Photography Now
On Courtenay Place, sun-bleached and heaving with people, the wind is arrested by silver nitrate and held static under glass. There are eight double-sided monoliths spaced along the walkway, from which the past regards us with a neutral eye; looking down at people waiting in line at the former-public-toilet-turned-pizza-place or sprawled on inhospitable street furniture.
In time is the longest distance, an exhibition by photographer Camus Wyatt, the figures flanking Courtenay Place are larger than life, but not so large as to dwarf the viewer. For these images Wyatt selected images from the Alexander Turnbull Library, and scanned segments of them, later patching these segments together, and placing them in lightboxes along the central Wellington thoroughfare. The people in these photographs look at us the same way that we look at passers-by—with disinterest, or a mild, unseeing curiosity. They are engaged in difficult, emancipatory work, or celebration, or quiet moments of introspection. Almost everyone looks young, and handsome. Did they know the roles they’d take, these people projected large onto glass? Did they know the lengths to which we would go to preserve them?
The title of Wyatt’s, described by its author as a ‘memory play’:
