To begin with, this small selection of images from a larger body of work is about a city that exists, but also doesn’t. In many ways it only exists in my imagination.
Let’s start with some background.
There is a lot of commentary on how photography is associated with memory. Memories shape our identity and identity in turn shapes our memory, as does place, time and a multitude of influences. Photography is in many ways a talisman of the past.
I was born, and spent the first 25 years of my life in the city of Ōtautahi/Christchurch in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I have subsequently lived in other places.
I studied history at university where I learnt that no one history is necessarily true (or, conversely, wrong). It is all in how we filter, interpret, contextualise and edit evidence.
As a psychology student I also learnt that memories are somewhat unreliable and subject to outside influences. Again it is all in how we filter, interpret and edit. Memory, like history, is soft and pliable, delicate. We forget, remember and re-create our memories. And they are all different. A group of people may all remember the broad sweep of an event they were involved in, but their details will vary. And often contradict.
These works came about from this, originally unintended premise. When I started I had lived away from the city for some time, but visited regularly. I knew that soon the distance, both physical and emotional, was going to grow. On my visits I documented the places that held childhood memories. Then two things happened. Firstly I found that several rolls of film I had shot one day were all defocused. Secondly, I was showing my mother some of the images I had made and was talking with her about my memories of them from my childhood. She looked at me and said “But we never went there” and “You weren’t at all interested in that” about some of the images.
This led me to stop and think. What was I photographing? Why did I have memories of these places? Was my mothers memory wrong? Whatever the truth, it gave a new impetus to the work.
Whenever I returned I sought out places that to me held childhood memories. I "remember" all these places that I have photographed, some clearly, others as feelings or associations; picnics, walks, laughing, crying, lost, happy, sad.
The places I remember can range from something as simple as a sports field or a park, to school buildings, churches and monuments, feelings. As time passes the places change and my memory of them, or the events surrounding them, become less and less reliable. While I worked on this series I sometimes felt that I could remember things no one else could, and had forgotten things others remembered. But my sense of be-longing remained as did the growing awareness of the cultural impositions of memory.
Then Ōtautahi/Christchurch changed dramatically. In February 2011 two massive earthquakes ripped the city of my memory apart, and no matter how I try I can’t, as yet, continue this project. I think the time where there is nothing left to say, my memory will fade. I will continue to try and keep my childhood memories. Or my memories of them.
All images are 6 x 4.5 cm C type hand printed contact prints.
