Mission to put need in frame

By LINDA HERRICK

Fashion photographer Chris Sisarich is used to shooting beautiful people but he has had a reality check with his new assignment.

With the help of Auckland City Mission Older Persons worker Gayle Denton, Sisarich has been meeting some of the city's elderly people, photographing them for an exhibition called Forgotten Age to support the mission's winter appeal.

"I do shoot fashion and I've been feeling it doesn't add anything to society," says Sisarich. "Fashion is creating a fantasy - but this project is real."

The exhibition, which opens tonight at the Peter Webb Gallery, comprises 10 portraits and about 45 prints which tell the story of the conditions those people live in. Most of the subjects are mission clients who receive food parcels and get help with accommodation, or are isolated people needing no more than a visit and a friend to talk to.

"Everyone has a story but what was a recurring theme for most is that it was all about the past," says Sisarich. "They told stories about what they used to do, not so much about what's going to happen tomorrow.

"It really hit home that this is what is going to happen to all of us. We work all our lives, we retire, we have all this spare time, and then our partner dies. Our family's not visiting us, we have no purpose and no company. That was a common story. I found with a lot of elderly people, their family can't be bothered with them."

Sisarich took time to get to know his subjects before getting out his camera. "I wanted them to see I was sincere about it so I spent a week with Gayle who took me out to meet them. I didn't take my camera for the first week, I wanted them to get used to me and I didn't want to be intimidating at all."

Says Auckland City Missioner Diane Robertson, "Although the [Auckland City] council sees pensioner housing purely from a housing provision angle, for many older people their home is their only place of safety in a rapidly changing society. Take that away and you destroy their sense of security and belonging."

* Forgotten Age, Peter Webb Gallery, today and tomorrow. The Auckland City Mission Winter Appeal is on now.