Use new eyes as you walk the road again

Netted Martinborough vines as harvest looms and autumn clouds gather. Photo Credit: ‘Town’ by Madeleine Slavick.

Wairarapa author and photographer Madeleine Slavick has a newly published book of photographs, stories and poems, all set in New Zealand, with many in Wairarapa.

“Town” is published by The Cuba Press and distributed by Bateman Books.

Slavick’s “Town” features at the Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival ‘Late Night Lit’ event on Friday 10 May (sold out). Slavick will also be present at her exhibition at Featherston’s Common Ground Art Gallery on Saturday May 11 from 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. with a Q+A session at 11:30 a.m. All welcome.

“Town is reminiscent of Robert Hass at his most beautifully imagistic, or Georgia O’Keeffe telling deep stories in flowers,” notes Hinemoana Baker, who contributed an endorsement for the book.

“The art is in the structure, the layering of images,” writes author Jillian Sullivan who will join Slavick at an event at Aratoi Museum on 11 June at 12 noon. 

“At once humorous, poignant, arch, illuminating and matter-of-fact, Town gives you your hometown as if you had always remembered it that way yourself.

Luo Hui writes: “Slavick uses her eyes as a viewfinder, and language as film. She composes with conscience and sensitivity, in flashes of light and shadow, and finds a delicate access to sanity, and joy.” 

He and Basil Keane, who have rendered two short works into te reo Māori, will join Slavick for the Wellington launch at Unity Books on Thursday 4 July at 12:30 p.m.

Artist Robin White writes, “Slavick’s images and text are mutually supportive and distinct at the same time. She reminds us of how much is to be discovered if only we would stop and ponder. The road I just walked, I must walk again, with new eyes.”

Slavick has exhibited her photos internationally, and has published several books, including Round, with Barbara Baker (Bumbershoot Book Award, Seattle); Delicate Access, with Luo Hui; My Body My Business, with Caren Wilton; Something Beautiful Might Happen, with Shimao Shinzo; and Fifty Stories Fifty Images.

She works with Wairarapa Library Service and Almo’s Books, coordinates Wairarapa Word, and lives in West Taratahi.

Town will also feature at the Auckland Festival of Photography and the 2024 Photobook/NZ Festival (Te Papa).