B.
Spotting Dad
Exhibition
When Caroline first found out about the David Cook: Meet Me in the Square exhibition through the Gallery's Facebook page before it opened, she had an inkling that she might see her father in the show.
When she made it to the exhibition space with her sister Katherine and nephew Ari one weekend not so long ago, they did in fact spot him in one of the photographs on display. However it was not without a very careful look.
Caroline's sister Katherine with nephew Ari looking at the photograph in which their father appear in the background.
Caroline and Katherine's father was a teacher of English, History and Economics at Christ's College through the 70s and 80s and was also the head of cadets. He can be seen in the photograph taken by David in 1983 of students practising shooting. He appears as a tiny figure in the background between other men who are positioned below the rifle held by the schoolboy on the right. Despite the distance he seems to be looking directly at the camera.
“It looks like he’s seen the photographer. He has a serious look on his face which is very typical of him,” says Caroline.
“As children we used to go into the school in the evenings when he had marking to do. We all grew up here so these images bring back memories of our childhood.”
After he finished teaching at Christ’s College, their father worked at the Hocken Archives in Dunedin where his job involved helping researchers and members of the public identify faces on old photographs.
“I remember dad holding up his magnifying glass against the photographs to get a closer look at the face of the person in question. It’s exciting that thirty years later, I am seeing him in a piece of history – I think dad would have liked that.”
Thank you Caroline for sharing your story with us. Caroline is the Director of The National, a dealer gallery dedicated to showing contemporary jewellery situated just a short 10 minutes walk away from us at 241 Moorehouse Avenue next to the Chambers 241 gallery. You can check out The National's website here.
David Cook: Meet Me in the Square runs until the 24th of May, 2015 at Level 1, 209 Tuam Street. The accompanying publication is available on our Online Shop and also in the exhibition space.
Related reading: David Cook
Exhibition
David Cook: Meet Me in the Square
24 May 2015
Cathedral Square, Centennial Pool, Lancaster Park, schoolboys, punks, nuns – a photographic journey through 1980s Christchurch.
Interview
The significance of everyday things
During the winter of 1984 my mother, father and I packed an overnight bag and climbed into Dad’s Hillman Hunter. I was five years old and, as far as I could remember, it was the first time we’d ever ventured outside of Blenheim.
Notes
A stroll down memory lane. . .
Karen Cunningham found out her photo was in the David Cook: Meet Me in the Square exhibition when a resident at Edith Cavell Home and Hospital brought it to her attention during a weekly game of housie.
Notes
Catch the Bus Into Town
Megan made a special trip to the David Cook: Meet Me in the Square exhibition last week after seeing a photograph in The Press of her and her friend at the Cathedral Square bus stop, taken in 1984.
Notes
Sisters Growing Up in Christchurch
Since the exhibition David Cook: Meet Me in the Square opened at 209 Tuam Street, the Gallery's Visitor Hosts have spoken to several people who either appear in the photographs themselves or have a personal story to share about a particular photograph in the show.
Article
Meet Me in the Square
The first thing you notice, even before the pageboy haircuts and oversized plastic spectacles, is the absence of smiles. The unhappiness in the eyes of the average Cantabrian snapped on these grey, chilly streets seems palpable. Even the Christ's College cadet, cradling a rifle as part of soldiery drill, looks ready to turn the gun on himself. In 1983, the year when David Cook began a project to explore his hometown, a camera as his compass, most locals look distinctly brassed off.
Notes
Meet Me in the Square
Now's a good time to make Friends with the Gallery. We're offering Friends 20%* off our new book of photographs of 1980s Christchurch by David Cook.
Collection
David Cook DIC Beaths Winter Fashion Parade
The former DIC Beaths department store was converted into the former Christchurch Bus Exchange on the corner of Cashel and Colombo Streets.
Collection
David Cook Funeral In The Cathedral
David Cook took more than 6,000 photographs of Ōtautahi Christchurch in the 1980s, recording life in the city from unexpected vantage points. Here, his camera peers through the door of the Anglican cathedral in the city square to a waiting hearse outside. It’s a scene of lost things; some obvious, others overlaid by the city’s subsequent history – the death that prompted the funeral, the (now absent) flow of traffic in Cathedral Square, and the cathedral itself, nearly wiped off the map during the Christchurch earthquake of 2011, and now being rebuilt.
(Absence, May 2023)
