Between Rivers - The Manawatu

 Published by Haunui Press
Available in both softcover, $79.95 , and hardcover, $120.00
224 pages. 280mm (H)  x 275mm (L) x 17mm (W)
Publication - December 2013
www.haunuipress.co.nz
info@haunuipress.co.nz

This large, utterly gorgeous book is described by the authors as "a tribute to provincial New Zealand as seen from the road". And what a wonderful tribute it is to "this often under-appreciated, green, in-between wedge of the North Island".

Photographer David Lupton's images were all taken no more than a few metres from where he stopped his car on the roadside (with the exception of a few aerial shots!).

Perhaps the best way to describe the book is to quote the authors from their introduction.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself home. MATSUO BASHŌ

This book is part monument, part pictorial tribute to the many journeys and journeyers who, over the generations, have engraved their mark upon the landscape of our home - the Manawatū.

As modern New Zealanders we are all descended from intrepid travellers; dreamers and seekers who packed their necessities and treasures and set forth from somewhere in search of a different life at the bottom of the world. Gone but not erased, their imprint on our lives and our place lingers.

From those who were here first, stories of ancestral journeys endure in whispered legend and lullaby and the lie of the land. Later visitors left more forceful marks on the landscape – latticed transport links, patterned farmland and weathered structures that punctuate the riverscape we live within. Visual mementoes of the past, they tell a story and yield beauty and meaning for those who choose to look.

The Manawatū seduces you slowly and gently, revealing its riches in unexpected ways. We set out with the hope of inspiring others to see our part of the country through slightly different eyes: this grey-green, in-between wedge of land; hauntingly plain, scattered with windswept light and ringed by rumpled ranges, wide waters and arching coastlines.The visual journey herein is our Manawatū, a linear mosaic of ideas matched with images rendered from the air and grounded against those taken by car – each shot no more than a few metres from the roadside. You too can get behind the wheel, pick a spot on the map between the threads of the Rangitīkei and the Manawatū, and ride into the place of memories captured here.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

DAVID LUPTON
BETTINA ANDERSON

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

	DAVID LUPTON There is no original in photography, you are the original. Basically at the end it is your vision which is your original and you sew it all up and it becomes your work and you have organized it and you have made the statement and you give this vision to the world. Ernst Haas A looker, a thinker, a measurer of time and space in colour and place, David is the ‘original’ behind this journey on paper. His long and at times tempestuous love affair with the quiet, unexpected beauty of the Manawatū comes to life within these pages. Possessing a rare ability to explore the obvious and thus reveal the exotic in our surroundings, David’s images speak to the eye on many levels. David started photographing when he was six years old, a graduate of the toy Diana camera. This wonderful blend of light-leaking plastic and a truly dodgy lens is now, as it was then, a cult classic capable of producing beautiful images rendered not by perfection but by possibility. He has worked as a professional photographer for what seems like two lifetimes, producing images for a wide variety of corporate clients, as well as continuously photographing on a more personal basis for publication and exhibition. www.davidlupton.co.nz
	BETTINA ANDERSON Descended from a long line of colonial fossickers, goldminers and fisherfolk, it was hardly surprising that Bettina took a shine to the earth sciences in her days at Otago University.  As a child, the back seat of the family station wagon was always full of sand, rocks and shells ‘far too precious to be left behind’, with Mum and Dad joking that once she started studying geology, the tonnage collected went up dramatically. Bettina’s love of the land and what lies beneath has translated into a career spanning the science, education and museum sectors.  As she’s aged, rather than growing up her interests have grown out to encompass a passion for ‘old stuff’, collective memories and the place these have in the telling of engaging stories. She now works as a freelance science writer and ‘exhibitionist’ (exhibition developer) from a patch of Pohangina paradise just outside Palmerston North. Her collaboration with David is the culmination of too much gazing out the window at Wharite Peak (when she should have been doing something more productive to feed and clothe the family). www.pukekoblue.co.nz

David has kindly given me permission to reproduce four of his images from the book below and while these will give you an idea of the contents of the book they cannot do justice to the almost 200 glorious photographs included. This is a very special book and I offer the authors and publisher my warmest congratulations on a fine achievement.