hot shots
cx ove x x x xr s t o r y
hot shots
KEVIN BOWIE
They are instantly recognisable. The grinning mouths, the child’s hands, the weathered skin, the embraces, the hand-holding and the solo moments of joy which are the M.I.L.K. (Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship) photographic series. They grin out at you from the bookshelf or greeting card stand, often with crooked or absent teeth, and make you smile back. The spontaneous and honest nature of these photographs has made an international success of what began in 1999 with a photography competition. To mark 10 years since the first exhibition, a new competition, Fresh M.I.L.K. was run and the resulting 150 photos are showcased in a new book called Friendship, Family, Love and Laughter. And four of the images are by New Zealand photographers. Out of 35,000 entries, their images captured the spirit of the competition, each with a distinctly New Zealand feel: take the old claw foot tub, the side of a weatherboard lighthouse, pony club participants and little girls playing on the dark stones that surround urban Auckland beaches. M.I.L.K. was inspired by Edward Steichen’s 1950s landmark photographic exhibition ‘The Family of Man’. Its founder, New Zealand publisher Geoff Blackwell, says he was moved by the global scale of the exhibition and how its subject, the fundamental human capacity and need for love, meant the images transcended geography and time. In the original competition, 17,000 professional and amateur photographers entered more than 40,000 images and a space dubbed ‘the milk shed’ was filled with sacks of prints, negatives and handmade packages. Ten years on and this time the 35,000 entries were submitted entirely online. Eminent Magnum Photos photographer Elliott Erwitt again selected the 150 included and this time chose an overall winner: a part-time professional photographer from Lithuania, Victoria Vaisvilaite Skirutiene, who shot a father entertaining his daughter during a break in a long journey to Russia in a campervan. Here we bring you the New Zealand winners and a selection of others from the book. 16
sunday
ALL IMAGES FROM FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND LAUGHTER BY M.I.L.K.
Some pictures are worth a thousand words – and a place in a prestigious, world-renowned collection. Olivia Tully talks to four winning Kiwi photographers
Kevin Bowie, New Zealand
>>
Cantabrian Kevin Bowie is new to photography, starting in 2002 while fishing for salmon on the Waimakariri River. A magical sunrise made him pick up a camera and he says it’s grown from there. A plasterer by profession, he is modestly proud of his achievement. “It’s one of those things where you send the image away and think, oh, I’ll see how it goes. I had that image and thought it might fit what they were looking for. So you send it away and forget about it and then, bugger me, you get the email. It was a great thrill.” His winning photo captures his daughter Leigh at a Belfast pony club event. As he sat watching from five metres away, he noticed she was teasing her horse, Beaver, with the bridal. When she brought it up the horse anticipated the bit going into the mouth and would lift her lips up and down. The sight made Bowie pick up his camera. “The horse’s mouth was opening and closing like a smile. I just snapped off a few images and there was one in there that was a cracker.” He says he had the feeling he had caught a special moment but it was not until he removed the colour and heavily cropped in on the two smiles that he realised its impact. His daughter Leigh was “chuffed” with the image’s success, although Bowie says it was tinged with sadness, as, a week after they learned of the win, Beaver died. What does he think made his picture stand out? “I think it’s just what appears to be a spontaneous laugh from the horse. It’s not staged and it just makes you smile.” Since that fishing morning, Bowie has developed a passion for landscapes and with lots of reading and attending courses he now makes a part-time income from his photography. He says being in an international publication gives him confidence to pursue his art. “It tells you you’re on the right track. You think nothing much will come of it, but until you send an image away or put it in front of people you really don’t know, do you? People don’t like your stuff all the time but then every now and again something like this happens.” Bowie is working toward pursuing photography full time but his expectations remain modest. “From what I’ve read, you don’t give up your >> day job too quickly.”
sunday 17
c ove r s t o r y
HEIDI COPPOCK BEARD Heidi Coppock Beard was on a walk with her husband Kirby and one-year-old daughter Elizabeth on an extremely windy day. They had stopped at the lighthouse on Awhitu Peninsula, on Auckland’s west coast, when Kirby pulled his coat over Elizabeth’s sling to shelter her from the elements. “I think my shot is just very simple. I don’t think there are many dads who carry their child in a sling. He was always carrying her around in that,” says Coppock Beard. A professional lifestyle and food photographer for 10 years, entering the M.I.L.K. competition was a first for her. “I’ve never entered anything before but, because I have just had kids quite close together, I have loads of shots of my husband with them. I thought I really must enter something. And it’s got a lot of kudos, has M.I.L.K. I do think it’s a prestigious award.” Coppock Beard submitted 10 shots – all intimate moments of her husband and daughter, who she says are used to being her subjects. “I do a lot of work for Getty Images so every time we’re out I take shots. There’s heaps of my husband and daughters on Getty [a photo library] but this was just family time with Elizabeth and Kirby.” Kirby, she says, was thrilled. “He couldn’t believe it – it was lovely. He only worried that after some media got in touch he’d get pestered on the ferry because we live on Waiheke Island. Every time he goes to work it will be, ‘Are you that guy with the baby?’ “We have another daughter now who’s the same age as Elizabeth was in the shot and he’s always carrying her around in the sling.” Originally from Lancashire, England, Coppock Beard has been here just over
Arne Strømme: Norway
Heidi Coppock Beard, New Zealand
three years. Her commissions in the UK included work for Nigella Lawson and large ad agencies. Her passion started at 15, but it took determination to get the success she did. “In the early ‘90s it was a real man’s world; well, it was in Britain anyway. It’s changed now, which is really good.” She’s found that the birth of her girls has helped her grow and improve her work. “I found it terrifying at first. I thought I’d never be able to pick up a camera again but only recently I’ve been doing lots more personal work. Once you become a mum it’s a bit like solitary confinement for the first two years, so when you’re let out and start doing stuff again your appreciation for the time that you have is just immense. “It’s not something I can choose now; its completely part of me. I’ll be >> shooting until the day I die.”
Moshe Shai: Israel
sunday 19
c ove r s t o r y
VICTORIA VINCENT Victoria Vincent caught a moment typical of any family – her daughter Stella and three cousins sharing an evening bath. “For us, the family, it totally catches all of them. It was simply a record of them hanging out together, a real moment,” she says. A professional photographer in Wellington, she says she was blown away. “For me it was amazing because I thought it was special but for others to look at it and see something special was something else.” Victoria Vincent, New Zealand The photo of Claudia, Max, Stella and Holly bathing together was not her original choice for the competition but when another shot would not upload she went in search and saw something in the bathroom antics. “I was looking after them one night, like I do every week, and they were just having a bath and going about their funny little business. I really love it because you can see their four personalities; they are all doing their own thing and reacting to the camera differently, but in their own ways.” Vincent says what she thinks makes the image stand out is the detail of the way Claudia, on the left, holds the soap in her palm. “All the kids are being gorgeous but Claudia – that is her. She’s really dramatic and over-the-top. I think when people look at it she catches the eye.” Photography is in the family. Vincent’s grandfather was a war photographer and her uncle shot nature and landscapes. She says from an early age, with her first hand-me-down Minolta camera, she knew it was what she needed to be doing. Although, she did get side-tracked by television, working for the BBC while overseas. “I was directing and camera-operating but when I came back to New Zealand
Silvia Morara: Italy
Melissa Mermin: USA
a couple of years ago I decided to go back and do more study and learn about digital to try to make a living out of photography.” She now shoots anything with people: weddings, portraits, and a new business venture doing boudoir photography. “It’s sensual and hot, sexy photos of women in their finery. It’s just started going really well. The people who have done it so far have loved it.” She says M.I.L.K. is an amazing thing to be involved in as its qualities and realism are things she aims for. “Elliott Erwitt is someone I really look up to and I love his work. He takes some really quirky street photography and takes it in ways you don’t normally see in everyday life. For me, M.I.L.K. is something that really celebrates that.” And for her the placement of her image in the book was something she could not have anticipated. “It couldn’t have been printed any bigger; I was totally spellbound. I thought maybe it would be a small image in a corner but it’s a double-page >> spread – it’s massive.”
Martina Gemmola: USA
sunday 21
c ove r s t o r y
TERRY WINN Terry Winn is not new to being a M.I.L.K. winner, with one of his shots in the original collection and featured in the book Friendship. The professional photographer has a long list of accomplishments and after having a studio in Auckland for more than 20 years, he’s now based in Havelock North, where he is doing mainly portrait work. “It is very satisfying when people have something on their wall for life,” says Winn. His winning shot was a private commission. Hiwa and Terawai, around six and four years of age, were playing on the steps leading to Point Chevalier beach, where he got them to sit as he shot from the water. He says it was a mix of control and letting things flow – the result being that he caught a spontaneous moment of interaction between the two. “It was one the family fell in love with immediately because of the vibrancy of the mood – the girls’ excitement. I’ve had it in the studio and everyone seems to gravitate towards it. “There’s always an element of serendipity. With a couple of young girls like that, at the beach, when we got there they jumped out of the car and headed straight to the water.” He says that, after making sure their image would be treated with respect, the family were thrilled they would be in the book. “We alleviated those concerns because M.I.L.K is a very prestigious publication. I was just disappointed we didn’t win, but that’s the way it goes.” Winn has our highest qualification, a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of
Terry Winn, New Zealand
Professional Photography, and has produced books and calendars, and exhibited at Te Papa, but it all began with a passion for surfing. “It probably started when I was supposed to be at school but was taking surfing photos. For years I was playing around with the camera. I travelled a lot; I left home at 18 to travel and surf and got involved taking pictures.” Then a job in the aerial mapping darkrooms in Hastings honed his technical and black and white skills. And having seen the challenges of changing times with the advent of digital, he says it still inspires him. One of his pleasures is still taking photos for himself, “which even my wife doesn’t get to see”. This shot, he says, captures an element of New Zealand. “Not many places in the world have little girls in pounamu and they were speaking fluent Maori the whole time. It was very cool. It was so relaxed – a laidback mum who said, ‘That’s who they are and let’s just see what comes out of it.’” Friendship, Family, Love and Laughter goes on sale tomorrow, $70.
Jane Therese, USA, above; Kathleen Hunter, USA, below
M.I.L.K’s overall winning image by Victoria Vaisvilaite Skirutiene, Lithuania 20
sunday
hot shots
KEVIN BOWIE
They are instantly recognisable. The grinning mouths, the child’s hands, the weathered skin, the embraces, the hand-holding and the solo moments of joy which are the M.I.L.K. (Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship) photographic series. They grin out at you from the bookshelf or greeting card stand, often with crooked or absent teeth, and make you smile back. The spontaneous and honest nature of these photographs has made an international success of what began in 1999 with a photography competition. To mark 10 years since the first exhibition, a new competition, Fresh M.I.L.K. was run and the resulting 150 photos are showcased in a new book called Friendship, Family, Love and Laughter. And four of the images are by New Zealand photographers. Out of 35,000 entries, their images captured the spirit of the competition, each with a distinctly New Zealand feel: take the old claw foot tub, the side of a weatherboard lighthouse, pony club participants and little girls playing on the dark stones that surround urban Auckland beaches. M.I.L.K. was inspired by Edward Steichen’s 1950s landmark photographic exhibition ‘The Family of Man’. Its founder, New Zealand publisher Geoff Blackwell, says he was moved by the global scale of the exhibition and how its subject, the fundamental human capacity and need for love, meant the images transcended geography and time. In the original competition, 17,000 professional and amateur photographers entered more than 40,000 images and a space dubbed ‘the milk shed’ was filled with sacks of prints, negatives and handmade packages. Ten years on and this time the 35,000 entries were submitted entirely online. Eminent Magnum Photos photographer Elliott Erwitt again selected the 150 included and this time chose an overall winner: a part-time professional photographer from Lithuania, Victoria Vaisvilaite Skirutiene, who shot a father entertaining his daughter during a break in a long journey to Russia in a campervan. Here we bring you the New Zealand winners and a selection of others from the book. 16
sunday
ALL IMAGES FROM FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND LAUGHTER BY M.I.L.K.
Some pictures are worth a thousand words – and a place in a prestigious, world-renowned collection. Olivia Tully talks to four winning Kiwi photographers
Kevin Bowie, New Zealand
>>
Cantabrian Kevin Bowie is new to photography, starting in 2002 while fishing for salmon on the Waimakariri River. A magical sunrise made him pick up a camera and he says it’s grown from there. A plasterer by profession, he is modestly proud of his achievement. “It’s one of those things where you send the image away and think, oh, I’ll see how it goes. I had that image and thought it might fit what they were looking for. So you send it away and forget about it and then, bugger me, you get the email. It was a great thrill.” His winning photo captures his daughter Leigh at a Belfast pony club event. As he sat watching from five metres away, he noticed she was teasing her horse, Beaver, with the bridal. When she brought it up the horse anticipated the bit going into the mouth and would lift her lips up and down. The sight made Bowie pick up his camera. “The horse’s mouth was opening and closing like a smile. I just snapped off a few images and there was one in there that was a cracker.” He says he had the feeling he had caught a special moment but it was not until he removed the colour and heavily cropped in on the two smiles that he realised its impact. His daughter Leigh was “chuffed” with the image’s success, although Bowie says it was tinged with sadness, as, a week after they learned of the win, Beaver died. What does he think made his picture stand out? “I think it’s just what appears to be a spontaneous laugh from the horse. It’s not staged and it just makes you smile.” Since that fishing morning, Bowie has developed a passion for landscapes and with lots of reading and attending courses he now makes a part-time income from his photography. He says being in an international publication gives him confidence to pursue his art. “It tells you you’re on the right track. You think nothing much will come of it, but until you send an image away or put it in front of people you really don’t know, do you? People don’t like your stuff all the time but then every now and again something like this happens.” Bowie is working toward pursuing photography full time but his expectations remain modest. “From what I’ve read, you don’t give up your >> day job too quickly.”
sunday 17
c ove r s t o r y
HEIDI COPPOCK BEARD Heidi Coppock Beard was on a walk with her husband Kirby and one-year-old daughter Elizabeth on an extremely windy day. They had stopped at the lighthouse on Awhitu Peninsula, on Auckland’s west coast, when Kirby pulled his coat over Elizabeth’s sling to shelter her from the elements. “I think my shot is just very simple. I don’t think there are many dads who carry their child in a sling. He was always carrying her around in that,” says Coppock Beard. A professional lifestyle and food photographer for 10 years, entering the M.I.L.K. competition was a first for her. “I’ve never entered anything before but, because I have just had kids quite close together, I have loads of shots of my husband with them. I thought I really must enter something. And it’s got a lot of kudos, has M.I.L.K. I do think it’s a prestigious award.” Coppock Beard submitted 10 shots – all intimate moments of her husband and daughter, who she says are used to being her subjects. “I do a lot of work for Getty Images so every time we’re out I take shots. There’s heaps of my husband and daughters on Getty [a photo library] but this was just family time with Elizabeth and Kirby.” Kirby, she says, was thrilled. “He couldn’t believe it – it was lovely. He only worried that after some media got in touch he’d get pestered on the ferry because we live on Waiheke Island. Every time he goes to work it will be, ‘Are you that guy with the baby?’ “We have another daughter now who’s the same age as Elizabeth was in the shot and he’s always carrying her around in the sling.” Originally from Lancashire, England, Coppock Beard has been here just over
Arne Strømme: Norway
Heidi Coppock Beard, New Zealand
three years. Her commissions in the UK included work for Nigella Lawson and large ad agencies. Her passion started at 15, but it took determination to get the success she did. “In the early ‘90s it was a real man’s world; well, it was in Britain anyway. It’s changed now, which is really good.” She’s found that the birth of her girls has helped her grow and improve her work. “I found it terrifying at first. I thought I’d never be able to pick up a camera again but only recently I’ve been doing lots more personal work. Once you become a mum it’s a bit like solitary confinement for the first two years, so when you’re let out and start doing stuff again your appreciation for the time that you have is just immense. “It’s not something I can choose now; its completely part of me. I’ll be >> shooting until the day I die.”
Moshe Shai: Israel
sunday 19
c ove r s t o r y
VICTORIA VINCENT Victoria Vincent caught a moment typical of any family – her daughter Stella and three cousins sharing an evening bath. “For us, the family, it totally catches all of them. It was simply a record of them hanging out together, a real moment,” she says. A professional photographer in Wellington, she says she was blown away. “For me it was amazing because I thought it was special but for others to look at it and see something special was something else.” Victoria Vincent, New Zealand The photo of Claudia, Max, Stella and Holly bathing together was not her original choice for the competition but when another shot would not upload she went in search and saw something in the bathroom antics. “I was looking after them one night, like I do every week, and they were just having a bath and going about their funny little business. I really love it because you can see their four personalities; they are all doing their own thing and reacting to the camera differently, but in their own ways.” Vincent says what she thinks makes the image stand out is the detail of the way Claudia, on the left, holds the soap in her palm. “All the kids are being gorgeous but Claudia – that is her. She’s really dramatic and over-the-top. I think when people look at it she catches the eye.” Photography is in the family. Vincent’s grandfather was a war photographer and her uncle shot nature and landscapes. She says from an early age, with her first hand-me-down Minolta camera, she knew it was what she needed to be doing. Although, she did get side-tracked by television, working for the BBC while overseas. “I was directing and camera-operating but when I came back to New Zealand
Silvia Morara: Italy
Melissa Mermin: USA
a couple of years ago I decided to go back and do more study and learn about digital to try to make a living out of photography.” She now shoots anything with people: weddings, portraits, and a new business venture doing boudoir photography. “It’s sensual and hot, sexy photos of women in their finery. It’s just started going really well. The people who have done it so far have loved it.” She says M.I.L.K. is an amazing thing to be involved in as its qualities and realism are things she aims for. “Elliott Erwitt is someone I really look up to and I love his work. He takes some really quirky street photography and takes it in ways you don’t normally see in everyday life. For me, M.I.L.K. is something that really celebrates that.” And for her the placement of her image in the book was something she could not have anticipated. “It couldn’t have been printed any bigger; I was totally spellbound. I thought maybe it would be a small image in a corner but it’s a double-page >> spread – it’s massive.”
Martina Gemmola: USA
sunday 21
c ove r s t o r y
TERRY WINN Terry Winn is not new to being a M.I.L.K. winner, with one of his shots in the original collection and featured in the book Friendship. The professional photographer has a long list of accomplishments and after having a studio in Auckland for more than 20 years, he’s now based in Havelock North, where he is doing mainly portrait work. “It is very satisfying when people have something on their wall for life,” says Winn. His winning shot was a private commission. Hiwa and Terawai, around six and four years of age, were playing on the steps leading to Point Chevalier beach, where he got them to sit as he shot from the water. He says it was a mix of control and letting things flow – the result being that he caught a spontaneous moment of interaction between the two. “It was one the family fell in love with immediately because of the vibrancy of the mood – the girls’ excitement. I’ve had it in the studio and everyone seems to gravitate towards it. “There’s always an element of serendipity. With a couple of young girls like that, at the beach, when we got there they jumped out of the car and headed straight to the water.” He says that, after making sure their image would be treated with respect, the family were thrilled they would be in the book. “We alleviated those concerns because M.I.L.K is a very prestigious publication. I was just disappointed we didn’t win, but that’s the way it goes.” Winn has our highest qualification, a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of
Terry Winn, New Zealand
Professional Photography, and has produced books and calendars, and exhibited at Te Papa, but it all began with a passion for surfing. “It probably started when I was supposed to be at school but was taking surfing photos. For years I was playing around with the camera. I travelled a lot; I left home at 18 to travel and surf and got involved taking pictures.” Then a job in the aerial mapping darkrooms in Hastings honed his technical and black and white skills. And having seen the challenges of changing times with the advent of digital, he says it still inspires him. One of his pleasures is still taking photos for himself, “which even my wife doesn’t get to see”. This shot, he says, captures an element of New Zealand. “Not many places in the world have little girls in pounamu and they were speaking fluent Maori the whole time. It was very cool. It was so relaxed – a laidback mum who said, ‘That’s who they are and let’s just see what comes out of it.’” Friendship, Family, Love and Laughter goes on sale tomorrow, $70.
Jane Therese, USA, above; Kathleen Hunter, USA, below
M.I.L.K’s overall winning image by Victoria Vaisvilaite Skirutiene, Lithuania 20
sunday
