NZ Visual Diary - entry 413

man on a park bench

Looking through the lens of geography, my photography walks have a principal focus. I am relentlessly focused on Auckland’s city centre, on walkabouts across the streets and lanes that radiate east and west from Queen Street and as far south as Karangahape (‘K’) Road.

Auckland’s city centre presents the greatest mix of architectural styles and most complex weave of cultural and commercial activities. I walk the city centre when I want to watch how people interact with their built environment and with one another.

A city centre also attracts the extremes of material circumstance, notably of prosperity and despair. I greatly admire the documentary photographers who chronicled the lives of displaced and exploited peoples. Dorothea Lange and Sebastião Salgado are among my favourite photographers in this genre.

My nod of recognition and grateful acknowledgement to that pantheon of documentarians is to bare humble witness to individuals whose faces are furrowed by the sharp edge of suffering, for whom good fortune has been absent and bad luck all too abundant.

To ‘witness’ is an act of fierce empathetic observation without judgment. Acknowledging the ineffable dignity of a stranger is the first step into a heightened moment of compassionate observation, of humble witness.