{"id":57,"date":"2014-08-06T03:03:54","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T03:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.johnbotton.com\/?page_id=57"},"modified":"2025-06-02T08:20:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T20:20:34","slug":"about-john-botton","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/about-john-botton\/","title":{"rendered":"About John Botton(FPSNZ)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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John Botton(FPSNZ)<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"johnbotton_camera\"<\/a><\/p>

My earliest encounter with photography was being entrusted with my grandfather\u2019s Kodak Box Brownie. I was fascinated by the idea that this little black box could \u201ccatch\u201d a picture\u2014somehow storing a moment until the local pharmacy transformed it into a tangible print. The negatives themselves, ghostly images burned onto strips of celluloid, were just as mysterious.<\/p>

That short-lived honour ended after I opened the camera \u201cto see how it worked,\u201d accidentally exposing and ruining an entire roll of film\u2014and with it, a month\u2019s worth of memories. My photographic journey faded out\u2026 for a while.<\/p>

Decades later, during a working trip to Mauritius in the 1980s, my passion was rekindled. I was working as a television producer and cameraman, and borrowed a Minolta X-700 from a family member, packing a few rolls of Ilford black-and-white film. Between shoots, I wandered the back streets of Port Louis, capturing moments in still frames with the same intention I brought to moving images. When I finally returned and developed the film, I watched the latent images emerge in the darkroom like secrets revealed\u2014intimate, luminous, and utterly transformative.<\/p>

That sense of wonder has never left me. Over the years, my practice has grown to embrace both film and (horror of horrors!) digital image-making. My work continues to explore the tension between observation and emotion, memory and presence.<\/p>

I am honoured to hold a Fellowship with the Photographic Society of New Zealand.<\/p>

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Artist’s Statement<\/h2>

For me, the creative process is a weird and wonderful experience\u2014sometimes spontaneous, sometimes the result of a long, meandering thought process. It can be empirical, intuitive, or even sparked by a re-examination of another artist\u2019s work. But at its core, it is always anchored in feeling\u2014a powerful emotional response to the moment unfolding in front of the lens.<\/p>

Whether it\u2019s the shifting light draped across a landscape or that fleeting \u201cmoment of alignment\u201d in a street scene, the intensity is the same. When I revisit my images, I\u2019m taken back to that exact moment\u2014the same emotional charge I felt as the shutter clicked, freezing time into a single frame.<\/p>

Photography, for me, is a moment of joy and reverence. A celebration of perception, presence, and the vast, beautiful space we briefly occupy in this universe.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Botton(FPSNZ) My earliest encounter with photography was being entrusted with my grandfather\u2019s Kodak Box Brownie. I was fascinated by the idea that this little black box could \u201ccatch\u201d a picture\u2014somehow storing a moment until the local pharmacy transformed it into a tangible print. The negatives themselves, ghostly images burned onto strips of celluloid, were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-57","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11020,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/57\/revisions\/11020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnbotton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}