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| The story behind this teenage Latvian soldier is the subject of Returning Home - A Place to Stand by Mark Beehre. Source: Mark Beehre |
Kia ora, and welcome to the first post of 2020 from Aotearoa Rocks. A common question I get asked is the origin of my exotic sounding name. Today's guest post from my cousin Mark Beehre will go some way towards answering that question, with a story that starts many decades ago in a small country sandwiched between the Baltic Sea and Russia.
Mark Beehre initially trained as a specialist physician (MB, ChB, FRACP), and continued to work part-time in medicine while studying and practising photography. He completed an MFA at Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 2014. His work sits at the intersection of documentary, portraiture and social history and is concerned with questions of identity, belonging and the lifelong quest for intimacy.
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| Mark Beehre contemplates thre chain of events that brought his family from the geopolitical turmoil following WW2 in Eastern Europe to Aotearoa. Source: Mark Beehre. |
Mark’s photographs have been exhibited at Photospace Gallery in Wellington and other venues in New Zealand and overseas. His published work includes includes Men Alone—Men Together, a major project in which photographic portraiture and biographical interviews are used to create a picture of the lives and relationships of a cohort of gay men; Diana Unwin: In Search of Peace, a short commissioned biography of philanthropist Diana Unwin; and the artist’s book Returning Home – A Place to Stand, the record of a journey with his mother to rediscover the heritage and father she has lost when, as a five-year-old girl in 1944, she and her own mother fled the Baltic Republic of Latvia to escape the invading Soviet Army. He is currently working on A Queer Existence, due for publication in 2021.
Mark's guest post takes the form of a recording of a presentation made at the Ōpōtiki Arts Society Hall in 2019. Thank you to Mark for sharing his story, which is also the story of my Maternal Grandfather, we hope you enjoy it. You can also view the text of Mark's book at his blog here.
