Off the Top of my Head
By Paul Murray
Based in the remote rural township of Karamea at the top of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, Paul Murray creates montages from abstract photographs by mirroring, flipping and inverting the images to showcase the art inherent in nature.
Instagram: @pauljohnmurray
#artofnaturemontage
To purchase any of these images, please e-mail Paul Murray: Info@LivingInPeace.com
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
© Original Image by Paul Murray
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ArtofNature Montages By Paul Murray Based in Sunny Karamea at the top of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, I create montages from my abstract photographs by mirroring, flipping and inverting the images to showcase the art inherent in nature. Instagram: @pauljohnmurray #artofnaturemontage
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The History of ArtofNature Photography
Off the Top of My Head
By Paul Murray
I accidentally became famous for photography. Here’s the incredible story…Around the time digital cameras were becoming a thing, I was working as a photo-journalist at the Yomiuri Shimbun (the largest newspaper in Japan and possibly the world) and had access to some pretty fancy camera gear as part of my work…The Yomiuri had all the latest Nikon cameras and the new digital gadgets as well. I bought myself a very expensive macro lens that fit onto the Yomiuri camera I was using at the time…It was an F100 film camera…a very good one. I took it on holiday to New Zealand with me in the late 90s. I was very much into photography as art at the time (and still am) and started taking abstract nature photos of the colours, textures, patterns designs and shapes of nature up close. In addition, I tried to incorporate a metaphor into the images to increase their artistic merit…and I did this for personal self-gratification…It was a hobby, and I enjoyed it very much. When I returned to Japan, all my friends wanted to see my holiday photos from New Zealand.
I was reluctant to show them as the images were not at all like most people’s holiday photos…They were obscure, abstract, macro nature photos…I’d taken them for myself, and I didn’t think anyone else would really find them interesting or even good (I have no formal training as a photographer or artist). Anyway, I finally showed a few friends my photos from New Zealand, and they went nuts….They were VERY complimentary and even suggested I do an exhibition…”Mmmmmm….” I said…”Come and see Paul’s holiday photos”…I mean who’s going to come right?” I really didn’t think the photos were worthy of such attention. Them a friend with a fancy cafe restaurant said she’d fund an exhibition at her establishment…I thought…OK, I’ll give it a go…I had nothing to lose, so I selected 100 photos and had them enlarged to A4 size, I then mounted them on black A3 board and we put them up around the cafe. We were pretty happy with the way it looked and the photos worked well as a display at the cafe/restaurant…They really brought an interesting new dynamic to the place.
We had made a postcard featuring one of the images and sent it out to all the cafe customer database and invited all our friends and asked them to bring their friends. On opening day, I was sitting with my cafe-owner friend wondering if anyone would come…What happened was amazing…So many people came, we had to close the restaurant as the waiting staff couldn’t move…for four days! We had to get a guard for the door and only let about 40 people in at a time…People were lined up outside for about 2 1/2 blocks waiting to get in and see the show…This attracted quite a lot of media attention and journalists started to request interviews with “the artist.” I ended up in Japanese photo magazines, newspapers and even did a radio interview…From that, famous Japanese photographers started to come and ask difficult questions about shutter speeds and aperture settings etc…The show was an unprecedented success, we had it up for one month and sold every photo…some of the images sold numerous times…and OK, I didn’t have high prices on the works (I basically doubled the unit cost of presenting the photos, so they were selling for about ¥5,000 each).
After the success of my “ArtofNature” show, I was offered other exhibitions, two in Ginza! I also exhibited my work in Omotesando, Shibuya, Ichikawa and later Kamakura, Zushi and Hayama.
Why was the show so successful? I’ve thought about this a LOT…Japanese people have an inherent appreciation of the natural aesthetic…Nature is in your art, music, poetry, literature and an appreciation of nature is held dear by all Japanese…Even though most Japanese people live in large urban environments ironically devoid of nature…I think my abstract nature images present a sharp contrast between people’s daily lives of concrete, steel, asphalt, glass, chrome and plastic…and appeal to the inner appreciation of nature all Japanese have. My images enable people to momentarily lose themselves in the beauty of nature and forget the tensions, stresses, complications, and challenges of their respective lives and smile a little inside, remember that nature is wonderful and beautiful and that their problems are insignificant when confronted with such natural beauty. Japanese people actually got the idea of the incorporated metaphor as well…They understood my artistic endeavour…(I showed the same photos in Christchurch, New Zealand some years later and there was absolutely NO interest whatsoever…The contrast wasn’t there…People living in New Zealand have much more contact with nature in their daily lives and don’t really have the cultural appreciation of nature Japanese people have.
My next show was titled “Contemplative Observation,” and it was displayed at Las Chicas in Omotesando. I set a stringent set of criteria for the show…I had three rolls of 36-exposure slide film (courtesy of The Yomiuri Shimbun!) and gave myself one hour to shoot each roll of film. Each image was to be taken in urban Tokyo…A little plant growing out of a crack in the pavement, the patterns on a leaf, the flower on a pot plant in front of someone’s house etc. Also, I was to show every image, sight unseen…meaning I was going to display all the images without having seen them myself (this turned out to be one of the most stressful things I have ever done).
It was physically, mentally and emotionally draining to concentrate so hard for 1 hour and take 36 images…I had to make sure every shot was a winner and had just under two minutes per shot in which to do this. It required intense concentration, and I was also working so I did one roll of film per month for three months…All the photos were taken in urban/suburban Tokyo.
I then got myself a carousel projector and developed the slides, loaded the project tor and took it to Las Chicas where about 200 people were waiting to see the new work…(Remember I hadn’t yet seen them myself)…I was beside myself with stress and thought to myself “My God…I’ll be exposed for the artistic fraud I am…This will be the end of my foray into photography…” So, I closed my eyes and pressed the start button on the projector not really knowing what was going to happen and if the images were any good or not…So 108 slides were beamed onto the wall in the courtyard at Las Chicas in front of 200 of my “fans,” and I was quietly dying…
Well…Again the show was an incredible success…People didn’t believe I’d taken the images in Japan let alone urban Tokyo, some thought they were taken in the botanical gardens of some exotic country…The idea of the show was to show urban-dwelling Tokyoites that there is natural beauty all around, but we don’t see or take the time to appreciate it. We leave our homes, walk to our jobs in a mental tunnel that excludes everything around us…We see, but we don’t observe…My exhibition showed the little things that we all walk right by without appreciating every day…Again Japanese people actually GOT the concept of the exhibition and really understood the point I was trying to make…Another great success. (I’ll never do that again though…too stressful!)
I then did an exhibition in Ginza called “Cryptic Triptychs,” which featured three images framed together to create a little story. This was also successful and the exhibition well attended.
Anyway, I basically became tired of exhibiting my work…and living up to the expectations of others. I was no longer really enjoying photography and the cathartic process I experienced in taking photos…so I quit!
I still love photography and take a LOT of photos and love the idea of photography as art. Fifteen years later, I’m ready now to exhibit again and have the idea of a collaborative exhibition with Belgian Artist Arnaud “PsoMan” Vanderkerkin to expand the concept of the “Exhibition of One Photo” he assisted with in 2012, and present a show in Tokyo in 2019.
After almost 14 years at 
The Rongolian Star 
West Coast Economy Benefits From Hidden Tourism $ Yields
Off the Top of my Head
By Paul Murray
There is quite a lot of talk at Councils and in the local media on the West Coast lately about the need for the tourism industry to be self-sustaining and not to rely on local government funding and ratepayer subsidies to support it.
Currently, tourism is without question best game in town for the West Coast. Traditional extractive West Coast industries like forestry, mining, fishing and dairy are in decline or don’t really have any additional growth potential. The people employed in those industries may choose to spend some of their wages on the Coast, and they certainly do, but much of that money is spent elsewhere and doesn’t really benefit the local economy.
Tourism, however, caters to visitors to the region and those people spend a lot when they are here. The come to visit the Coast and see the spectacular natural environment and scenery that we sometimes take for granted. When they are here, they purchase accommodation, meals, fuel, food; they spend on activities, events, visit coffee shops, purchase souvenirs…this is good for the local economy and local businesses as it enables them to operate and also to employ staff. The tourism industry supports businesses that are not directly tourism related and inadvertently helps keep Coasters employed. The supermarket staff, the butcher, the local mechanic, the service station workers, the waiting staff, the baristas, the information centre teams, the local hairdresser, the newsagent, dairy owners and many more are supported by tourism money directly and indirectly.
The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has determined the average daily spend for a visitor to the West Coast is $248. This figure is calculated by dividing the total visitor revenue by the number of visitors. Resident West Coasters do not support the local economy by spending this much per day, but we directly benefit from the capital introduced to our economy by tourists.
Jim Little, CEO of Tourism West Coast, said, “The latest MBIE figures show West Coast number 1 for percentage growth of expenditure at 14% to $577 million up $9 million year-to-date March 2018. The national average is 9%.” He added, “In terms of GDP contribution, tourism now number 2 on the Coast at $172 million second only to dairy on $234 million. That’s up from number five 5 years ago.” This shows the importance of tourism to the West Coast economy and also just how fast it is growing and demonstrates its potential to bring further economic prosperity to the Coast.
Many of the services and facilities we enjoy as local people would not exist without tourism. Local cafes, restaurants, service stations, pubs, museums, activity providers and scenic attractions would not be available to local people without the financial support derived from tourism. Without tourism the quality of our respective lives and the range of facilities and services we enjoy would not be available without the income tourism provides…they just would not be financially viable.
Tourism also encourages local governments to improve infrastructure to cater to the visitors. So our roads, public facilities like toilets and waste-management systems, electricity, Internet services, telephone networks etc are all improved because of tourism, the money tourists introduce to the economy and the demand for services and facilities they create.
To cater to tourists, accommodation providers must also purchase all sorts products, materials, furniture, whiteware, electrical appliances, print brochures, make signs produce advertising material etc, and all of those requirements support other non-tourism related businesses, like; furniture shops, linen suppliers, cleaning products, gardening equipment, fuel, hardware and building supplies, food and beverages, groceries and much more. All of this also supports the local economy and enables us to have such shops and businesses and suppliers available to people living on the Coast.
While tourism-related businesses may not cater directly to West Coast residents, the quality of our lives are significantly enhanced by the money visitors bring with them when they come, and the people working hard to cater to them when they are here should be supported in every possible way and the small amount of subsidisation that West Coast tourism currently receives from the Councils (via rate payers) goes a long way to maintain and improve the quality of life for Coast residents and helps keep services and facilities open and available to our people and us employed. The World Trade Organisation estimates that tourism generates an indirect contribution to the local economy equivalent to 100% of direct tourism expenditure. Please consider this when discussing tourism and the subsidies the industry receives for the benefit of us all and future generations.
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Paul Murray is a Karamea-based tourism business operator and owner of:
Rongo Dinner Bed & Breakfast: http://www.Rongo.nz
Karamea Farm Baches: http://www.KarameaFarmBaches.co.nz
Karamea Connections: http://www.KarameaConnections.co.nz
Published: The Westport News May 8, 2018
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