MrTimothy Veling

My research consists of longitudinal projects that explore the psychological and social-cultural landscapes of place in relation to collective understandings of home, belonging, family and community, specifically within Ōtautahi Aotearoa. The impulse for my research is to contribute towards increased knowledge, perception, appreciation and tolerance of one another and our surrounding environment. My work is rooted in the mode of ‘Critic and Conscience of Society’, acting as mirror, vital dialogue and critique of principles fundamental to a progressive, free-thinking and inclusive society. Through the output of long-form bodies of work within exhibitions, publications and online, my work emphasizes a durational sense of looking; it often privileges minute shifts in detail, the significance only grasped if the photographer is deeply attuned to and situated within intimate proximity to the subject. This embedded approach to practice results in images that encourage the viewer to linger on the subtle but distinct significance of each moment recorded. Read in the context of a broader body of work and archive, cumulative connotations and importance becomes apparent. This is where the ‘art’ lies within my documentary practice, a photographic approach that has far more in common with poetry than prose.

A binding thread of my research resides in the autoethnographic, exemplified in projects that depict my own whanau in relation to broader societal issues and events. This work has resulted in a number of exhibitions and publications, most significantly my book, ‘Dad, Pete, Opa’ published by XYZ Books, Lisbon, Portugal, jointly funded by Creative New Zealand and DGArtes Funding Portugal.

Another significant, ongoing project tracks long-term physical and psychological consequences of forced, rapid change in Ōtautahi as a result of the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes. This work has become recognized as the most comprehensive photographic response to this period in Ōtautahi’s history. A focus of this research has been the Residential Red Zone suburb of Avonside, which I was initially invited to photograph in 2012 by a local community group that hung in the balance of Orange/Red land zoning classifications. While initial work culminated in a large outdoor exhibition as part of Christchurch Arts Festival 2013, I have kept returning to document gradual change in the area long after the community vacated and land was cleared.

I am currently concentrating on photographing Ōtautahi’s central city, towards the output of a publication to mark the 20th anniversary of the Canterbury Earthquakes. Within this work, I am documenting a range of sites that symbolise, memorialise or embody aspects of an extraordinary time of trauma, recovery and rapid change. In making this work I am attempting to think of locations that relate to the construction of Ōtautahi’s post-earthquake narrative in both direct and indirect ways; locations where specific events have unfolded in the wake of disaster; places where lives were lost or significant structures demolished, but also sites that by association or proximity have come to represent or indicate something of the collective experience of events, as well as dominant feelings for place and time.