Peach Cove, Narrative photography, and some thoughts on being a real person

Early in July, L and I drove to Whangarei Heads with some friends and their kids, strapped on everything we needed for one night and hiked to the DOC (Department of Conservation) hut at Peach Cove. Only an hour or so hiking each way wasn’t too bad except for its being a fairly steep uphill and downhill climb carrying our overnight gear. But the hike in and out was well worth it for the sense of accomplishment, peace, and remoteness we found down at the cove.

I love this photo of me and L that our friends took. L has only a minute prior baited my hook, and I am just about to bring in the kahawhai already tugging on my line. I love how completely unconscious we are of being photographed, and how visible L’s mentorship is in our stance and our open, delighted faces.

I’ve seen L catch fish off the beach in the most unassuming places. The water at Peach was wind-ruffled, messy and opaque. I wouldn’t have even tried to fish. But L hiked defrosting bait all the way to the cove and wasn’t about to let it go to waste (or hike it back). After L caught a couple fish, one after another, he set us each up to catch one too. We kept two or three mid-sized kahawhai, wrapped them in tinfoil and cooked them over hot embers with kumara. Delicious.

I hiked my DSLR to Peach Cove and spent an hour or so taking photos. I would have liked to have taken more, but I am still primarily in the habit of letting life unfold without capturing it.

Some thoughts on skill integration and being a real person —

Viewing this spread of images at this particular time set off some major but subtle realisations.

When I was twenty-four in 2010, I’d just returned (to New Zealand) from a year spent in India and Southeast Asia, with a hard drive full of images and a dozen rolls of film. After reviewing the images I’d taken in Kalimpong, West Bengal, where we’d rented an apartment and lived for about three months, I saw that my images of this place weren’t all that varied. India was vivid, crowded, unignorable—the images I took were mostly of what was right in front of me.

Kalimpong is a unique mesh of cultures and a hotbed of politics within a stone’s throw of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. Tibet and China are to the north, Myanmar to the east, and the plains and the Bay of Bengal to the south. We were high up in the mountains—our apartment was perched on one edge of a ridge road, overlooking the Teesta Valley to the south and the Himalayas sprawling to the north. I have one good image looking north, few images whatsoever looking south. I stared off in these directions all the time—had I normalised these views of the subcontinent so much that I did not feel the need to capture it? I primarily photographed the middle ground, the middle range with few distance or close-up shots and almost no images of myself. A decade and a half later, I can see how my limited thinking at twenty-four and my extremely limited view, is reflected in the resulting spread of images.

Looking south towards town.

Looking north.

Looking north.

Looking south from the orphanage. The house in the foreground is where we lived. The ground floor is where our landlord Chaying Lhamo had her shop. The two top storeys are unfinished. We lived in the storey below the shop and there was one other floor below us where a family lived.

At twenty-five, I made a conscious decision to vary what I captured, to look around and pay better attention, to get a handle on the big picture as well as the detail of a place. I’m now thirty-eight and have been doing this successfully for a long time, but viewing the Peach Cove spread early this July was the first time I really noticed it.

I’ve been doing a lot of trauma work this year—the two miscarriages I underwent since July last year demanded it. I told my friend K the other day that I am starting to feel more like a real person. I can see myself more clearly and feel more myself—at thirty-eight it is about time. The above realisation is a clear example of what I mean: for the first time in fifteen years, I can see clearly what I’m doing and the skillset I have built for myself through dedication, commitment, and persistence. A big part of the discrepancy between feeling like a real person and its opposite is being unconsciously committed to a primal search for safety, driven by fears lodged deep in the brainstem. At twenty-four I couldn’t perceive the horizon or myself because I was myopically focused on my partner at the time, in an unconscious effort to engender and ensure approval and safety which seemed somehow to always be at risk. (Funny that I am also, literally, near-sighted, which didn’t present until my first year of high school.) If you’ve read my essay Choosing Sides, it’s the discrepancy between being inside the frame and outside of it. (If you’d like to read it, email me and I will send you a copy).

I can see more broadly now, and my photography reflects this. I’m also not crippled by self-consciousness every time I pick up a camera, in a faltering effort to prove myself. I’ve integrated the skills I have, the ones that come naturally and the ones I’ve cultivated, and I’m a humble learner in areas where my skills are in process. (I can’t tell you how freeing it is to be a real person!!) With these new insights, I wondered how to classify my images. Portrait, landscape, travel and lifestyle as genres felt too limiting, and ‘documentary’ felt too ambitious. I like ‘narrative’, especially as there is often a written component alongside my photographic work.

In March 2023, my friend Rose died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. She was the most avid photographer I knew—it is what she was doing on the beach when she died—and I was deeply sad and angered to lose her. I didn’t—and still don’t—understand why she died—I haven’t made any meaning about it. But I did make a promise to myself to be more like her by taking more photographs, and to be less precious (but also more intentional) about sharing work. And her death, along with my mom’s cancer coming back, was the final push I needed to start actively trying to have a baby. That’s a work in progress, but we’ll see what happens.

In the eighteen months since Rose’s death, I’ve built up quite a library of new images. I haven’t shared many of them yet. I’ve been undergoing a lot of deep work, and part of that involves how and what I share online. My ideas about this too have clarified. I’m in the process of upgrading my website to a better design engine, and once that’s ready, I’ll share these latest images on here, as well as a new showcase of older images.

At Peach Cove, I was at the apex of a month or so of my body really coming alive (feeling like a real body). Hiking in and hiking out with friends in the middle of winter, I couldn’t help wishing I could go back to when I was seventeen and do life again with a focus on the body, on being a real person, on cultivating experiences where the body can come alive and so too the soul. (I’d also buy that falling down hot-pink beach house I wanted that was for sale for $15,000 dollars in 2002.) I spent a lot of time as a young person grieving and suppressing my soul while being driven by it at the same time. That made for a lot of unnecessary difficulty, exhaustion and confusion. But we can’t go back—only forward. And I have been lucky, despite all that internal battling, to have done some incredible things.

Raw handwritten notes from Peach Cove —

The scene — scorched driftwood, kahawhai caught straight off the beach in choppy, incoming swell, fire under the pohutukawas, shag colony feeding their babies

On the walk down, my knees started to hurt. Legs were jelly on arrival at the hut, after hundreds of stairs. I wish I could go back and do life again with what I know now. I know that is impossible. It’s all about the body. Support the body, use the body, use youth — do the bulk of exploration and difficult treks in youth, even having babies. I see why that would make sense.

If I could go back and do it all again, I’d make full use of my body. I’d love it, I’d have no shame. I’d be fully alive and active every day. I think I’d have babies younger and take them places. I’d love myself and have no shame or fear so I’d have tons of energy. I’d do everything I could to support the body, make it strong, keep it strong loose and limber. I’d hold it all lightly, with love. I’d work, explore and make things constantly. I’d love most my body, myself and what I could create with others. Embrace life speeding by.

What of this can I take to heart now, at thirty-eight? All of it. Hold my intuition and body knowing close. Use all emotions for energy, for fuel, nothing gets stuck, only love leaves a trace. I could try to have a baby with no doubt, no second guessing, just give it everything. Give my body everything it needs, make it stronger, loosen it up, mobilise it, love it, release all shame. Live and love as best as I can, as lightly as I can. Be alive, knowing it isn’t forever.

These notes feel pretty raw but I’m going to leave them up. I’m really grateful to our friends for getting us out on this adventure and for taking photos of us as well (below and top). It was an incredibly special one-night trip that I will remember for a long time.

Thanks for reading. - AMB