NZ Visual Diary - entry 335

Mt Eden garden and wash line

Small neighbourhoods of densely packed homes populated the base of Maungawhau along Mt Eden Road as one travels north from Mt Eden Village to Newton, the contiguous suburb before the boundary that announces Auckland Central.

The housing is of mixed stock - early to mid-20th century cottages and modern designer homes, tear-downs that create considerable visual dissonance between old and new as one climbs narrow streets along the steep southern slope of the volcanic cone that is Maungawhau.

I fixed on a particular backyard of an older home because it dramatised in a pleasing way a tension that is central to my photography, the dynamic interplay between the built and natural within urban environments.

Stairs, retaining wall and brick, window and house wall, clothes line, wash and clothes pins compete for prominence with bush, flower and grasses, a challenge that is punctuated by the insistence of colour in both forms, built and natural.