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Mythology of Place - Homage to James K Baxter - © 1993-94 - Lloyd Godman - Lawrence Jones - Mythology of Place - Book now available

Photographs of the Brighton Coastal Otago World of James K Baxter

Top detail - Homage to Baxter  Resonance XII Taieri River in Flood from Scroggs Hill - 1994 - Two selenium toned silver gelatine prints - Lloyd Godman

 

image is mapped click on image detail to enlarge - Full size image

 

Resonance XII

It was raining hard and that Friday night Lawrence said "what we need sometime is an image of the Taieri River in flood". Such events are impossible to arrange, and little did I know that sunday afternoon we would be standing on the same hill as Baxter had over looking the brown ponds that engulfed the plain below. It was still spitting pellets of rain and the cold southerly cut straight to our skin as the tussock lashed  and the tripod rattled. The bursting patterns of light through the clouds were sporadic and it took sometime to wait for a pool of light to hit the water to shoot these two images.

From Scroggs Hill the vista is out over the small farms and dwellings of Allanton across the flood waters to the dominating hump of Maungatua cutting the skyline. It was from here that Colin McCahon also had his vision of the land further out over the rain obscured-hills to the right of the Maungatua.

Map of Brighton indicating where the image Resonance XII was taken from

enlarge map

 

 

James K Baxter - Poem references

The Flood 1962  CP 263

From which the farms were bare and small,
houses not even visible...

The fury of the sky father.
and once with light rain still falling, stood
Above the Taieri plain, where the brown flood
had covered paddocks, sheds and fences.

 



She Who is Like the Moon  CP

Pure as the moon influences of torn cloud.
who floods the earth and sky and troubled water.