Book Description

Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu Please note: this EPub is optimized for viewing on Thorium Reader. Thorium Reader is the free EPUB reader of choice for Windows 10 and 11, MacOS and Linux. https://www.edrlab.org/software/thorium-reader 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, 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.