For several years Howard Greive photographed the development of a coastal subdivision in Aotearoa. His book sub-division is both a document and response. He talked with photographer and art writer Mary Macpherson.
Mary Macpherson: I know you want the location of the subdivision to be a bit of a mystery. But the few pre-subdivision photographs you’ve included suggest it’s quite a lovely seafront overlooked by a farm. I’d like to know why you started this project. Were you startled by work beginning on an area that you knew and valued?
Howard Greive: Yes you’re right. It was a lovely farm that I have deep connections with however once the earthworks started I decided that I should simply document this transformation. It was only through the ongoing process that I responded to some images over others. The wrapped timber and the cover image of a child’s swing in the playground for example seem to say something far more than what they actually are. Once I was in this mode then it seemed to change my own point of view. Each image I responded to seemed to propel the project into a new dimension. The shots of clouds arrived as a response to the heavier images I was finding. I may have started with creating a document but it emerged as something else.
For the most part all photography is a response. This is what makes photography so alluringly dangerous. It presents as a document, a reality, but actually is the result of lots of deliberate manipulations/ responses on the part of the photographer.
MM: Is photography a way of processing your emotional response to things happening in your world?
HG: Yes photography is a way I process a response to what is happening in my world. However it all starts as an idea. If the idea can be brought to life primarily by photography then I will do it. However, I have used advertising and PR to bring an idea to life also. By way of example the land on which the subdivision has happened was under threat from an Australian gold mining company many years ago. I utilised advertising and PR to gain national awareness in order to get them to stop. Photography would not have brought the immediate “punch” that I needed then.
It could be bone idleness on my part but I am no good at simply taking a camera and finding random images. Or generating random images. There are brilliant street photographers who can do this with ease. I don’t pick up my camera until a strong idea has formed. This can take years. Once it has taken shape then I seem to be able to prosecute the idea into reality. I never work on two ideas at the same time. This again could be idleness but it does keep me singularly focused.
MM: Did you know from the beginning that you were going to make this a long term project, right through to when houses were built and people moved in? How many years did you spend on it?
HG: It took the best part of five years. It became apparent that once I had started that I needed to carry on and to carry on at the pace of the development. By this I mean the development evolves in its own time. It certainly isn’t linear. It can be months with no apparent change. I really had to train myself in these unchanging periods to walk in and tell myself that somewhere in here is an image waiting to be found. A wonderful way to work as it turned out. You need lots of Zen-like patience.
MM You’ve taken quite a clinical approach to the titling of the work – sub-division a longitudinal study – and the photographs themselves portray angular dominating machinery in close up detail. The marks on the earth and even the houses have that subdivision rawness without much redemption. Where does that approach come from?
HG: There is always an undeniable rawness and a certain energy to a subdivision as it emerges. It is this transition from farm to early stage dwellings that I wanted. I wasn’t inspired by anything on either side of this transition – neither a farm nor a fully developed settlement.
One of the issues I really struggled with early on was presenting the machinery of the development in a way that it didn’t look like pages of an “Earthworks 2024” calendar. Hopefully I have avoided this.
MM: In places throughout the book you’ve represented nature with larger scale, quite elemental pictures: skies, the sea, seagulls. There’s no human activity in these works. What was the point you are making in the images?
HG: These images serve two purposes. Nature as represented here always pays a price. I was also allowing for the birds to represent other attitudes that a viewer may or may not respond to. As I mentioned previously these images arrived later on. I really was looking for a counterpoint to the destruction-construction.
Sub-division can also be seen as a companion to my previous book, At Rest, where I simply compare birds as roadkill on NZ roads with the mausoleums of the titans of the auto industry.
The second more pragmatic use of these images is they present a tonal shift that I wanted to inject every so often. They give clues to what we have seen or are about to see. As an ex-editor of film they also neatly work as a “cutaway”. A device used in editing for time passing.
MM: You haven’t included any people in the pictures, just the evidence of human activity on the landscape. Why did you go that way? And were you influenced by any other works about subdivisions and buildings?
HG: I deliberately avoided people. They were unnecessary. I did shoot images with people but I found it became a story about them. They added a layer that didn’t help. Editorially it shaped the book towards subjective rather than objective. However the reality is people may not be included but mankind is all over it.
I’m an admirer of the German industrial photographers Bernd and Hiller Becher. Their work is amazingly both sculptural and honest. They are distinctly unromantic in their documentation. In fact at one stage I was tempted to convert the project to black and white like they do, but obviously resisted. I haven’t seen any photobooks on subdivisions. Incidentally one of my theories behind sub-division is that these developments seem to be peculiar to new world countries. Countries that have small but relatively wealthy populations and huge amounts of land to clear, farm, develop, etc.
MM: One of the final images is a close up of a padlocked gate, which suggests possession of the land and view by the people who live in the houses. Is that how you feel about the results of the subdivision or were you saying something else with that image?
HG: Yes possession and exclusion and also a finality. There is also another “tone” running through the book which I notice and it is a soft death. Fading to darkness. A lot of the images I feel have this. Undeniably this has something to do with the slow decline and death of my younger brother. This occurred over the project. We spent our lives together in this area. Sub-division is dedicated to him.
sub-division, a longitudinal study by Howard Greive (KARAKA books, $75, Edition of 100) is part of the Photobook/NZ bookfair, Saturday 10 August, L2, Te Papa.