Former GP Paul McNamara’s Whanganui gallery provides a vital gateway for New Zealand photography.
The Doppler Effect #2
Paul McNamara declined to be photographed for this article. “I have strong views opposing the cult of celebrity,” he wrote from his photography gallery in Whanganui. “In other words, it is about what we do here, rather than who I am.”
What he does there is provide a vital gateway for the exhibition, sale and discussion of New Zealand photography. It’s one undertaken in the absence in New Zealand of public photographic galleries and, bar one (Athol McCredie at Te Papa), public gallery curators who focus exclusively on photography.
Who McNamara is, however, does also have some bearing on his wish not to be photographed. He is a former doctor and displays a keen interest in ethics and the public responsibilities of a private practice. His gallery in a leafy, genteel part of Whanganui is his former surgery, where he practised for 25 years. Rather appropriately, the exhibition space has taken over the examination room. McNamara has a finely attuned appreciation of the power of a photograph.
Since the establishment of McNamara Gallery nine years ago, he has shown a remarkable dedication to getting New Zealand photography out and about, from international fairs and small publications to curating touring shows in public galleries throughout New Zealand. He even once set up an exhibition in a tiny weighbridge station on Wellington’s Taranaki Wharf during the International Arts Festival.
McNamara travels extensively with his work, but Whanganui also seems to suit a photography gallery. History accumulates on the lower banks of its great river. The past mingles anxiously with the present, time collected and stilled like in a photograph.
To walk the five minutes from the Sarjeant Gallery to McNamara Gallery is like walking through an architectural historical slide show – from the colonial to the modernist. Whanganui also has a strong photographic heritage, reflected in the Sarjeant’s collection.
“If I was in Karangahape Rd [in Auckland] or Cuba St [in Wellington], I would be too busy dealing with people coming in the door,” says McNamara. “Whanganui frees me up to look quite broadly at the medium and do some of the things a public institution might do. Rather than just static one-person shows rolling on, I’m interested in the bigger conversations.
“Technology is liberating. It doesn’t really matter where you are any more. Cellphones and email addresses don’t locate people. I have conversations with people and I don’t know where they are. We couldn’t have run the operation here without the technology.”
McNamara’s distance from bigger centres also echoes radical changes for the medium. The photographic image in digital form now has increasing ease of transmission and reproduction. Culturally, it has also seen what McNamara calls an image glut. Not so long ago, photography sat at the gates asking to be let in. Now, it has moved to the centre of contemporary art practice. And as its ubiquity has risen, the photograph as physical object has arguably gained greater pre-eminence.
McNamara has high regard for photography where the art only exists as a physical object – ie, a print created by or under the supervision of the artist – rather than as a digital image. In this case, he says, you have to see the work to fully appreciate it. He doesn’t regard a photograph as having sold until the buyer has seen the work; if they buy based on a digital reproduction, money doesn’t transfer hands until they receive the actual object.
Recently, McNamara has been writing and promoting discussion on the subject of editioning.
“I’m encouraging photographers to contemplate their mortality in terms of what happens with their negatives, and what their views are. Partly it relates to the fact that for many artists citing the work is part of their practice. With photography, people work hard at getting a print they’re happy with.
“The key thing is it is part of the artist’s expressivity – for how long and how widely do they want one of their images to be out there in circulation? New technologies are very exciting and give us great potential, but when you have this potential, the ethics of how you apply it become important.”
The public need to be clear about what they’re buying when they buy a photograph, he says. Is it, say, a print from a limited edition the photographer or their nominated agent has approved of, or a reproduction among hundreds that the artist has had nothing to do with?
McNamara notes that four Australian states have state-funded photography galleries, and four major Australian art galleries have curators specialising in photography. He feels we don’t really have photography collectors in New Zealand yet. Probably the largest collection of work by one of the artists he represents, Ben Cauchi, is overseas, not here.
“The beauty of living in a small country, however, is that we can have a broad approach. Our goal [as a gallery] has always been to represent the medium and work with the artists. I’m interested in the ideas of the medium, its range and possibilities. If I was in America, we’d probably just deal with a particular style, or band of history.
“I’m looking for things that really contribute something unique to the picture. If someone approaches me, their work may be fine but I may be working with someone else whose work addresses those kind of concerns already.”
McNamara is pleased public galleries take his exhibitions, ensuring a bigger audience for the work, but he is concerned the last significant survey of photography in a public gallery dates back to 1989: Imposing Narratives, curated by Greg Burke at City Gallery Wellington.
“I’d like to see public galleries consider the medium in its breadth so that people can navigate their way through it. Most of the publishing and the exhibitions we have are really artist monographs and we need a drawing together of some of the threads.”
McNamara is asked to look at a lot of work from photographers, who continue to pour out in increasing numbers from tertiary institutions, and there’s something of the old bedside manner in his approach.
“To do the thing properly, you need a clear head. You just want to sit down with them quietly and say, ‘Now, I’m going to look at this work’, and you put it up. And I always look at the work without any of the text. The image is what I go for. It’s a bit like how the sick child used to be brought in by the mother and I’d always sit the mother to the side and talk directly to the child. Mostly, I was interested in how the child was feeling.”
McNAMARA GALLERY, 190 Wicksteed St, Whanganui. Alan Bekhuis’s REFLECTING MANA: PORTRAITS OF TAINUI KUIA shows until July 29 2011.