John Fields - Part 1

In 1983, John Stacpoole presented the Gallery with an important sequence of black and white photographs taken by John Fields for their joint book project entitled Victorian Auckland (John McIndoe, Dunedin, 1973). Fields’ subtle photography, and Stacpoole’s honed text, remains the most wide-ranging overview of Auckland’s colonial architecture.

Some of Fields’ photographs for this collaborative publication utilised his Cambo 5 x 7 inch View camera. Other images were created with 35mm cameras. His architectural images were meant to have a descriptive intention and plenty of detail about texture and surface is noticeable. For example, the upstairs interior view in the Reverend Vicesimus Lush’s 1864 cottage must be one of the very few Victorian residences that retains its original furnishings.

According to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, all the furnishings recorded in Fields’ interior photograph are original to the period when the Lush family lived there. I know of no other comparable Victorian house’s interior in the Auckland region that retains so much of its pre-1900 contents. The original furnishings give the photograph a period authenticity without equal. The impressive chest of drawers is constructed with locally milled Kauri wood.



Another memorable image from Victorian Auckland is the close-up of the basalt wall (above)surrounding the Auckland Barracks, apparently designed by Major Marlow in late 1846. Sir George Grey, New Zealand’s Governor, had ordered the construction of a large-scale military barracks to protect the military garrison originally based nearby at Port Britomart. Originally named Barracks Hill, the site was enclosed with a 1300-metre long barracks wall constructed with volcanic basalt bluestone quarried from Maungawhau (Mount Eden). 60 local Māori built the stone wall, a 27 metre (90 feet) deep water well and all of the Barracks buildings. The 3.6-metre high stone wall took more than five years to complete (1847 -1852) and was intended to be protection against a Māori invasion, an event which never eventuated.



One of the most poignant of all Fields’ photographs for Victorian Auckland is his image of the Graveboard, St Peter’s Churchyard, Onehunga (above). The painted board records the death of Reverend Charles Haslewood (1830-1863), a Naval Chaplain to the steam-corvette Orpheus. He drowned when the Orpheus was wrecked at the Manukau Bar on 7 February 1863 when the ship was heading for Onehunga from Sydney, where it was to take up Royal Navy duty in New Zealand. Of the crew of 256 men and officers, only 69 were saved, making this the worst maritime tragedy in New Zealand’s history.

During the 1960s and 1970s Fields also utilised both of his 35mm cameras - a Nikon and a Leica IIIF. The material that he shot on these cameras is equally eloquent as his View camera photography. It reveals how he employed other approaches to both his photographic style and content. Instead of carefully pre-visualising his subjects, he relied on spontaneity, chance and intuition to help him select his human subjects.

Image credits:

John Fields
Ewelme Cottage, 14 Ayr Street, Parnell circa 1971
gelatin silver print
242 x 193mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of John Stacpoole, 1983
1983/53/28


John Fields
Barracks wall, Alfred Street circa 1971
gelatin silver print
132 x 202mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of John Stacpoole, 1983
1983/53/4

John Fields
Graveboard, St Peter’s Churchyard, Onehunga circa 1971
gelatin silver print
249 x 185mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of John Stacpoole, 1983
1983/53/37