Ode to Robin Morrison
I'd been wanting to photograph this small rural church near Auckland since I first saw it in a Robin Morrison photo 20 years ago. The local community has recently restored it and it no longer has the sense of neglected decline that is in that original photo that stuck in my memory, but it's essential character remains. Robin Morrison's photographs still stay with me in the way they instantly transport you back to the late 1970s and early 1980s....a confusing time for New Zealand and this brooding sense of angst seemed to poor out of his photographs. It's not an easy thing to do to capture a sense of exactly where a country is at during a certain time and even though we are inundated with photographs like never before, how many photographers working today are getting close to that I wonder? How many photographs will stay with us in our minds or just be fleeting ephemera? I've visited many of those places that Robin Morrison recorded in his photographs, nearly all have changed, some have disappeared forever, replaced by where ever New Zealand is at.
The original Robin Morrison photo can be seen here:
