It was a wrench for Karsten Schoder to reduce his photos and commentary down to the 400 pages that make up his newly published hard-cover book.
The weighty tome, full of scenery photography, illustrated maps, history and reflections, is titled ‘New Zealand – Fragile Beauty: A Tribute to My Adopted Country’.
The 68-year-old grew up in Germany, and emigrated to New Zealand with his wife Elfriede 30 years ago. In the early 1980s, they quit their jobs in Berlin and travelled the globe, ending up in New Zealand – a place that Karsten describes in the book as “so staggeringly different than anything we had ever seen before that the boundaries between reality and fairy tale often became blurred”.
A second trip followed, and the couple spent over a year exploring the country from north to south. In 1994, they emigrated for good, pouring their energy into setting up their Graham Valley home.
The book project remained hypothetical for years, until a medical event in 2012 gave Karsten a wake-up call. He and Elfriede began travelling the country again, settling somewhere for a few weeks and using it as a base to explore. They tramped extensively, calling on their memories and slides from their early travels to plan their itinerary. Aside from one helicopter flight across the Southern Alps, everything was accessed by foot.
Karsten initially planned to include images of people and architecture, but space restraints led him to focus on his first love: scenery photography. He is too tactful to label his favourite spot in country – “let’s be diplomatic and say it’s in the South Island” – but he is captivated by the more untouched scenery.
“All those areas which are still a little bit as they used to be for the last hundred years,” he describes. “Still wild.”
The book is bilingual, with German and English side by side and a print run of 750 for New Zealand and Europe.
The lengthy introduction delves into the history of New Zealand, as well as the protections and challenges presented to its natural environment. It reads from the birds-eye perspective of someone who did not grow up here, but also shows Karsten’s deep affection for his adopted home, as well as a hopefulness that its wilderness will continue to be protected.
His viewpoint straddles the two cultures – he describes himself as being active and involved in New Zealand life, but also with the perspective of an outsider.
“Integrated, yes, but still a little bit of an oddball,” he laughs.
Karsten’s book, ‘New Zealand – Fragile Beauty: A Tribute to My Adopted Country’, is being launched at Te Noninga Kumu-Motueka District Library on Monday, 24 November, from 6pm-7.30pm. Copies will be available for sale on the night, and also from Nationwide Book Distributors via books@nationwide.co.nz
