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Notes from Underground
by Nigel Yates

 If you trap the moment before it's ripe
 Tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe;
But if you once let the ripe moment go,
You can never wipe off the tears of woe!
                                    William Blake

Nigel Yates is the man behind the camera. Helmut Gersheim, the doyen of photo-historians, wrote biographies of nine noted photographers of his day which he published under the title The Man Behind The Camera. Gersheim saw the photographer as the source of the creative work.
    Many years ago when I was attending a professional photographers’ meeting I took the opportunity during a break to request half a dozen fellow photographers to take my photograph, using my camera. All demurred at using my camera, but agreed; one said he only took portraits in his own studio, anything else was but a snapshot. The same photographer insisted I should not ever reproduce his portrait of me under his name. I made postcard-sized prints of the six negatives and had six entirely different studies of myself. They were all of me, but were all different: this was what I wanted to know.
    The man behind the camera, the photographer, the artist, that is, the human being, puts a stamp on the work, communicates his own impression of the subject, conveys, in his photograph what strikes him as characteristic and, perhaps, essential about the subject. These are two opposite approaches. A portrait painter will express his own feelings about a sitter, and will paint with a brush; the photographer will emphasise the essential nature of the subject.
    The photographs in this book are the result of wonder. Wonder is the source of all photography, as of all art. That is why art lovers exist – they find joy in sharing that wonder. Yates does not want to be analysed but looked at, gone into, lived in for long enough to feel something of what he felt as he brought his camera to bear on what he saw.
    The camera has many purely recording functions. It could be said that in some future time Yates the bits of everyday life he found significant or interesting. Photographers like Yates, the Magnum photographers, like Alfred Burton who photographed the Mäori at home – not in the studio – know that they show a mirror image of the past times.
    Yates is showing us in photography what is scarcely possible in words or in paint. There is humanity, he is at one with the people who appear in his photographs. He seems to want us to ‘join in’ as it were. He shows us the silvery sun light a cloud over the horizon with black silhouettes in the foreground. Above all nature’s wonders I love clouds; I trust the camera more than I do the brush. Clouds, like a child’s face, must show the truth. They are never ‘pretty-pretty’ unless we represent them falsely.
    I remember a noted photographer, in the 1930s, deploring the way some photographers were relying on their technical equipment to produce fantastic effects, but which were emotionally empty, instead of allowing a sense of wonder to create photography.    Hardwicke Knight  Broad Bay, Otago Peninsular

Born: Yorkshire 1955
 Arrived in NZ 1966
 Newspaper photographer 1976-1998 ODT, Dominion, Timaru Herald, Ashburton
 Guardian, Southland Times, Dunedin 'Star'
 Freelance Photography for Dominion Sunday Times, Listener, Fortune Theatre
 1986-2002
Previous Publication: Dunedin An Essay 1988 ESAW 
Finalist in M.I.L.K International Photography Competition 2001

Solo Exhibitions
Marshall Seifert Gallery Dunedin   1989
Ooops Gallery  Dunedin               1993
Emma's Cafe, Oamaru                  1999
 Emma's Cafe, Oamaru                  2002
   Forrester Gallery Oamaru             2006/7

Review in the Otago Daily Times

TITLE               Notes from Underground
AUTHOR         Nigel Yates
PUBLISHED    2007
CATEGORY    Photography
FORMAT         Paperback
EXTENT            
ISBN                1-86942-087-X
PRICE              NZ  $35

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