Below a selection of pages |
Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu 1985- 6 Ebook
When significant landscapes are changed forever it is imperative to understand what has been lost. Past down from generation to generation, stories acted as a means to address loss. Later, images embellished these narratives and then in recent times photographs offered a compelling witness.
However, there is often no record, no images, and little documented local stories, that reference the natural features as they once had been and how these landmarks once impacted on local people.
Blackhead, near Dunedin, New Zealand, was a dramatic headland with stunning columnar basalt rock formations that projected into the Southern Ocean and was threatened by quarrying. In 1995, artist Lloyd Godman realised that significant areas of the headland were about to disappear forever, and he committed to photograph the details of the landmark as often as he was able, producing a valuable archive of what had once been. At the time, the images were assembled into complex composite images and exhibited at various art galleries, which led to an awareness of the immediate threat to the headland. This stimulated a range of interested people to negotiate how a covenant could be drawn up to protect part of the area, which came to pass.
Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu, ( Tapu - meaning sacred place )) presents an extensive series of emotive black and white photographs from Godman’s archive that acts as a witness to the sublime basalt bluffs lost forever to quarrying and the areas that have been protected by an eventual Conservation Covenant. The narrative tells the history of the headland from early Māori and their embedded legends to the importance of the place as a special surfing break and place of solace. It outlines the headlands unique geology and botany. Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu offers an insight into the creative process of working as a photographer with film and darkrooms in a pre-digital age.
The images and text of Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu allow a destroyed landscape to live again.
chronicles the stunning rock formations at Blackhead, Dunedin, New Zealand and provides an insight into the columnar basalt formations and sublime bluffs lost forever through quarrying.
The base of the hill is composed of a magnificent range of basaltic columns, standing erect, of much larger size than the beds above, quite as complete as those of Fingal’s Cave at Staffa, or the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. Indeed, the rocks here are as worthy of a visit as either of these Old Country lions and there is no doubt, were they as well known, they would be equally famed. The photographer, if his chemicals would not be affected by the damp sea air, would find many an effective grouping, which would make most capital pictures during a sou-wester the contrast between the black rocks and the broken water must be very fine, and give plenty of light and shade.
Peter Thompson,
Otago Witness 25 October 1867
ISBN: 978-0-6457151-1-8
Now available as an ebook from
or as n interactivea PDF via email
lloydgodman at gmail.com
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