NZ Visual Diary - entry 237
Christchurch vignettes
Randolph and I recently spent the better part of the past week in Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand’s South Island. It was our first extended visit to Christchurch since a series of earthquakes in 2010/2011 killed 185 people and caused extensive damage across the city and the wider Canterbury region.
We were last in Christchurch in 2015 by which time efforts to raze badly damaged buildings had levelled whole blocks of the city centre or encased other buildings in stabilising girders and scaffolding. The city centre looked eerily empty and embattled.
The Christchurch of 2023, notably its city centre, is thrilling. The cathedral reinstatement project is underway, although the reopening of the cathedral may be as much as four years away. The Isaac Theatre Royal, also badly damaged by the earthquakes, has been meticulously restored and reopened.
The inclusion here of the stately Public Trust building reflects my abiding love of elegantly appointed large-scale architecture. The image of New Regent Street celebrates civic capacity: the coalescence of citizenly, governmental and commercial virtue out of which a city declares its willingness to embrace and protect the cultural heritage of its architectures and landscapes.
Finally, as any photographer will tell you: the genre of black & white photography is about chasing light. The atrium at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū smiled kindly upon me and rendered an evocative play of light and shadow — what the Italian Renaissance painters might have called chiaroscuro.