all her rags, brushes and other art materials prominently displayed – an arrangement which emphasises her single-minded professionalism and dedication to her art; it’s all about the painting. Other subjects – a beach-lazing poet, a dignified kuia, a blind musician – likewise display their best selves.
The mood is naturally darker in the protest photos from 1978 and 1981, documenting traumatic events from the Muldoon era which sharply divided the nation. At Bastion Point the starkness of the situation is embodied in the high contrast between dark and light, in the bold signs – white-on-black or black-on-white – and the dramatic silhouetting of solitary figures (a young boy perched on a fence, his back to a line of uniformed invaders; a lookout with binoculars high above eloquent Ngāti Whātua placards). In the 1981 tour photos the tense confrontation is underlined by juxtaposing anarchically packed protesters against the sinister regimentation of paint-splattered policemen.
A less fraught, more relaxed sense of Auckland life is conveyed in casual moments captured at barroom, beach, playground, ferry, speedway racetrack and wrestling matches. Robin often makes brilliant use of text and signage as in the iconic photos affectionately celebrating the denizens and businesses of Ponsonby Road. He also demonstrates throughout a compositional acuity and refinement, overt in such images as Zebra Crossing or Ferry Crossing, but which underlies all his images whatever their disparate subjects and moods, subtly shaping and sharpening their impact.
Returning to my starting point about not having met Robin, on reflection I feel – especially after immersing myself in A Decade of Days Revisited – that in effect I came to know him personally – his humour, his empathy, his sensitivity to injustice, his undemonstrative commitment to the country and its people, his technical mastery, his superb eye – through the idiosyncrasy of his photographs.
_____Peter Simpson, born in Takaka, 1942, is an Auckland writer. He is the author of Peter Peryer Photographer (AUP, 2009) and many other titles, including several on Leo Bensemann and Colin McCahon. His most recent book is Dear Colin, Dear Ron: The Selected Letters of Colin McCahon and Ron O’Reilly (Te Papa Press, 2024).
