Reflections from an image addict

By NIGEL GEARING

Fred Mans became a photographer on January 1, 2000. At the age of 50, he clicked his first image. The image he had carefully lined up fell and landed on the ground. Through a glass window, he photographed it where it lay. Ever since, reflective photography is the only way he shoots.

Mans' journey began at the age of 3 when he underwent two eye operations to prevent him becoming crosseyed. Having both eyes bandaged for several weeks left him traumatised. His older sister decided to treat him to a trip across the United States on the train from his native Pittsburgh to California. Getting there took two weeks in 1953. Though he knew he would see again, the time behind bandages fuelled his imagination. Back home again, he told his family his goal was to see the world.

"That was kind of an unusual dream for a kid to have in the 50s, particularly in a working class, steel mill town," Mans says.

At 20 he embarked on what was to become the first of four trips traversing Latin America which would take the next decade. This was followed by his Asian tour, six years in Taiwan, six years in Hong Kong and a further three years in Taiwan. And it was towards the end of his second stint in Taiwan, where as the millennium approached, he decided that by January 2000 he would be a photographer.

"I don't believe that I really was a late starter at all," he says. "Everything was subconsciously building up to that moment. It changed my life."

By Christmas that year the personal trainer, fitness instructor, marathon runner and tour guide had become an image junkie.

"Everywhere I got such great feedback," he says. "People wanted to know what filters I used. Well, I don't. The surface I shoot off is the filter."

Ponds, puddles, cars, sand, grass, glass, even curtains are his filters.

It's that same approach that he has applied to his subject matter since arriving in New Zealand last June. Fifty images, taken around Auckland, comprise his latest exhibition, Peeks@Paradise.

His subjects have no idea they are in his images. Like the boy playing on the summit of Mt Albert, captured by Mans photographing his reflection in the glass inside a light. Or two horses and a rider on Karekare Beach, their image reflected off the wet black sand.

"It's exhausting work," he says. "It can take up to 20 minutes to get all the elements just right and often the subject is moving, so you have to grab the moment. For certain images in this show the camera had to work out what it was actually focusing on and would whirr away, the lens going in and out as it made up its mind."

* Peeks@Paradise: An Outsider's View of Auckland, photographs by Fred Mans, at Old Government House, Aug 30-Sep17, Monday to Friday