My coldest Winter was a Summer in San Francisco, said Mark Twain, and that could probably apply to Wellington too.
Like San Francisco, New Zealand's capital is a
very cool city in every sense of the word cool. Cool because the chilly gushes of wind from the Cook Strait keep it that way, cool because of its overall vibe. Modern and dynamic but laid-back, with good museums and culture, fun bars and cafes, good restaurants. Friendly people, everyone seems to be into one sport or another. All of this by a very beautiful landscape, water ever-present.
While traveling for my project on
rugby in New Zealand, I got a call from one of the photo editors at M, the weekly magazine of Le Monde. "Can you fly to Wellington and shoot something for us?"
Why, of course ...
Some photo assignments are more fun than others, and this one fell in the camp of the really fun ones. M has a section where a local who knows a city well, writer
Eleanor Catton in this case, picks her five favourite spots. My job was to take photos of those places: a theater, a pizzeria, a bar, a pie shop, and a trendy street.
Camera in one hand, pizza, mince pie, flat white or beer in the other. Fun.
Eleanor Catton takes us to Wellington, Le Monde's on-line slide show.
