Spaces of the Mind

Two photographers, both alike in dignity,
in fair Raglan where we lay our scene.
From Whitecliffe College break to new creativity;
where developer makes artistic hands unclean.

A pair of star cross’d lenses set focus on Raglan for the first joint exhibition.
Friends, Jane Alice and Tracey Baird graduated from Whitecliffe College of Art and Design each with a BFA majoring in Photography in 2008 and three years later have had tremendous success with their show, Oh! The places you’ll go.

The title of the show – which shares its name with a Dr. Seuss book – explores the spaces of the mind.
“We are both very interested in fantasy,” the pair says in a joint statement. “We share similar ideas and messages from different perspectives and aesthetically we share an element of sinister beauty. We both love how our works can tie in together with ideas but in reality have completely different and extreme aesthetic styles.”

For Jane, photography has been able to merge her two life-long passions. Her childhood revolved around competitive swimming and later on, she became involved in surfing and surf lifesaving. Jane's interest in photography also began at an early age with the influence of her dad who worked as a wedding photographer. Understanding the technical process of photography was a fascination shared between father and daughter.



The 25-year-old remembers her 11th Christmas (when her parents split up) as the beginning of her life behind the lens.
“My little sister and I had our Christmas Day lunch with our Dad at Denny's,” Jane recalls. “Dad bought our presents to the restaurant in a black rubbish bag. Mine was a camera, a little Pentax that I loved! I have been taking photos ever since.”
Throughout Jane's practice, she has set parameters around aesthetic qualities and the connection between her life and her art. Relationships and experiences from the past hold influence over what she photographs now.

An extraordinary example is a compilation of seemingly ordinary real estate portraits that hold a much deeper meaning.
The collection, titled ‘34 homes, 23 years,’ is a simple yet heartfelt look back at the 34 homes she has lived in during the last 23 years of her life. Jane returned to the homes she once occupied to photograph them. Each shot is accompanied by a basic narrative of an event that took place during her time there. The still frames and text are as brief as Jane’s time in each location – a prime example of when simplicity goes a long way.
That minimalism is echoed in her most recent collection, which melds her investigations of water and photography.
“The work is about temptation, fear and self destruction,” Jane says. “Sometimes the places we go in our minds can be the hardest thing to resist and can also be the thing that destroys us. I wanted to create something beautiful yet the sharks have that stigma about them that you should fear them; that they have the power to destroy you. Perhaps the mind has that same power...”



Jane has been able to take that relationship one step further when a surfing accident and subsequent hip surgery two years ago took away her ability to surf. She has since launched her own photography business, Raglan Surf Shots.
“The surf has the power to transform a person,” she says. “There is that goofy grin that’s impossible to wipe off your face.” Her photographs are reminiscent of the search for the perfect wave.

For Tracey Baird photography has a more of a ‘chicken or the egg’ milieu.
The 36-year-old has worked as a hair stylist and nail expert in Auckland and London for more than 17 years. When she began taking photos of her hairdressing for her records, the process of capturing beauty struck a chord.

However, it wasn’t until one trip from her Waitakere base to Piha that she decided to get in to photography. As she approached Piha beach, the sun was dipping into the Tasman Sea creating a brilliant hue around Lion Rock. She had her camera handy and snapped a shot that she refers to as her ‘first photo as a photographer’.
“I liked that I was able to share my perspective,” Tracey says of the photo. “I enjoy the aesthetics of beauty.”

She enrolled in Whitecliffe College and halfway through her degree found herself delving in to the realm of ‘constructing reality’. She became fascinated with creating installations in spaces that shouldn’t be there – an inclination that was birthed from warped dreams that she recorded in a dream log.
“A lot of my work is created from that subconscious idea of what is real and what is not – the border between dreaming and reality.”

The locations of her dreams also influence what she photographs.
In her most recent collection, there’s a photo of a boy in a lounge in the forest. He’s sprawled across worn carpet watching Star Wars on an old sixties television set. The creation was inspired by one of Tracey’s dreams where she came across a room in the forest with carpet similar to that which covered the floors of her childhood home.



Tracey isn’t one to over-analyse the meaning of dreams but enjoys incorporating them in her work.
As she furthered her photography degree, Tracey also continued with hairdressing – a choice half-decided by friends and family
“They wouldn’t let me give up,” she quips. “Like a doctor or dentist, if you have a good hairdresser it’s hard to give them up. It was a nightmare trying to balance the two.”
Today, Tracey does just that, as the Director of West Auckland Salon, Fusion. She’s found a great balance between hairdressing three days a week and photography two days a week. She is thankful to have both as, “creating art is quite a solitary occupation but hairdressing is very social.”

Through her business, Tracey was able to organise a VIP evening of art, music, fashion and photography last year to raise funds for Dress for Success. She called on the help of friends including Jane who donated work to be auctioned off.
After the success of their first show and the charity event, the friends look forward to continuing their business relationship. 
“[From] every exhibition you always learn something new,” the pair says. “It has been good to get feedback from the public [and] it was interesting to see locals, friends and holidaymakers experiencing photography in a new and different way [which] provoked thought on a different perspective.
“We felt it went really well for our first show together since university and we are looking forward to the future because it can only get better from here.”

www.surfshot.net
www.fusiongirl.co.nz