Snow in wellington, past and present

Francoise Padellec

http://frankeheidecke.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/hello-world/

Description

I came across this competition during the coldest week of the winter, when the country was being bombarded by a polar jet stream coming from Antartica. The Wellington regions was covered in thick snow. Many people were cut off for a couple of days up on the hills. The city was shivering and yet there was a holiday atmosphere. People were excited and marveled by the novelty of having snow at their doorstep. Skis and sleds appeared from garages and attics and had a once in a generation outing onto the slopes of the capital. The headlines emphasized the rarity of the vent and I went to hunt for newspaper articles in PapersPast for similar events in New Zealand’s past. I ended up finding some references to heavy snow falls in the region back in 1918 and found some free from copyright images from 1918 and 1992. I started a process of integration to create a tableau that would mix past and present to convey the timeless feel of exhilaration that snow always brings to a community. I created a diorama out of the images I selected and mixed and photographed its various elements, to create a sort of memory album. Memory not from a single event but from similar events from the same place at different moments in time to try and create the feel rather than the specific facts related to the weather, so important in our lives.

Sources

See list on image site: http://api.digitalnz.org/records/v1/1757206/source http://api.digitalnz.org/records/v1/1757205/source http://api.digitalnz.org/records/v1/1757204/source http://api.digitalnz.org/records/v1/20326216/source http://api.digitalnz.org/records/v1/1289038/source