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This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
A bifurcating track in a forest of young eucalyptus trees. At first sight it looks like the cinematic shot/reverse-shot pairing typically used to film a conversation experienced from the point of view of each of the protagonists. So here we might be looking along a path and, after walking on a bit, turning and facing back. However, close examination of the images shows they are both taken from the same point but with one reversed or ‘flipped’. They are exact mirror images of each other. A doubling that seemed to offer an expanded reality turns out to be hermetic and claustrophobic.
The photograph was taken as part of a series by Ann Shelton on places where dark things have happened in the past. This particular track on Christchurch’s Port Hills was the site of the infamous Parker–Hulme murder of 1954, in which Honora Parker (known as Honora Rieper) was bashed to death with half a brick in a stocking by her teenage daughter Pauline Parker and her close friend Juliet Hulme.
The term ‘doublet’ of the title can refer to a pair of words with the same origin but different meanings. Here, we might view the image without knowledge of the horrific event that occurred at this spot. Like many sites of violent crimes it is an unremarkable location. The flipside comes from knowing its history, where the mundane is forever contaminated with a chilling presence, a place inhabited by the ghost of Honora and undoubtedly etched into the minds of Pauline and Juliet.
Another doubling is alluded to in the title: fact versus fiction. Heavenly creatures is a 1994 film about the murder, directed by Peter Jackson. Are we looking at the film-set version of the location? Has the film taken on a greater reality than the original events, given the way it fleshes out the historical traces of newspaper court reports and the like where our knowledge and imagination falter? Just as Shelton does not reveal which of her two images is the correct view of the path, so these polarities exist, like a quantum state, simultaneously, each alternative equally true.
Athol McCredie
Ann Shelton's Doublet
Doublet (after Heavenly Creatures), Parker/Hulme crime scene, Port Hills, Christchurch, New Zealand relates to one of the most infamous crimes in New Zealand history: the murder of Honora Parker by her daughter Pauline and her teenage friend Juliet Hulme, in Christchurch in 1954.
The story continues to capture the public imagination and has been the subject of ongoing speculation, countless newspaper articles, several books, and Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures.
Shelton presents us with an oddly banal scene in which no activity occurs, leaving us to ponder the significance of the site she has chosen to document. It could be anywhere, yet we nevertheless get the sense that something happened here. The mirroring of the two images creates further unease. The work’s title provides some clues but we are left to put the pieces together and construct the narrative. The power of the work lies in prolonging this moment of uncertainty – needing to question the veracity of what we are looking at – and destabilising our faith in the photographic image as truthful record.
This image is one of a number of works by New Zealand photographer Ann Shelton in Te Papa’s collection.
[Text originally written by Sarah Farrar for Toi Te Papa Art Newsletter, February 2011.]