David Langman talks to Peter Ireland, Wanganui based painter and freelance curator of photography

Can one look at the '70s, '80s and '90s and see a pattern in those decades?

Thanks for getting me back on track! Well, I'm a bit suspicious of trying to see patterns in such artificial constructs as decades, but I think I know what you mean. We're talking photography, right?

Well, the 1970s was the missionary decade, when John Turner's passion created PhotoForum and through its focus energised the troops. In the 1980s the key figure was Luit Bieringa and the conduit for his passion was the old NAG. So, from a very practitioner oriented decade in the '70s you got a more entrepreneurial one in the '80s. So, the ripples were spreading outward. A number of factors caused a certain diffusion of focus in the '90s I suspect, not the least of which were the effects of the financial crash in '87. Most of the values - of all kinds - attached to art are largely based on credibility, and as the art market got a hammering post 1987, everything else down the line was affected.

Nevertheless, I think the past decade has been one of a consolidation less public, which is all good. There has been a steadily growing acceptance of photography as a medium worthy of attention culturally, and it is an enormous pleasure to encounter so many intelligent and lively people under 30 for whom the groaningly boring "issue" of whether photography's art or not simply isn't an issue. Better still, it's a non-issue. They're just open to it in a wonderfully refreshing way. Once this generation starts influencing more directly the mechanisms of the art world photography's profile will improve by leaps and bounds. It's starting already. Justin Paton's just done a small show at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery of Peter Peryer's Erika portraits of the mid to late '70s, and that's exactly what's needed - smart core-samples of photographic history that can be illuminating out of all proportion to the size and scope of the show.

One of the obstacles in the past twenty years is an art school trained generation of gallery curators who, basically, have no sympathy for the medium - at best, they tolerate it - but there's certainly no enthusiasm for it. Well, they're now slowly being retired to Jurassic Park. The new breed of curators - people such as Justin, Damian Skinner, Aaron Lister - look at things very differently. It's a very exciting time to be alive. My feeling is we're right on the cusp of a big surge of interest in photography as a potent form of human expression.

Some personal highlights in your career?

"Career" seems an odd word to describe the situation I've found myself in. Rather like one of the Titanic survivors having a career as a bailer in a lifeboat! It just seemed a necessary thing to be doing at the time. Maybe it's just another instance of this peculiar little DIY culture. Of course, one could snootily regard this as a lack of "professionalism", but it's pure, channelled passion, and that's what matters in the long run.

I've been lucky to have been trusted by individuals such as Luit Bieringa, Bill Milbank and Peter McLeavey. They've allowed me access to opportunities that I could never have constructed myself. Working on contract at the NAG in the '80s was an immensely stimulating and satisfying endeavour. It was apostolic in its intensity. Highlights would have to be Views/Exposures in 1982 - the support of the photographers was something I'll never forget - then Glenn Busch's Working Men in 1984, followed by the Aberhart Nature Morte show at Shed 11 in 1990. Being involved in Chris Matthews' Citizens of Napier project and the resulting show at the National Library Gallery in 1989 was a particularly rewarding and memorable experience - a lovely show in all that that word can mean, and being able to do the R P Moore panorama show for the National Library was fantastic - the experience of going through all the original negs made me giddy with excitement. I felt like Howard Carter stumbling on Tutankamun. Moore's a truly great photographer. I'm talking "anywhere, any time" here, too.

A recent highlight was being able to do the Not By Subject show for the Sarjeant from their collection - for the opportunity to use a collection in a different way that had a very gratifying response from viewers, particularly local Polytech students. There is a great hunger out there for that sort of thing. And earlier I did a show about the Sarjeant's collection called Sum of its Parts, a modest attempt to survey the more dynamic aspects of NZ photography over the past 40 years. People are still talking about this show. Not because it was more than it was, but because it's the only time an institution has attempted to make sense of things in this way.

I guess the most gratifying show I've ever had the privilege of doing was the Frank Hofmann Object & Style show in 1989. A combination of Frank's amazing trust, the heart-stopping beauty of the images, the real sense of discovery and the making of the work accessible to people after decades of it, literally, being hidden. It remains a sorrow for me that Frank died just 6 weeks before the show opened at the NAG. I'd been able to visit him in Auckland Hospital a fortnight before his death, and that morning he'd received the issue of Art New Zealand in which the ad for the show appeared, and despite his considerable pain he was able to express a typically boyish pleasure at this evidence that it really was going to happen. You never forget those moments. They're actually the moments that shows originate in, not the prescriptions of marketing departments.

Any room for improvement?

Bring your longest tape-measure?! It's axiomatic that things can always be better. Given existing circumstances things should be a lot better and it's unfathomable to me that they're not.

You wrote an analysis of the national collection. Have you reappraised this in recent times?

Did I? I can't remember that I did. I can remember comparing it to the definition of a fishing net as a series of holes held together by string. It had some terrific strengths and some awesome gaps, but nothing that some energy, enterprise and some cash couldn't fix. Te Papa doesn't publish its acquisitions in the way the deficient National Art Gallery did, so it's not so easy to keep track of what's happening.