Tag: Buried

‘Half Buried Memories’

No, it’s not the results of a New Zealand earthquake, but rather a sculptural piece in Auckland commenting (perhaps) on the loss of historical buildings, and that greater emotional loss which accompanies that process.

While I was taking the picture on the weekend, a colourful local approached and told me that he had opposed the sculpture’s installation years ago. A “waste of money” ,”not actually real”. Just attracted people wanting to take photos (“like me?”, I asked smilingly).

That was as may be, but there was no getting around the period in  the 1980s when developers, according to the bloke, were hell bent on pulling down old buildings and replacing them with new and shiny edifices, before new “heritage” planning rules prevented them doing so without some preservation measures being undertaken.

It is a burial site of a kind, even if “not real”, and evokes the feelings you associate with those places.

In the background, the newer high rise buildings of downtown can be seen through the trees.

There will come a time when they too will be demolished to make way for something “better” and more progressive.

And only memories will remain.