Iconic and unseen early photographs of Christchurch by Laurence Aberhart

Aberhart started here. Between 1975 and 1983, when the internationally-renowned New Zealand artist lived in and around Christchurch, he began to photograph the everyday world around him. Christchurch is where Aberhart developed his eye for the things that later brought his work to international prominence: his interest in the vanishing past, vernacular histories, and typological series, all emerged over this period. Aberhart’s early photographs, some of them now iconic but many unseen or little known, reveal a city – and a way of life – that no longer exists. Long-gone fast food joints, masonic lodges, lonely monuments and cemeteries are brought together with stucco houses, weird domestic scenes and haunting family groups.