Spotlight On CRL Workers

The men and women at the project’s coal-face have been immortalised in a new 62 metre construction wall running down Nikau St at the Mt Eden Station.

The 24, two-metre-high portraits were taken by our site photographer Mark Barber for the Auckland Festival of Photography. They show a diverse sample of our construction workers, ranging from those working in management, supervisors, labourers and traffic controllers.

This series of portraits works well in two ways - it creates a balanced and visually interesting series, while highlighting and humanising our workers at the heart of this historic infrastructure project.

As a child growing up in 1980s Auckland, Mark was intrigued by his grandmother’s stories about a time before the motorway system. A time before the construction of the Auckland Harbour Bridge, when travel to the North Shore was only directly possible by ferries, like the Kestrel and the Toroa.

Historic black and white images of the Auckland Harbour Bridge's incredible construction have always been in his mind's eye, and Mark is honoured to play his role in documenting the next big infrastructure project to revolutionise the city’s transport system.   

With these portraits, Mark hopes to capture the humanity within the toughness of construction.

The Auckland Festival of Photography is a city-wide contemporary, cultural experience which takes place within Auckland's major galleries, project spaces, non-gallery venues and public sites throughout June each year.