a story re-written

This New Frontier: Creating a World Beyond the Stories we are Told

Kia ora koutou katoa,

This deeply personal but timely project presents a photography of profound reconciliation—cultural, geopolitical, temporal, familial.

With a family history shaped—for good and bad—by a figure no less looming than a sheriff of the pre-War American South, Aotearoa-based Filipino-New Zealand photographer Hōne Naera-Scott revisits and reimagines the stories and legends handed down to him by his family. The photographs Naera-Scott stages in “This New Frontier” attempt to reconcile an empathy for temporal, cultural, and geopolitical change, a deep unease with the subtext behind founding mythologies, and, ultimately, a refusal as to the temptation (often instructed) to not look too closely at the past.

Drawn to the evocative symbols—synonymous as much for opportunity as for oppression—of this larger-than-life time in both his family’s history and the large and messy story of the West (coming into uncomfortable contact, as it does, with his Filipino heritage), Naera-Scott reimagines the ambivalent power of such iconography, recast in a context of reconciliation. What the images of “This New Frontier” champion is an altogether new kind of frontiership—radical inclusivity.

In a succinct, thematically brimming series of 12 large-scale prints, to be unveiled and displayed later this year, unexpected reconciliations will emerge—as generational perspectives divided by continents, cultures, and centuries are reconfigured in conversation. The eventual 12 images will be selections from photo sessions conducted amidst the intricate staging of four installations. These are to be arranged in Auckland, Hokianga, and Jackson County, Florida.

As such, this thematics of reconciliation—cultural, temporal, geographic—is extended to the methodology of the project, to be achieved through a highly-involved process of set design. In capturing intra-format encounters—such as contact between hyper-real and actualized representations and contexts (painted installations, for example, set against natural environs), evocative images emerge that insert their audience into the space between the stories we are told and the world we want to create.

This artistic photography series reassembles the iconography and mythology Naera-Scott has inherited as a person of colour (informed by both particular and identifiably general forms of racism and xenophobia), and seeks to reawaken and/or encourage a sense of optimism in those who might understandably resist exploring the confrontational nature of their family histories.

-       A BODY OF 12 IMAGES.

-       A STORY OF FRACTURED ANCESTRY.

-       A FAMILY REPRESENTING BOTH OPPRESSOR AND OPPRESSED.

-       CONTESTED TIMELINES.

-       UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTERS.

-       HEALING AND PROVOCATIVE.

-       COMICAL YET CONFRONTING.

-        JACKSON COUNTY, FLORIDA.

-       BLUEGRASS.

-       A SHERIFF WITHOUT A GUN.

-       PEANUTS.

-       CIVIL WAR.

-       THE SACRED AND PROFANE REUNITED AND REIMAGINED.

-       IMMIGRATION AND EXCOMMUNICATION.

-       SYMBOLS REAPPROPRIATED.

-       HISTORIC VIOLENCE COMMISSIONED ANEW.

-       TOWARD A NEW FRONTIERSHIP.

About me, in the words of Michael Whittaker:

“Hōne Naera-Scott (b.1989) is a Filipino-American fashion photographer from Tamaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. His work is cinematic in sensibility, drawing together subject and environment in images that invite narrativisation. His detail-oriented process pays particular attention to mise en scene, intent on world-buidling.”

This New Frontier: Creating a World Beyond the Stories we are Told

Your Money will fund the following : 

- Exhibition (space, drinks, nibbles) of project Sept/Oct

- A2 - A0 prints

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-Kingsize Studio One (2 days)

- Misc. Gear / Lighting

-Horse Arena (1 day)

-Lighting Assistant (2 days)

-Digitech (2 days)

-Stylist / Costume (2 days)

-Hair & Make Up (2 days)

-Producer (pending / 2 days)

-Set design & Build (2 days)

-Camera Technician 

-Film (medium, large format, collodion)

-Travel Auckland - Hokianga (via car)

-Accommodation, Hokianga (2 nights)

-Travel New York - Jackson County, Florida

-accommodation Jackson County, Florida (2 nights)