Abundance Art Gallery and Gift Shop Mo 707,Te Atatu Road, Te Atatu Peninsula

I had never set foot on Te Atatu Peninsular until my wife Mala, who grew up in Titirangi, took me house hunting there in 1996. Ultimately, we were seduced by the view from a 1950s bungalow in Renata Crescent that overlooks a mangrove swamp and the Henderson Creek. Experiencing the tidal cycle and river traffic in this quiet location, and occasional kayak and fishing expeditions, have become an appreciated part of our life away from the city.

During our first six years on the Peninsula I would only occasionally take some photographs while walking the neighbourhood with or without our dog. Accustomed to working in black and white photography and the habit of completing the cycle of exposing and processing my own film and proofing, editing and enlarging my prints while the purpose of the images were still fresh in my memory, without a darkroom in our new home I found myself shooting colour film simply because I could get it processed at the chemist shop.

My familiarity with the Peninsula dramatically increased after my doctor told me on 11 September 2002 that I had type two diabetes, and needed more regular exercise. But it wasn’t until early in 2005 that I discovered the delights of digital photography with a semi-professional 35mm camera (a Canon 350D)and started to take my photography of the Peninsula more seriously.

I am colour blind (in the red-green spectrum)so had largely shied away from colour for my serious photography, which consists of photographing everyday events, family, people and places mainly, in the time-honoured tradition of the amateur photographer. I like to photograph what I like to photograph, in other words, rather than be told what to photograph by clients. But because I have a particular interest in history and the history of photography I am particularly aware that so many aspects of our lives and times do not get recorded photographically, or do not get photographed as well as they deserve. It’s the small everyday encounters that make up so much of our lives, rather than the big public events that tend to hog the news, that I am thinking of. Hence I came to take more seriously the task of trying to capture aspects of the look and pulse of Te Atatu Peninsula and its inhabitants—in colour. (In the late 1960s I had documented the main street of Johnsonville, where I had earlier been brought up, but only in black & white.)

Because the land mass of Te Atatu Peninsula is so clearly defined by the Henderson Creek and its Waitemata Harbour boundary, and everything on the Peninsula is within walking distance, it lends itself to the possibility of something approaching a full photographic documentation of its physical character, at least, if not the diversity and complex social interactions of its inhabitants. As a photographer, I am interested in both the place itself, and the people who make it a unique community with its own distinctive history and character.

But so far I have concerned myself mainly with what I consider as Phase One of my self-assigned project, and have already amassed over 20,000 digital photographs for the record. These are photographs more or less of and from the street; of shops and shopkeepers, old buildings and new, and just interesting people I’ve encountered. They include coverage of key events like Anzac Day and the Christmas Parade, school fairs, garage sales and the like, the Pony Club, the Mud Run, music entertainments and the like. Infil housing is another aspect I am recording along with the often rapid changes to business premises that can change hands and their function almost overnight, over the dashed dreams of their short term underfinanced occupants. 

For  Phase Two my hope is to photograph a wide range of people in their homes and offices, and to work with oral historians to record the life stories of a diverse range of people on the Peninsula.