Peter Ranyard’s River was edited down to 28 prints out of thousands of negatives – an extraordinary feat in itself, Peter presents Poronui, an area outside Taupo, New Zealand that runs into Maori lands and that he visited over a period of ten years for commercial work with the lodge there. When the lodge was sold a few years ago, a box of negatives arrived – with all his images of this remote, stunning, timeless place that he’d shot within and outside the brief!
What is so extraordinary about these images, a testament to the art of Peter’s rhythm in editing and hanging the show as much as his care with the contrast and soft grain, is that they are not gothic. Black and white images of isolated places, old sheds, forest, whispering grasslands – all the ingredients are there. But no – they are gentle, human, inhabited and uninhabited, respectful and welcoming. How could they not be, with the inclusion of characters like Flick, the lodge dog who just turned up one day and stayed. The other thing these works are not, is Lord of the Rings – they are not what is now recognised and has become almost a stereotype of the New Zealand landscape. They are just as beautiful but more complex, universal, poignant and, as Peter put it to me – ‘more like a place in your memory.’ Hardy Lohse writes that ‘Peter Ranyard’s images create a space where we can revel in the joy of feeling small in the world, satisfying an urge to be elsewhere and to explore, matching our imaginations with reality.’6
Great American photographer of black and white landscape, Ansel Adams said that ‘There are worlds of experience beyond the world of the aggressive man, beyond history, and beyond science. The moods and qualities of nature and the revelations of great art are equally difficult to define; we can grasp them only in the depths of our perceptive spirit.’7
The full speech is available here
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