“I hope it will help to bring home to people that once something’s gone, it’s gone forever. And it might help people at the district council, or a developer, say, ‘Hang on a minute, let’s have another think about this before we knock it down.’ Once it’s down, it’s gone,” Wotton said.
During a tour in 1968 of the “wonderful old-town buildings” in Warsaw, Poland, he learned how many were faithfully reconstructed after World War II from an 18th-century Venetian artist’s highly detailed paintings. Bernardo Bellotto used the “camera obscura” technique to achieve an almost photographic accuracy.
“We were shown a movie, a lot of which was taken from German air force planes showing the devastation they’d unleashed on the city, which was 85 per cent destroyed. After the war, when they were talking about reconstruction, they located 20 paintings by Bellotto and these were used by architects and construction people to rebuild.”
And closer to home, he tells how photographer Laurence Aberhart warned, “If you see something you like and think, wow that’s worth a photograph, I’ll come back and do it next week – it’s the kiss of death”.
During his time as the first Tylee Cottage artist-in-residence, in 1986, Aberhart noticed a two-storey timber grocery shop not far from Wotton’s childhood home on Plymouth St.
“I could see it in my mind’s eye when Laurence was telling me. He was going to go back the next weekend and photograph it. He went back, only to find an empty section.”
Double says he has learned a lot about photography while shooting the film with Wotton and has become something of a self-styled apprentice.
“I’d seen some of Richard’s work and was always fascinated by the detail.
“There’s something about looking at a building photographed in black and white, and the way Richard records them is captivating. The challenge for me was trying to get that on film as a static image and also get some sort of life around it in terms of what was happening at the time – and it was not clement weather!”
The film shows Richard in locations he photographed years ago, and they have changed.
“The fish and chip shop has doubled in size, and there is now a fence in front of the Del Mar Flats. The wooden building that used to be flats on the corner of Liverpool St and Victoria Ave has gone completely and is now New World supermarket.”
Being filmed was “quite painless”, Wotton quipped, even though it was shot in winter, and one chilly day required swaddling his upper body in eight layers of clothing.
“I knew Kevin was a professional and he would direct me, so I just had to do what I was told. I did, and he was very happy,” Wotton said.
The film, while short and of measured pace, covers a lot of ground both in terms of buildings featured and Wotton’s process in shooting the Plunket Building on Campbell St, one he had not previously photographed.
Double says the online digital archives of the Sarjeant (available to the public on the Sarjeant website as Explore the Collection) have been an exceptional resource.
“For a lot of the work I do, we have to go through archives, so I didn’t have to bug Richard too much to find shots and work out the route we took. The Explore the Collection archives were absolutely brilliant for that.”
Moments Later will screen at Sarjeant on the Quay on Tuesday, December 6 at 7pm. Entry is free, but please book your seats on 06 349 0506 or info@sarjeant.org.nz
