NZ Visual Diary - entry 145

off K Road

The building in the left-side segment of this image fronts on K Road. Of that building, what we see here is the rear entrance, specifically an entrance to a parking garage. The battered sign hanging tenuously from a chain at the foot of the short driveway indicates that the entrance has been abandoned for some time.

The building facade fully represented in this photograph caught my eye.

Neglect is an essential component of what some call urban grunge photography. There are clear signs of age and perhaps abandonment in this image, both outside and inside the formal structures.

My interest in this scene relates to a story of what might have been. It is an exercise in urban visual forensics. What I see in this photography is a faded and tattered beauty, the remnants of intention to combine the solidity of rectangular form with the dynamism of diagonal movement, and of desire to express the evocative power of colour.

This photograph not only offers the viewer a visual statement, it also poses what I believe to be an intriguing possibility for story-telling, for imagining this building in its prime, for speculating about how a former worker in this office building might have felt had she paused one morning before entering the building to appreciate that desire to bestow beauty into the built environment.