Manapouri: Art, Power, Protest
Wayne Barrar
Wayne Barrar, Twin tunnels, Manapouri Underground Power Station, 2005, inkjet print, Courtesy of the artist
Wayne Barrar
Wayne Barrar's search for human-modified landscapes has taken him to the Utah desert, the Australian outback and southern Iceland, as well as Lake Manapouri. His ongoing project is the opposite of the quest for pristine natural landscapes that has drawn so many artists to the lake.
In his documentation of the spaces of the Manapouri power station, Barrar works in a way very different from that of earlier photographers.
Barrar's photographs are nothing like the images produced for the tourist market, which romanticised Lake Manapouri as distant, splendid and untouched by development. But there is also a marked difference between his photography and the photographs that documented the construction of the power station 40 years ago. Barrar stops well short of suggesting any kind of achievement of industry over nature.
Image courtesy of Wayne Barrar
