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Jane Ussher was the chief photographer for the New Zealand Listener for 29 years. It was the role that defined her celebrated career; she has been a key player in documenting New Zealand culture through images and is widely considered one of the country’s best portrait photographers.

Hone Tuwhare (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Korokoro, Ngāti Tautahi, Te Popote and Uri-o-Hau) was a Māori poet and activist who died in 2008. He is best remembered for his entertaining performances when reciting his poetry. Alana Rae interviews Jane Ussher about the emotional days leading up to his sombre beach portrait, a photo showing a different side to the usually cheerful writer.

What was happening when this photo was taken?

Dennis Welch, a writer at the Listener, joined Hone and a group of poets and musicians on tour in the Far North going around marae and potentially schools doing concerts. They had this little group of people playing ukuleles. At that stage Dennis was part of the band, strumming along on the ukulele. They’d do a poetry reading and their little ukulele band would sing songs.

I joined them when they had been on the road for a few days. I arrived up to the marae in the Far North and the day before, somebody from that marae had died. We were allowed to sleep in the meeting hall, but when you have a tangi, people keep arriving all throughout the night. And each time they come into the meeting hall, they make a speech. None of us really slept the night before this photo because of the tangi. The next day, Hone took us out to the coast that some of his early poetry was inspired by. We were staggering around, sleep deprived, and that’s the photo.

So, he’s been doing these shows and being this happy, cheerful version of himself, but how did you capture this side to him that has such a different feel?

This is a lot like the [spontaneity of] the David Lange photo, but without the security people. Just really wandering around the beach. His background in Kaikohe was pretty traumatic. If you read about his experiences – he had a hard life. He would have been talking about that and talking about some of his poetry. I didn’t even have a tripod for this because the beach was quite rocky and weird. We were almost in a dream.

You almost can’t tell where he is, it is quite dreamlike.

And I remember this being a sombre day. You can see in his face he looks really sad, whereas when he was performing, he was always quite cheeky and chirpy and wearing a little pork-pie hat. This was a completely different side to him, and I don’t know whether many people get these opportunities anymore. It’s quite exceptional to think that the Listener for one story would let a writer and a photographer be there for a few days. By that stage, you’re really embedded in what’s going on; you’re not just there for an hour or so. Hone is one of our most celebrated poets and because he was bilingual, he meant so much to both Māori and Pakeha. I think for the Listener to recognise this was an enormous opportunity that we would possibly never get again.