Graham Morrell with Napier Revealed and the Six Sisters residences in Marine Parade. Photo / Paul Taylor
Graham Morrell with Napier Revealed and the Six Sisters residences in Marine Parade. Photo / Paul Taylor
When Graham Morrell decided to do a book of photographs, some might have expected an insight into his 44 years as a police officer — more particularly, 39 of them as a police photographer in Hawke’s Bay.
But the result is Napier Revealed, a depiction of more than 70 Napierbuildings, with a unique use of modern technology in a mix of pictorial restoration, enhancement and, in some cases, correction.
Trees that obscure street views such as those in Marine Parade in front of the Six Sisters, desecrations of architecturally significant features and even colour have been photoshopped.
Thanks to Adobe Creative Cloud — “not AI” — the trees are gone, doors from a past era have replaced glass frontages, and modern signage (sometimes tacky) has gone to recreate buildings as they once were or might have been. Generally, a bit more art has been added to Art Deco — “the buildings you can’t see properly, or won’t see like this.”
The Six Sisters in Marine Parade, without any trees to obscure the view. Photo / Graham Morrell
Quick to dispel any suggestions such alterations might have been made to images during the police career from which he retired after wife Carol died after a battle against cancer in 2019, he says that as far as Photoshop is concerned he’s self-taught and did the book because he needed something to do.
He also didn’t do it for the money, but in dedicating it to his wife and soulmate, and son Ian who died in 1996 at the age of 14; “any profit” goes to the Breast Cancer Foundation and Cranford Hospice.
A transformation of the BNZ in Hastings St to the ASB. Photo / Graham Morrell.
The collection started last year, though some images are from earlier, and he says he’s become a digital “building restorer” altering images to do some digital “plastering, removing and replacing windows, signwriting, straightening up buildings, removing aircon units, rust stains, moss, and bird poop”!
From Masterton, Morrell joined the police in 1975 and turned to police forensic photography five years later, completing training on December 8, 1980 — the day, he notes, that John Lennon was shot dead in New York, though there wasn’t any need to call in a police photographer from Napier to record any of the evidence.
The reimagination of the the old Napier Fire Station, in Napier's Tennyson St, that is now the home of a restaurant where the truck used to park. Photo / Graham Morrell
He then moved to Hawke’s Bay with his main Canon gear capturing hundreds of images of all manner of police tasks, from recovered stolen property to the grisly nature of major crime scenes.
Also “for something to do” since retiring, he volunteered at the Faraday Centre Museum of Technology in Napier, shuttering his way to over 1200 images of the centre’s collection.
Printed by Brebner Print, there is a run of 200 copies for what is mainly a self-distribution and sale operation, although the book will appear in selected outlets.
