This image is a photographic montage comprised from three frames of a 14 minute film entitled New Zealand, 1950's from the Huntley Film Archives:
It depicts a 1955, South-westerly aspect of the South side of Wellington Street East, Freemans Bay from near what was the intersection with Union Street and is now the overpass across a motorway junction.
Three years earlier the territorial authority had served compulsory purchase orders on most of the properties in the area, with compensation set at 1952 valuations. However, the Council was not in a hurry to complete acquisition, which, amid much resentment and controversy, was eventually completed in 1979 - at 1952 valuations. In the interim property owners were reluctant to incur the expense of anything beyond what decreasing rental values would justify.
And so it came to pass that what had once been an inner city suburb renowned for the solidarity of its social cohesion and the political unrest that had been a thorn in the side of conservative governments from 1913, declined into abject dereliction.
In what was possibly one of the ugliest examples of the corporate psychopathy that might seem to have plagued the Auckland Council since its inception, the consequential window of opportunity was used to plaster the popular Media with images of the deplorable state into which the area fell - dodgy propaganda justifying the premeditated demise of a community.
Although the houses that comprise most of the image survived from the late 1860s until 1977, the photograph is date-able to 1955 by the lack of houses and shops in the block between Howe and Hepburn Streets, which were subsequently replaced by the Freemans Park development of apartment blocks and courtyard houses.
The artificial intelligence bit is the acquisition of every known digital image of the area and then renaming all of the images firstly with the date, then with the geographical location, aspect, elevation, etc., followed by relevant keywords up to a length of 256 characters in the file name.
The in-house Ponsonby & Freemans Bay database includes works of art, photographs, maps, ephemera, audio and video, etc., all of which adhere to the same file-naming protocol. An easy familiarity develops with the landmarks and eras to be seen in the images and the database becomes increasingly accurate (and interesting) as the knowledge-base expands.
Although there is a tendency to think of landmarks as steeples and towers, etc. below consciousness there is a whole other level of landmark recognition - a fact readily brought to mind as a strange sense of alienation when much of central Christchurch vanished in a cloud of dust a few years ago.
So whether it's swanning around downtown, or soaking up a Freemans Bay slide show, markers accumulate below consciousness ready to spring to one's aid with a slightly fuzzy sense of familiarity in a four dimensional cognitive model.
1955 14-19 Wellington Street East South side South-westerly aspect Union Howe Hepburn Pratt Franklyn 'New Zealand, 1950's' 14 min film 30854 Huntley Film Archives.jpg
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