And now for something completely different: two extraordinary books from left-of-centre that have caught our eye in the last couple of weeks, and they’re both from the dynamic duo of Wellington typographer/designer Catherine Griffiths (interviewed on LeafSalon here in 2005) and her photographer partner Bruce Connew (pictured).

Stopover was put out by VUP but was actually printed and produced in Italy by craftsmen who have worked with some of the world’s best photographers. A solid, heavy little book, black cloth-bound, silver foil glinting, it’s a definite work of art. The word ‘Stopover’ is punched or debossed into it, over and over, with various ‘o’s picked out with the silver – this ‘represents the interlacing and movement of Indian-Fijians about the Western world’. There are several different stocks throughout the book: heavy, matt black endpapers, equally heavy white gloss, matt, finely-ridged, oyster grey… and it’s been set in Bryant Light and Letter Gothic Standard, so the type has a no-frills documentary feel, which contrasts rather deliciously with the luxuriousness of the binding and stock. You get the idea. This is a book that has been thought about on every single possible sensory level. It even smells classy.

So that’s the design angle swooned over – the story? Well, we all remember Speight and his bully boys during the coup of 2000 but the drama faded and Fiji for most people went back to being a glossy holiday destination that was now a bit cheaper. So it's with a little thrill of recognition that you see, at the beginning of the book, a double page spread of Speight on a TV screen: powerful, heavy-featured, grim, implacable. Then a single, very old sepia photo of two Indian labourers, unknown, holding hands and looking guarded and apprehensive. And then the introduction from Bruce Connew, telling us how this photo documentary happened into being. (You can see these photos, and some others from the book, here). First I looked at the photos, then flicked through the story, then went right back to Bruce’s introduction and read the whole thing through, utterly absorbed; transported into other lives.

Briefly, Bruce was over in Fiji during that coup for a few weeks, and was back in NZ in time for his younger daughter to give birth to Bruce’s half-Fijian Indian grandson, his first. His other daughter is also married to a Fijian – an indigenous Fijian. Despite their very different backgrounds, the two sons-in-law get on well but Bruce was intrigued at the way they both described their homeland as if it were two different countries. So, as you do, he decided to pop over during the coup and check it out for himself. And in the time he was away he not only witnessed an extraordinary political upheaval, but also uncovered a story about the epic journeys of the Indians of Fiji, from their first arrivals as contracted sugar-cane cutters in the late 1800s to now, when they are still not allowed to own land in Fiji and have begun a migration to first world countries – a 'trickle which is becoming a torrent'.

Then the photographs. What photographs. This man has an eye for the human condition which comes straight from the heart and cuts to the bone. All black and white, and captioned meticulously at the back of the book; no text to clutter the beauty of the plates. They are the stories of Indian families working hard in Fiji in extreme poverty, with love and joy and dignity, focused on getting the money together to send their children to cities around the world where they can have a chance of a better life, a replica story from perhaps a hundred years ago, when Indians were arriving in Fiji with the very same hopes for their futures.

There are precisely seven colour photos, the last ones in the book, double-page spreads of those beloved children who’ve made it, have moved to Auckland, Sydney, California, Canada, Hawai’i and started their own families, leaving poverty and their parents behind them, but finding it sometimes hard to settle in to a life so different from the one they have left.

The story from Brij Lal, Professor of Pacific and Asian History at the Australian National University in Canberra, says it all. Professor Lal’s immediate background is impressively academic, but he grew up in a canecutting community much like Vatiyaka, the one depicted in Stopover. His story is a heartrendingly personal one of an elder in his village in Labasa who finally goes to live with his son’s family in Sydney. He cannot fit in: has no words to communicate with his grandchildren, misses his beloved cow, is so embarrassed by lingerie ads on TV he goes to his room and spends his nights ‘sleepless and wondering’.

You can read a lot about Stopover here, where Bruce Connew was interviewed by Finlay Macdonald in the Sunday Star Times, and here, where Brij Lal was interviewed by Kim Hill on Radio NZ National. Bruce, Catherine and Brij are all in Fiji launching the book as I write this. I’ll see if we can get some news on their return on how it went. I reckon there’ll be a few less goats and some serious partying in Vatiyaka. There’s an exhibition at Pataka Gallery which opened on August 18, and we’re very happy to report that the book is a finalist in the Editorial and Books section of the Best Awards – watch this space come October 5th.

And just to keep us on our toes, the team has just releases another project, entitled I Saw You, 52 images of Bruce’s latest series on surveillance. He took these photos from his house of unknown people in a carpark over the course of a year. It’s about his preoccupation with how we’re being watched all the time and how our lives may perhaps appear to others. The pictures have been blurred to protect identity.

There’s been an exhibition at the Mary Newton Gallery in Wellington, there’s a charmingly simple little board-bound book and a short film of the images on YouTube. Check this out – I found it astonishingly moving and couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Something to do with the simplicity of the images, which seem to have an epic quality: is this due to the lack of the subjects’ distinguishing features? It’s impersonal yet there’s thought-provoking feeling of personal mortality about it. Is it the god-like invisible watcher, the unemotional freezing of a moment of human preoccupation, now gone forever? Probably also quite a lot to do with the slow, heartbeat-like sound track… I found myself very keen for it not to stop.

I Saw You is the first in a series of three exhibitions and books. Keep an eye on these two incredibly talented people. They are asking big questions, and making sure the answers are presented in intelligent, crafty, visceral and very beautiful ways. Are we not lucky to have them.