Joyce Campbell: Te Taniwha

Te Taniwha, like Campbell’s two previous photographic series, Crown Coach Botanical and Last Light: Antarctica, is a meditation on gothic and sublime aesthetic traditions, nineteenth century spiritualist photography and ecosystems in a state of crisis.

With these latest photographs Campbell’s attention was drawn homeward, to the waterways between Te Urewera and Wairoa, the region where she grew up and to which she has deep personal connections.

Te Taniwha is an ongoing project, of which this exhibition is the first manifestation. Spun from multiple threads, drawing on the mythology, history and ecology of Waikaremoana and its many tributaries and outlets, it traces the search for two great serpentine water species: the Taniwha and the giant longfin eel.

Joyce Campbell has been working onsite in a field darkroom to produce ambrotypes and daguerreotypes at Te Reinga, home of the Taniwha Hinekörako. Contemporary cameras do not lend themselves to the depiction of mystery.

Digital cameras have made photography an increasingly descriptive medium and also one that is open to greater manipulation than ever before.

By contrast, the nineteenth century techniques of ambrotype and daguerreotype provide the photographer with extraordinarily detail, depth and richness while also having an innate tendency to produce artifacts from silver and ether that are spontaneous, open to interpretation and often extraordinarily beautiful.

Campbell has taken photographs of caves, gullies, pools and cascades but her hope is that in the silver we might catch a glimpse of the Taniwha as well.

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