These pictures were taken for a 1975 Listener article exploring how a shortage of hospital beds in Auckland had led to many rest homes providing elderly care, despite being woefully under resourced.

“I could never photograph if I was a disaffected, sour, unloved, unloving person,” Robin Morrison said. A sympathy and real interest in his subjects was one of the consistent threads to his work.

His friend and fellow journalist at the Listener, Louise Callan, said his interest in and responses to the people he photographed was absolutely genuine: “As a result people showed him parts of themselves and their lives they didn’t often reveal to outsiders.”

Robin was happy for his photos be inhabited with emotion: “There is too much photography around that feels nothing at all or gives no impression of any thought, any feeling. I wanted to do something with a little more to it,” he said.

Further reading

This page features quotes from the Quote unquote blog, Happy birthday, Robin Morrison, with Michael King’s obituary of Robin Morrison, and the Art New Zealand article, Robin Morrison, by Rhondda Bosworth.