The Wind in a frolic

James Chapman-Taylor was an eminent architect and furniture designer whose domestic buildings reveal that he was a devoted adherent of the utopian Rosicrucian philosophy known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He believed that a house could influence the entire emotional and spiritual lives of its inhabitants and proscribed unnecessary decoration while sometimes providing his clients with instructions on how they should use and understand the building in which they lived. Chapman-Taylor installed a darkroom in his home in the late 1930s and joined the Wellington Camera Club to which he actively contributed. His advertising claimed that he could produce 'Portraits in your home', so that his clients could avoid what he considered was the unnatural environment of photographic studios. He was one of the first New Zealand camera artists to use a Leica; The Wind in a Frolic was exposed on the Leica's 35 mm negative and the camera's speed ensured that the woman's eurhythmic high-kick would remain in focus. She greets the sun like a dancer inspired by the paintings on a Greek vase. In his methods of printing photographs, Chapman-Taylor was equally innovative. He believed that darkroom manipulation was essential in order to obtain memorable photographic prints and that viewers should look at his photographs on a wall and from exactly two metres away. (from The Guide, 2001)

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