The northernmost part of New Zealand, where Tim White took these photographs, is approximately as far south of the equator as Dallas, Texas, where I am writing this review, is north of the equator. That may seem like a pointless comparison, but it highlights the fact that here in the US we need to abandon most of the images we association with “the North,” before we look at White’s book. White’s book is about the assumptions we make about places and regions. For New Zealanders, the far north represents, he says, “...a mysteriously spiritual place with a sense of ‘hopelessness’ about it.” This notion of a remote, mysterious region also has to be put into perspective. New Zealand, north to south, is only about 1000 miles long, and Auckland, its largest metropolitan area, is no more than a couple of hundred miles from where White takes his camera.



So much of the impact of White’s images, their debunking aspect in particular, is lost on viewers outside his home market. We are not surprised to find what seems like a typical rural community living in a pleasant landscape. One photograph offers us the posted “greetings” sign a local bed and breakfast, and its mix of welcome with a list of exclusions that includes cell phones, computers, and alcohol suggests the prideful austerity of the region. It suggests that a visit to Whakarongomaikio might be something like a trip to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania.



New Zealanders think of the north as the most “Maori” part of the country, and many of the people White photographs clearly have a Maori background, although every aspect of the lives is thoroughly modernized. Given the ethnic diversity we expect in the U.S., there is nothing exceptional in these images of two cultures living side by side. Overall we see a community where adolescent males would like to look surlier than they can really pull off, and where one of the oddest things, for me at least, was a pink tractor. —Charles Dee Mitchell