Panoptikal*: Symonds Street Cemetery--Auckland (January 16, 2010)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Symonds Street Cemetery--Auckland (January 16, 2010)

I found this place by accident, the day after I arrived. I'd set out to return to the Auckland Domain and the War Memorial Museum, since by the time I'd arrived the day before, the museum was only open for one more hour (I knew it wouldn't be enough time). Now thoroughly sunburned, I looked forward to a day spent in the shade, under a layer of 50+ sunblock.

Just before the entry to the Grafton Bridge, at "K' Road" and Symonds Street, I noticed there was an iron gate leading to a graveyard. Always morbidly fascinated by burial places, I decided to take a look; the gate stood open and there appeared to be no restrictions on entry.

I ended up spending about 45 minutes walking through this cemetery and taking pictures. It turned out to be very old, by New Zealand standards especially--in use only between 1842 and 1886 (the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840), and originally divided into five different burial grounds for the various different faiths, with Anglicans taking up the most room.

What made the place really fascinating, yet somehow haunting at the same time, was the air of dilapidation about it. Old stonework crumbled below while lush pongas (tree-ferns) spread themselves over the graves with their usual umbrella-like protectiveness. Cabbage trees and palms grew next to decaying bricks and mouldering, unreadable lettering on broken headstones. The place looked like a Victorian graveyard falling victim to encroaching jungle, which I suppose is a fair enough description. Quite lovely in its mournfulness.

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More about...

The pictures I post here were taken between 1994 and today. There are some breaks during that period, generally because I had no working camera, or because I processed many negatives and made few prints (generally this is the case for 1994 to 2000 or so). I also have many prints from that time that have not yet been digitised.

The reason I call this a "photojournal" is that I tend to document my life with images, where possible, rather than words. I find it much easier to remember moments, and then events, when I have some kind of picture with which I can associate them. This is probably why I've always taken pictures when I could--even when there was "nothing" to photograph--and why I have such a difficult time keeping up a written diary or journal of any sort.

Technicalities

I've used a number of cameras over the past 15 years or so. The bulk of these were SLR, manual or semi-automatic, and of course non-digital (35mm film) cameras (photos shot from 1994 to 2004, roughly), though for a period I used both (low-quality) digital and film (around 2002-2003).

I first used a fully manual camera when I was 14, which was borrowed; the first SLR that I owned was a Vivitar, which rapidly deteriorated. It was followed by a Pentax, and after that, the Minolta XD-11 that I have used for film ever since. I use it with a 35mm or a 28-70mm lens with telephoto and macro. In addition to these, I also used Mamiya 220 and 330 medium-format (120 film) cameras while at NSCAD in 1997-8, and very occasionally, I used an old Agfa range-finder (from roughly the 1940s) which produced 6x9cm negatives on 120 film.

The first digital camera I used would probably have been in 2002, and I used it periodically over about a year (it was borrowed). In 2004-05 I again used a digital camera (also borrowed; specs not available); I stopped shooting on film beyond 2004 because of the expense. Finally in October 2006 I bought a Sony CyberShot, 7.2 megapixels, a very small camera (not an SLR) that I used for almost 4 years before replacing it with a CyberShot DSC-TX5, in July 2010. This camera now travels with me almost everywhere and is the only camera I use regularly.