I returned to New Zealand in late 2019.

It was the place I had always known as home, but had been distant in my life for many years as I lived overseas exploring exotic cityscapes. As the Covid-19 situation unfolded I was forced to make a decision to stay or to leave New Zealand. This decision guided the next two years of my life and the creation of my biggest project yet.

Choosing to remain in New Zealand, I was confronted with the place I had left behind all those years ago. On one hand I saw the idyllic paradise of these islands as they appeared from the outside: long summers, friendly people, and beautiful scenery.

But on the other hand I knew that it all had a darker side to it. The reality of a rampant housing crisis creating the world's most unaffordable cities, the contested history of the land bound up in the very material of the buildings, and a society slowly cracking like the fault lines that run through the country.

The New Zealand Nocturnes Photographic Series emerged as I travelled up and down the country, capturing the architecture, places and moments that no one else saw. From abandoned farm houses along deserted country roads, decaying colonial villas reclaimed by the land, to dilapidated and lonely state houses, my images explore the story of the places we call home as they really are under the beautiful and mysterious glow of moonlight.

Cody Ellingham
Photographic Artist
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