Exhibitions

Auckland

Aide Harvey -M é Benge moire and Other Stories

Northart, 3 June–20 July

NINA SEJA

I encountered Harvey Benge’s photographs in my pre-Y2K youth. Four Parts Religion, Six Parts Sin—a photobook, a form extensively used by Benge—appealed to my worldview of the unexpected, the quirky, the witty. His images showed the grungy side of street life.

There are some photographers who have such a decided style that even without a wall label you know it is unmistakably them. A tone, a colour palette, stock or setting—their imprint is distinct. However, it is unusual to have the landscape seem to remake itself as if conforming to the photographer’s vision. Since that early encounter with Benge’s work, I have found myself meandering through an urban landscape and a random item or person makes me think, ‘there’s a Harvey Benge photograph’. It is as if a set-dresser has already swept through, leaving props for the photographer.

Given this, it was no surprise that when I arrived at Northart, where Harvey Benge: Aide-Mémoire and Other Stories was showing during the Auckland Festival of Photography, a Benge backdrop was at the ready. Outside the gallery, a Chinese musician was playing a traditional stringed instrument as part of the Dragon Boat Festival. The hypnotic thrums filtered through to the gallery space. Past Benge’s work, through the glass, a throng had gathered outside to listen to the music, the intensity of their expressions matching those of Benge’s subjects.

In the catalogue, Benge remarks, ‘Dewi Lewis, my UK publisher of twenty years, is of the view that I have abandoned “the street” and now make tougher images, on one hand visually simpler but on the other hand more conceptually loaded. You will need to be the judge of that.’ Aide-Mémoire, then, is a challenge to take the long-view of Benge’s work. The show itself calls up ouroboros—the snake eating its own tail, symbolic of introspection and eternal renewal. presents previously exhibited images, along with new photographs. The earlier work is imbued with Benge’s conceptual rigour, such as the large wall-sized, multi-panelled, (2000), which consists of multiple fragments of a twentieth-century European history book. An aide-mémoire is designed to assist in recollection. Is the wall panel a tool for Benge, or for the viewer? The project also exists as a photobook, (onestar press, 2000).