Te Atatu Me - Photographs of an Urban New Zealand Village

Te Atatu Me: photographs of an urban New Zealand village is a personal portrait of West Auckland's Te Atatu Peninsula by John B. Turner, the noted New Zealand photographer, teacher and editor of PhotoForum. Recorded over a seven year period from 2005 to 2011, Turner's documentary photographs celebrate the character and pulse of life in this unique and yet typical multicultural New Zealand urban community where he lived. Turner captures the sense of place and the often surprising pace of change, as new houses pop up, shops change hands, people come and go, and familiar sights are changed forever. Chosen to represent an extensive photographic essay of the recent past, Turner's pictures are accompanied by a perceptive historical essay, 'Peninsula Dreams,' by local illustrator and historian Grant Cole, editor of West of Eden, the journal of the West Auckland Historical Society. Altogether theirs is an affectionate portrait of Tat Norf with its rural beginnings, its development as a working class suburb in the 1950s and transformation into an increasingly middle class and multicultural community today. A rewarding place to live, Te Atatu Peninsula can be seen as a microcosm of New Zealand society now, challenged with the collective responsibility of preserving its special identity and best values under the pressures of Auckland's rapid growth and fundamental changes in New Zealand society.