Changing Directions

Sometimes it's important to change direction.

Change, they say, freshens our outlook, it takes us to new places, it opens us to new influences.

Not everyone likes change - Cantabrians have found that out the hard way over the last five years since the first large (7.1 mag) earthquake hit the city on September 4, 2010. That shook all of us out of any complacency we may have slumped into.

That event proved the point that change is not always comfortable. It came with a multitude of drawbacks and discomforts - which, it's important to note, many people are still suffering; but for others the last five years of traumatic events have culminated in positive change..... when you think you're going to lose everything, you often fight back with a strength and a courage you never knew you possessed.

I haven't posted anything on this blog for eighteen months.

Because of change.

My life took a new direction - allied but different.

I still write. I still photograph. I still think.

I still draw, I still create.

I just do it in a different way.

I've spent the last five years photographically documenting the decline of the city landscape post-earthquake (and now its slow resurrection), but I finally reached saturation point - and to be fair, once the Government wiped the landscape clear of buildings, once they'd demolished everything in sight, there wasn't much left to photograph - nothing at least, that inspired me to pick up my camera.

Two days ago - September 4 - marked the fifth anniversary of the first Christchurch earthquake.

There have been thousands of aftershocks and major quakes since - the number varies but popular consensus seems to hover between 14,000 to 15,000.

To mark that occasion, I have randomly chosen fifteen photographs that encapsulate my change of (photographic) direction. In many ways, it's no real change - I've always photographed the details of life, the small, common landscapes of the ordinary, so often overlooked; I've always photographed architecture and people and  the things that make us human - it's just that I've stopped focusing solely on the devastation of the earthquakes.

It's very liberating.

It's the right time (for me at least) to move on - beyond the earthquakes.

If you live in Christchurch of course, you can never really 'escape' them because there is evidence everywhere of their destruction and their impact on the ordinary lives of ordinary people, but now I want to focus on the positive side of those impacts.

And there are increasing indicators of change.

The new buildings, the construction sites, the new cityscape emerging from the ruins.

I still sometimes play the game of trying to remember what stood on a corner like the one above, before the earthquakes but usually, it's just easier to accept the new.

It's too hard and too confusing to try and reclaim the past.

As always, I celebrate the decorative.

I gather the small beauties that I pass by, snapping them into my camera as if I can somehow make them mine. And in a way, I am of course - that's what photography is all about....recording, expressing, capturing.

I like that the changes forced upon Christchurch have had so many positive outcomes. 

There is new street art everywhere. It's as if the 'city fathers', the powers-that-be have relaxed their former up-tight attitudes and allowed the people to express themselves without censure. Personally, I never knew why people opposed street art in the first place. For me, it has always added to the character and colour of a city.

I celebrate the new shapes filling in the post-earthquake void.

Like most people, I don't like every new building and to be fair, an architect has his work cut out trying to please everyone.

But I like that every street is a gallery of emerging work.

In most streets, there's a mix of good and bad (subjectively speaking), but slowly, the gaps are being filled in, the earthquake bruises are being healed, the air is ringing with the sounds of change.

It was never going to be a quick fix and I like that the earthquakes have forced us to change, to adapt.

Like the city itself, our days, our activities, our psyches,our dreams, can take on new shapes.

We can see things in new ways.

Like most writers I suspect, I like the shapes of words and numbers.

For me they have always held a special beauty - not just for the facts and feelings they can convey but for their actual structural shapes, their 'architecture' you might say; and for the memories and connotations they hold, the way they can stimulate thought and memory.

They are a code of sorts, that I like to unpick with my own visual and mental tools.

The house, plain or grand, is where so much of our lives are writ.

The house is where we make our home, our retreat, our sanctuary.

It is our place of comfort, where we can let our guard down.

In Christchurch, the destruction of the house, the unmerciful shaking of that sanctuary, is what (I think) has truly marked so many people.  The breaking of our treasures, the loss of tangible memories - the photographs, the favourite cushions, the destroyed keepsakes - that's what has so deeply affected people.

And that's not a comment on the loss of possessions, it is a comment on the loss of the things that intrinsically identify a person, that sets them apart from others; it is about the despair of loss, it is about the despair of feeling like parts of yourself have been erased.

A house is never just a house.

Now I try to celebrate the old and the new simply for what they are, in this moment of time - without putting them through my 'earthquake filter.'

I may say to myself, as I drive by the suburban roller door that announces the new premises of Jonathan Smart Gallery, 'Oh... that's so different to the steep, narrow, mid-city staircase we used to have to climb to Jonathan's gallery,' but I don't see it as a negative; I just accept it as change, as a new direction.

I may smile at the tatty remnants of a broken building butting up against the new; or at the graffiti colouring high-up ruins but I no longer pine for the pre-earthquake city.

I am excited by the prospect of the new.

I may let my mind wander down the old streets, I may remember the times I laughed at the Yellow Cross bar and the people I met there before the earthquakes but isn't that what we do anyway, irrespective of earthquakes changing the face of a city? Don't certain buildings, certain words, certain symbols always trigger our memories of another time?

I don't think anyone who experienced the Christchurch earthquakes will ever forget them.

I don't think they will ever forget that instant of terror when the first quake struck and changed their lives forever.

I don't they will ever forget the way their houses shook and trembled and broke.

They will certainly never forget the uncertainty that followed - the months and in most cases, years of indecision, upheaval and chaos, as they waited to get their houses (their homes), repaired.

That has been the biggest change for most Christchurch residents.

The waiting. The frustration. The despair. The worry. The uncertainty.

Constant.

Unwavering.Unnecessarily prolonged.

Deeply unsettling.

Deeply saddening.

It has been living with that, that has signalled the greatest change.

It has been the digging deep to find the personal courage to deal with the irritation and frustation of it all, that has changed us the most.

It is in how we have all risen to that challenge that defines not only ourselves but how this city will move forward.

Revisiting 'Brokenville'

Theatre Royal Facade, Gloucester Street

It's been many weeks since I wandered around the inner city Christchurch Red Zone with my camera.

I had reached one of those saturation points that comes upon me after months of photographing the brokenness of this place.

When I set off early this morning, I didn't expect to find too many changes, and in the larger sense of things, that proved to be true. But after roaming this city throughout the two-and-a-half years since the first September 2010, 7.1 magnitude earthquake, I  am always surprised b y what I discover in the detail of things.

Ruins-in-Waiting, taken from Cashel Street

Framed, Madras Street.

Streets I have walked a hundred times before, still have the potential to deliver surprises - some brand new, others that have been there all along, just waiting to be seen. We miss so much of what goes on around us.

We spend too much time, walking from place to place, looking through half-open eyes.

The inner city home of a friend

Building for Lease, As is, where is - Hereford Street

Feet First, Colombo Street

"Future that Way," Tuam Street

I suppose, like most people, I should find this wholesale destruction of our city distressing and depressing; but I've moved passed that. I do of course have moments of deep sadness for the way Christchurch has changed beyond recognition, but for the most part, I am now buoyed by a growing sense of excitement. 

"A New Zealand Icon," For Sale, Tuam Street.

Not sure what's happening here - Lichfield Street.

Progress on Shigeru Ban's Cardboard Cathedral, Madras Street.

It's an excitement for the promise of the new and for the unpredictable and ongoing change.

Not everyone likes change.

I love it.

For me, cities should be about change and evolution. It would have been preferable of course, not to have had such dramatic change (and loss of life) forced upon us by the forces of nature but would conservative Christchurch ever have *really* looked at itself otherwise?

The  Capri Club, viewed from Tuam Street

Vacant lots, Poplar Lane, Viewed from Tuam Street

A Gothic Remnant, Canterbury Provincial Chambers, Gloucester Street

"Let everything - almost everything - change with a will, in any city that you love. People gush and moan too much about the loss of ancient buildings of no special note - "landmarks" and "links with the past." In towns, as in human bodies, the only state of health is one of rapid wasting and repair."

C.E. Montague. "The Right Place."

Fence Tag, Tuam Street.

Vacant Lots, Gloucester Street

"Every City needs a Giraffe, Cashel Street

Any change, even a change for the better, always has its discomforts and drawbacks; but sometimes, having change forced upon us, makes us 'go to new places.' It forces us to think differently, to live our lives differently and, in the case of a city, to build differently. That's where the excitement lies for me.

A Girl and Her Rubble - Cashel Street

Memorial Stones, CTV site, Madras Street.

Life in Christchurch now is all about change. It's like living inside a kaleidoscope. Nothing is still. Every part moves (sometimes literally). Few things are constant.

No  Entrance - with a Cabbage Tree, Hereford Street.

Early Sun on a Construction Site,  Lichfield Street.

"Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilised and directed."

John Dewey. "Reconstruction in Philosophy."

Restart Mall, Oxford Terrace.

Danger, Keep Out. Oxford Terrace.

We're all changed in Christchurch and I hope we will all keep changing, just as I hope the city will keep changing. Nothing is meant to last forever.

We never know when the next change is going to occur, or how big or small it will be. We never know what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner. But I do know there are unexpected opportunities of every kind, lurking in every corner of Christchurch's broken body.

I celebrate that.

Vertical Inspirations - Auckland

Phil Price Sculpture, Auckland Waterfront.

Yesterday, quite by chance, I banged into an artist friend in Merivale Mall. He was re-sizing some of his photographs to make cards and I was taken by how many similar images I had on my cellphone - Similar in subject matter at least.

We seem drawn to the same things.

That's not uncommon among photographers of course- nor in fact, among anyone of a creative bent, whether they be painters, writers, film-makers; we frequently visit and re-interpret the same material, always imbuing it with our own perspective, our own emotion and history.

New Lynn Shoppers

In light of that encounter, I decided to put together a selection of my 'visual rememberings' from my recent trip to Auckland - a sample of the diverse inspirations that caught my attention for reasons obvious and reasons unfathomable. It set me to wondering what my artist friend - who declared "I hope to be a photographer in my next life" - would have taken away from the same locations.

Church Door, Symonds Street

That concept of several photographers approaching the same subject is one that has always interested me. The way we all approach the world, the way we see - each of us influenced by our emotions, our passions, by what do and don't know. That split second that captures a moment of your experience and a moment perhaps in the life of someone else.

Street Poetry, Britomart

We may be captivated by a feeling, a shadow, a glimmer of light.

Our image may be a reflection of a thought.

It may be driven by some vague, niggling memory.

Household Goods & Artificial Flowers, New Lynn

I know that as I amble about a city, some things just 'speak' to me. I don't always know why but I know I can't leave them behind without somehow trying to capture the essence of that feeling in a lasting image. And often, after I'm home, sorting through hundreds of photographs, they fall into obvious groupings with no encouragement from me.

It's as if I have some intangible, pre-wired  selection process going on in my subconscious.

High Street Retail

I do also, quite consciously, photograph on a large number of ongoing themes - variations of a subject, collections of a series of moments, objects, people, places, colours.

Auckland Art Gallery

And for me, there are themes within themes. Take architecture for instance... I have different photographic collections for barns, old shops, museums, details, churches and so on. There seems to be something in my psyche that likes the order and the variation of that.

Grain Silo, Auckland Waterfront.

I like stairways. I photograph hundreds of cranes.

I like the mechanical detail, the rigid yet variant forms.

Crane Reflection, Hobson Street.

I can rarely walk past a good reflection - and when the crane *is* the reflection, so much the better - two birds with one stone and all that.

Leis & Brooms, New Lynn

There are images that tap into my personal history.

There are displays of colour and shape I cannot ignore.

Silo Stair, Auckland Waterfront

Stairs

Colours

Forms

Flower Chandelier, Choi Jeong Hwa, Auckland Art Gallery

Sometimes I record an image for the beauty of a form, or for the wider implications of the moment - who I was with, what we were doing, the things we shared - in that moment.

Auckland City Fire Station

And other times, it's like there's some mysterious rustling going on in my head.

Its purpose isn't always clear but I know I have to listen.

It is those moments - those unfathomable seconds - that often produce the images I love most, the short stories I am happiest with.

And sometimes at the end, I find the collection in its entirety is a collective snapshot of place.

This was my Auckland, on those ten days.

Next time it will be different.