Euan Sargison Photography

Euan Sargison Photography  —  High Street, Christchurch

Text by Alice Sarginson

Euan Sargison 1936-2004.  A photographic career spanning over 40 years, began for Euan Sarginson in 1953 as a means of escaping working on a farm in Cheviot, North Canterbury.  Leaving school at age 14 he got a job processing negatives at Perry's, a photographic lab in Christchurch, before moving on to become the studio manager at Wallace and Co. portrait studio, a photography business providing family portraits.

Euan combined a love of cars and photography, providing content for The Shell Book of New Zealand Motor Racing throughout the 1960s.  "I loved old cars at the time, but knew I'd rather keep my hands clean photographing them, than get my hands dirty under them."

Wedding and portrait photography was keeping him busy at this time and his first departure from the convention of the day was to shoot a wedding party coming out of the gasworks.  Euan's first studio was in High Street next to a small model school and his first fashion photography experiments were with students and friends.  His good friend Barbara Prisk (later Barbara Lee) was launching her own fashion label and retail outlet, Granny's Boutique.  Another friend, Paula Ryan, modelled Barbara's designs and together they presented their interpretation of the exciting and controversial new fashion trends that were exploding in London, such as shorter-than-short mini-skirts and extravagant hair-pieces, to what they saw as a rather sleepy and conservative Garden City.