Bill Irwin: Home

We can become so familiar with our home that we forget all the reasons that make it a great place to live. A couple of years ago we decided it was time for a little adventure and less house and garden to look after. We sold our lovely house and thought about jumping the Tasman for a while, looking at quite a few locations before deciding NZ was where we wanted to be. Sunny Nelson tempted, but eventually we decided Bank’s Peninsula had the right mix of visual beauty and big city proximity. We even bought a beautiful section at Church Bay and started to have house plans drawn up.

But the more we looked, the more we realised how much the people and place of Methven had to offer. Sure, we still want to get away and see other pockets of the world, but we know where we want to go when it’s time for home. We have nearly finished building a new house, right next door to our last one. It is a little smaller and simpler but incorporates brilliant studio and gallery space, a great place to call home.

This exhibition is a collection of some of my favourite visual reminders of why we couldn’t leave.

A brief history:

I have been involved with photography from about age 10. It was my main obsession through my school years until the family farm beckoned. After a 4 year Ag Science degree at Lincoln and a brief stint in the US (including marriage to Cheryl in 1982) I settled in for a career as a mixed cropping farmer near Rokeby. A slight drama involving a spinal cord tumour in the mid '90s prompted a career rethink. During a year studying Applied Computing at Lincoln after the farm sale in 2002 I picked up my camera again. The rise of digital photography offered a blend of technical skill and creativity that has made the last 10 years so enjoyable.

My photography is a about landscapes and people, sometimes together. I especially like photographing individuals in their environment. Some of this work is commissioned, but often I work on my own projects. These may or may not have an apparent use at the time, but I do have a niche with a New Zealand photo agency of rural landscapes. Print sales, some commercial work and a little portraiture are also in the mix. With new studio space being built I am looking forward to more portraiture opportunities.

The prints:
A downfall of digital photography is that many images are never printed. They are only viewed on screen which is a poor substitute. The prints that are made are generally mass produced at the lowest price, an insult to a good image. I like to complete the circle myself, from original concept, and capture, to making beautiful prints. The ultimate print quality today is pigment inks on archival cotton rag paper, this is the process I use.

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