Wellington on a good day

If you live in Wellington (or even if not) you're probably sick of the expression, 'You can't beat Wellington on a good day'. The thing is, it is really nice when the sun shines and the wind drops and the harbour looks like glass - but this is horribly rare. Most of the time there's a raging gale, if you try and cycle you get blown across lanes of traffic and if you walk you have to scurry head-down between buildings, dashing from cover to cover and clutching your jacket to stop it blowing away.

Last week I went to an exhibition of photographs from the Dominion Post at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, which showed Wellington in all its splendour. If these are to be believed, Wellingtonians love sport, festivals, water, animals and children, and there is nary a day of bad weather. The camera never lies, right?

There were a few that surprised me. For one thing, there were more photos of football than there were of rugby. Now I know that football is the beautiful game and the only true sport worth trudging down to that stadium for week-in-week-out, but could it be that Kiwis are finally coming round to that fact too? Or could it be that David Beckham took his shirt off?

The other thing was that there were very few photos of politicains. Okay, so admittedly they don't generally make good photo opportunities, and cats and dogs are cuter (hell, even children have their moments - although not as many as this paper would have you believe).

But this is Wellington, the capital city and surely the reason that people live here is the whole government industry, and the fact that the beehive is here is why the culture, arts and festivals follow. They wouldn't come here otherwise. So why is there only one image of a politician - and a shadowy finance minister at that.

Thing three is that so far as I could see, there was only one photograph of Maori on display. It was taken at the Tuhoe hikoi and the agression is bursting out of the page as a man (I presume) swathed in hoodies and bandanas points a mere at the camera while holding a chain at the end of which is doubtless attached a barely restrained violent dog.

This picture is on sale. For $300 you can display that on on your wall. Why would you want to? And where are the other non-aggressive, non-demanding, non-stereotypical pictures of Maori? Stereotypes make good photos I suppose bacause everything you want to assume is already there before you - encapsulated in celluloid - and it won't answer back to challenge your preconceived typecasts.

So I wonder about the purpose of this exhibition, and photo journalism in the Dominion Post in general. Is the idea to provide a realistic snapshot of the zeitgist in images, or is to work for the Wellington tourist board and only display the good? Because you know; they're right, but what about the other 360 days of the year?