Stan: The beauty of photography - and Connie!

A visual tribute to Aunty Con




There is only one way to stop time and that is to commit images to photos.



It is fortunate that I commenced this hobby about 52-53 years ago with a box camera.

With modern technology we can copy and enhance the old images giving them new life for even more years.

As much as photography is magic I think the aspect of being transported back into the past to the halcyon days where life was slow and simple, foods tasted better, luxury was an Adam’s Bruce ice cream dripping over the cone which was crisp tasty and edible unlike the hard shell things used today,and half a crown was a fortune.

These were the days of Connie’s youth…243 Riddiford Street, Newtown her home and Newtown School her primary .



After this it was South Wellington Intermediate that was just up from the house in Russell Terrace.

Then later was the Wellington Technical College where now is Massey University and a shift to 30 Homewood Avenue in Karori where she lived out most of her life.

She was a close friend of Margaret Gin and had acquaintances as sisters Lorna and Margarita Ngan whose parents had businesses further down Riddiford Street.

But most of all Connie was the quiet home loving girl and spent a lot of her companionship with brother Ray and sister June.

She did involve herself in sports on a social basis but not as competitively as elder sister Shirley.

And she loved to dress up to attend dances and social occasions and being the blossoming beauty that she was becoming, was very popular.

Her path was more guided by Mavis and like the rest of her brothers and sisters attended Sunday schools and Chinese lessons under Reverend Fung.

After Tech she gravitated to the Zenith Fruit shop in Manners Street the family business where nearly all the Chun’s worked as a matter of course as soon as they left schooling.

The photos of Connie I have captured in this album show the early periods of her Newtown home and Karori plus the workplace of the Zenith Fruit where she was such a solid and trusted worker.

One can only be pleased to display these shots because they do show Connie’s quiet beauty and the then bubbly nature she had inherent.

In my early days of photography Connie was my model…and now I am glad that she was because her beauty is preserved forever.

I am sure you will agree that these images of her will be in your minds whenever you think of my quiet, sensitive, strong yet fragile sister.




Stan Chun

1 July, 2008.