Have you ever wondered what it's like to be traveling all over the world; going where your work takes you? How much would you really see of what each place has to offer away from your workspace? Would the travel become a blur of light, colours, and sound that blends together with other travels of similar nature?

Do you become adept at picking out distinctive patterns in the shifting shapes that whip by you as your body is propelled by one means or another through or past them? Do those fleeting glimpses give any real insight into your new environs or are they just the revelations of illusion?

Tourists are packaged up into buses and shipped through countries spending an hour here and an hour there so they can say they've done France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland all in two weeks. What do they see and when they get home and develop the pictures they have taken? Why don't they recognise what's on the prints in front of them?

Usually it's because they have tried to preserve something static in an ultimately kinetic experience and what is still in the frame in unrecognisable. Nothing but bricks and mortar or wood and plaster captured within the neat frame of a 5 X 7 inch postcard that says nothing about where they were and what it meant to be there passing through.

MoTe Upoko-o-Te-Ika/For Wellington is a collection of reproductions from two exhibits of photography that Viggo Mortensen presented as a gift to the city of Wellington, New Zealand in the year 2003 after the completion of filming for the Lord Of The Rings movies. The images that appeared in the exhibition were of the places, including New Zealand, which he had traveled to in the years directly preceding the show.

The pictures that form the first part of the book are abstract representations of the places he has visited. The shutter has been left open allowing it to capture every iota of movement that can paint its way across the lens. Layers of texture and colour are painted on negative, and then given life under the enlarger as Mr. Mortensen brings us a glimpse of how fast the world can be.