Landscape photography in Aotearoa is almost too easy. Pull over anywhere and the view performs for you — mountains arranged just so, clouds rehearsed, light obedient. It’s a seduction that borders on hypnosis. As Mishima once wrote, “Scenic beauty is hell, isn’t it?” The hell here is how quickly the landscape takes control.

Confusion is often seen as a lapse in clarity, yet it is one of the most generative states in my creative practice. When certainty dissolves, new ideas surface, patterns shift, and unexpected connections emerge. By embracing uncertainty rather than resisting it, I open space for deeper inquiry, imaginative thinking, and creative transformation.

Scientific fictionalism offers a compelling way to rethink this. In philosophy, fictionalism suggests that scientific theories can be understood as useful fictions: conceptual models that help us navigate the world without requiring us to

Every time a new technology arrives, we seem to have the same argument. Is it real art? Is it cheating? Will it ruin everything?
Right now, we’re having that conversation about AI. But if you look back to the 19th century, you’ll find an almost perfect echo in the moment photography appeared.

It’s oddly comforting. We’ve been here before.

Photography has long carried the burden of being treated as evidence: an objective slice of reality, frozen and preserved.
Yet anyone who has ever made or looked closely at a photograph knows that images are never neutral. They are shaped by choices, omissions, interpretations, and the cultural frameworks we bring to them.

This project is a simple but revealing demonstration of artistic constraint in action. By committing myself to a vintage, single‑focal‑length lens from the 1960s, I adopted an OUxPO‑inspired framework that transformed an ordinary situation into a site of creative inquiry

Scientific fictionalism offers a compelling way to rethink this. In philosophy, fictionalism suggests that scientific theories can be understood as useful fictions: conceptual models that help us navigate the world without requiring us to