Between the then and the now

COLIN SMITH

LIFE IN THE LENS: Nelson photographer Glen Bisdee with photographs from his exhibition Bisdee 365.

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Glen Bisdee left New Zealand for Hollywood when he was 22 years old. He had dreams of becoming an actor, a legend, the next big movie star. Instead, he became a playboy fisherman. Charles Anderson reports.

Glen Bisdee went to Los Angeles to fulfil a dream, an ambitious one by anyone's standards, and looking back, a naive one by Bisdee's present-day standards.

LA will eat you alive, he told himself. "It's an ugly beast, a big beast." A place of lies, where if someone tells you they're a director, it means they paint houses for a living. It's a place where everyone is an actor and no-one is an actor.

That is why Bisdee went 4000 kilometres to Alaska. That and the offer of US$20,000 for three months' work.

Bisdee met Jason "Repo" Reposar at a 21st party in Hollywood. He was brash, just out of prison, a Liverpudlian and could talk his way into anywhere. Anywhere, Bisdee says, would come to include a drinks party at Barbara Streisand's house.

One night the pair were at a pub and Reposar said someone across the bar looked familiar. "So we went over and started yarning," Bisdee says.

The man said he had just come back from Alaska, where he had earned almost $20,000 for 90 days' work on a fishing boat. Bisdee said prove it. The man slapped a wad of $50 bills on the table. Bisdee said: "What's the address?"

The next day, Reposar and Bisdee went to Seattle, then to Anchorage, Alaska, then to Dutch Harbour. Bisdee stayed there four years: three months on fishing off the coast of Russia, three months off "rocking round the world like a rock star": Europe, India, the Middle East and Central America.

The first thing Bisdee bought with that first cheque was a 1974 red Carmen Ghia sports car. Then, among other things, a pair of leather jeans and a leather trench coat.

Then he got a flat in Malibu with Reposar. Their neighbours were Sean Penn and Pamela Anderson. "And suddenly you are 25 and you are cool, living a movie star lifestyle." But he wasn't a movie star - he was a playboy fisherman, based out of Seattle. "You just don't tell anyone you're a fisherman and they don't ask," he says.

There are a few photos from those days in Bisdee's exhibition, Bisdee 365, at Momentum Gallery. A testament to what unfolds when you open that cardboard box of memories underneath your bed.

When he was 28, he came back to New Zealand and settled in Nelson. "I was sick of living out of a suitcase. I felt like a bit of sanity."

The exhibition is Bisdee's life up to now - why and how.

The why he became a photographer is easy. He always loved it. The first photograph he ever took is in the exhibition. His friend Tom Hoyle on a climbing wall in 1985. Bisdee shot it, went to his school darkroom and processed it. "Just watching it come out of the drink, I thought, `I really like this, this is really cool'."

The how involves Jason Reposar. Repo didn't like fishing so much. Instead, he went back to LA. Somewhere between then and now, Reposar also found photography. But his portfolio didn't feature New Zealand's indoor climbing walls. Reposar became a senior photographer for Transworld Surf magazine, one of the biggest-selling surfing magazines in the world. Reposar also became Metallica's personal photographer. Yes, like one of the biggest bands in the world's photographer.

"Seeing is believing; got to go have a look," Bisdee says. "Google it. Google Reposar."

Bisdee stayed in touch with Reposar, but then Repo disappeared. "I thought `Oh no, he is dead.' I had six months of calling his cellphone, then his parents and his home phone. Finally I got in touch with him. He was in an immigration detention centre in Arizona."

Reposar had lost his passport in central America and tried to get into the United States via the Tijuana border. He was caught and deported to Britain.

"I called him up again for my wedding four years ago," Bisdee says. "I said, `Come to Nelson'." Reposar couldn't make it. He was touring with Metallica in Australia. But afterwards he invited his old mate Glen Bisdee to join him in Hawaii for a photo shoot. Oh yea, and Metallica would be there. That was where Bisdee learned his craft. "That was my break," Bisdee says.

Before, during and after that break is exhibited at Momentum Gallery. Before features Tom Hoyle with Bisdee aged 15 behind the camera. It features Alaska, a boat called the Fierce Sea, and a man that looks curiously like Lennox Lewis.

The during features Bisdee's notebook he kept in Hawaii with Jason Reposar. Polaroid photographs and "Repo's Rules" scribbled in blue biro: "Think outside the box, think conceptually. Show people how you see, It is your only true asset."

Bisdee's Visa card transactions, movies he wanted to see, things to ask Repo. "Ask Repo how much touch-up is acceptable [in photographs]."

The after is Bisdee's life and career as a commercial photographer. Weddings, advertisements and fashion shoots. His wife, and his five-month-old child.

"It is something different than your average gallery opening," Bisdee says, on the cusp of his 40th birthday. "That's what I have tried to make it. It's my entire life compartmentalised. When I first did it, I thought it was a bit small, it didn't look that impressive. It has been active, though. And interesting."

• Bisdee 365 at Momentum Gallery in Equilibrium Chiropractic on Church St until the end of August.

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