Guidebook of Noticing
Below, you’ll find what could be described as a photographic diary—little moments of noticing and interactions, recorded on an Iphone camera roll. There are many more moments made listening to the living things we share the world with, simply experienced, with no record to plaster into a zine/journal/guidebook.
In between these images, there are human going ons: three trimesters of university, moving house and home, a breakup, a summer, a Gregorian new year, new friends, two trips to Tairāwhiti, four hundred and thirty-two sunsets. The IPCC sixth assessment report was released, heatwaves broke record temperatures, the Amazon rainforest burned until it emitted more carbon than it sequesters. All the while, the things around us continue living, unfurling, growing.
Part of this can demonstrate that writing is taken from these acts of noticing. The process of forming words comes from everyday walks, trips to Zealandia, observing the growth of houseplants. Sitting and simply being. Photos themselves are important for recalling, describing and making sense of things once sat at a desk.
I am not a photographer; please do not hold me to such a standard. There are two photos collected here are taken by my friend, Lillias Ovenden-Carlyle, and their higher quality and skill will show. Some of these photos are more akin to ‘nature’ photography; close ups of plants, trees against a sky background. Some feature human hands, words, fences, paths. They are not in chronological order. I aim to mess up the distinctions I write about in Whakarongo ki te Tai Ao, and as such, qualities of this collection include inconsistency and contradictions; we have cultivated next to wild, cat next to bird, sky next to undergrowth, ugly next to pretty, potted next to free, human and non-human. I hope you enjoy scrolling through, and maybe begin noticing the living things around you.
Maia Ingoe
Maia Ingoe is an aspiring writer and Victoria University student based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). Her most recent work can be found in Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa and the Spinoff.
