Hope at heart of display

Christian Ziegler's image of a bonobo monkey was part of the exhibition recently hosted by Smith & Caughey's. Photo / Christian Ziegler; National Geographic

Graphic images show the extremes of life worldwide. Paul Lewis reviews the World Press Photo exhibition.

There's a strange contradiction in trooping through Smith & Caughey's shopping floors to reach the World Press Photo exhibition on the sixth level. The store is a picture of the quiet elegance of how the world used to be; it is accommodating some pictures of the turmoil of the world as it is now.

Smith & Caughey's old world setting is surviving the internet-led ravages of online shopping; returning to its dignified conservatism is a bit of a comfort after some of the photographs of man's extremism to man. However, the exhibition is notable for its expressions of hope. Even the harshest conditions and circumstances can awaken the human spirit - seen in this collection of the best news photographs from 2013, on its world tour.

Much of that comes from human conflict but you are reminded not just about how lucky we are in New Zealand but how people round the world can make the best of a bad situation. Like the overall winning photo - John Stanmeyer's National Geographic shot of immigrants in Djibouti holding their phones up to the night sky to pick up cheap coverage from neighbouring Somalia, so they can talk to relatives there. It works on three levels: starkly beautiful and lonely, it could be some sort of religious ritual; it also speaks of the global penetration of the mobile phone.

It also underlines the human ability to conquer adversity and there is plenty of that on show. Maybe the hardest-hitting comes from almost a year ago, the Westgate shopping mall massacre in Kenya by Somali extremists, in which 67 died and more than 175 were injured. Tyler Hicks' picture, published in the New York Times, of an armed Kenyan soldier stalking the four killers hits you like an unexpected blow to the stomach. The soldier is wide-eyed, all senses on full alert. He pays no attention to the body on the floor, surrounded by swirls of blood as the wounded man tries to drag himself to cover.

That's if you can call a stuffed baby elephant cover. The dead man is attempting to hide under a piece of African taxidermy, a symbol of the loss of our natural world in exchange for the "riches" of a shopping mall. Your eye goes from the soldier, his machine gun, the corpse and finally to the incongruous baby elephant and you cannot help but ask: What are we doing to our world?

Through all of that, hope and fortitude emerge in this exhibition.

Tanya Habjouga's shot of girls getting ready for a school dance in the midst of the madness of the Gaza strip is one example; while a shot of a man smoking a cigarette as a sheep watches him from the front passenger seat of his car, as they wait for traffic to clear at a checkpoint on the West Bank is another. Wonderfully bizarre.

The exhibition finished its run in Auckland last week but you can still view it online.

After visiting the exhibition, we headed to the ASB Theatre to see if we could book tickets for Bill Bailey, the straw-haired, eccentric, multi-talented comedian whose show we missed last time. Tickets for his November gig go on sale later, we were told. He can, it seems, play any instrument in the world and specialises in mickey-taking, such as playing the Downton Abbey theme as reggae.

We found ourselves down the other end of town, drawn into the gravitational pull of the Unity Bookstore, surely Auckland's best surviving bookshop. We spent too much time browsing there. It was getting dark; we kept thinking of some of the photos from the
exhibition. We headed off to nearby Vivace for an early dinner - good food and a cracking wine list. We can't solve the problems of the world but we can't forget them either, nor those who make the best of their lives. The rhythm of the inner city takes over, reminding us again how lucky we are.

Four other city events not to be missed:
• Disney On Ice presents Treasure Trove, at Vector Arena from August 8-10.
• Late: The cult of food, at Auckland Museum, August 11.
• Silo Theatre presents Belleville, at The Herald Theatre from August 28 to September 20.
• Queen and Adam Lambert: A Once In A Lifetime Experience, at Vector Arena, September 3