Rose

Rose-Anne Shaw

View more of her stunning photographs on her website.

We are devastated that our beautiful friend Rose died last week at the beach on our farm. We can’t believe she is gone. She was taken suddenly, doing what she loved in a place that she loved but I can’t work out if it was a blessing or not that she died in this special place. She spent countless hours at the beach: photographing, walking the sand and rocks and fields with Kitten along for company, spending time at the beach hut, stacking rocks and driftwood, and collecting seaweed, making the place better than she found it.

She was a stunning photographer, entranced by the natural world and most at home out of doors, out in the open. Rose took photographs down at the beach almost every day and it wasn’t unusual for her to head off to an even more remote location like Milford or the West Coast to photograph and sleep overnight in her car, dressed in layers for warmth. She photographed people when they were around but mostly rugged, remote landscapes, birds, rivers, waterfalls, waves, fields, the moon, the southern lights, shorelines. I believe she felt kinship with all living and wild things. She was a living and wild thing, beautiful, complicated, private, quiet, fiercely searching, drawn to remote landscapes and wild beauty. She was full of energy, always up for a walk to the beach, a glass of red wine and a little company, always willing to get straight to the heart of the conversation, the friendship, the subject, the landscape. She would build a blind from dried flax flowers on our deck and wait out the tuis and belle birds for hours to get her shot. She photographed bumblebees losing themselves in pollen-induced bliss. She photographed the dogs and cats and us whenever we gathered. We spent hours with her at the beach, celebrating Christmas, stacking wood, walking Joy, hanging out around the campfire, checking on the paua nurseries, startling sealions and admiring the rockpools. “In you go!” she always told me.

Her reserves went deep — energy, love, creativity, experience. She’d sailed in wild places, grew up in South Africa, told stories of white owls that came at night to warn her of things. She has two grown sons. She was in the middle of her life, in the middle of so many creative projects. I can’t reconcile these facts with her death. The world is less of what it was without Rose. She deserved recognition, remuneration for her beautiful craft, she deserved longevity, safety, security, years more of love, friendship, beauty and watching her sons grow older. I’m devastated she won’t receive these in life and can only hope death has offered her some greater bounty. But I’m not there yet. Rose didn’t like pretty pictures anyway. She wanted the truth, the heart, the grit. She wanted the facts and the feelings. She wanted the shadows to fall in close with the highlights. She wanted to capture the look no one else saw, the minute the wild thing closes its eyes to receive the nectar, time captured in light painted across the sky in waves. The naked eye and then some. The force and weight of a wave caught in a fraction of a second, the beach empty of admirers bar her. Rose carried her camera with her everywhere, admired every wild thing and place. I will think of her every time I see the moon, whenever I finally witness the southern lights, when a tui lands on a heavy flax flower, when I visit our beach and the rockpools. What else can we do now but carry her with us in whatever way we can, see her in every remote stretch of rock or water or field.

I write this with five red roses in a pitcher of water on my desk. Five roses for five decades she lived. Five roses for the five more decades she should have had. Rose, we love you and miss you so.