It was in the 1960s at the age of 16 that Pat Greenfield first discovered photography.  Having tried her hand at water colours and drawing, Pat bought her first camera, a Pentax Spotmatic and soon found photography a quick means of gratification.

Pat photographed anything that caught her interest, from houses to landscapes and plants.  To this day, Pat is drawn to old buildings and she is currently doing a series on the Patea freezing works.  Seabed mining is another project in the pipeline.

It was however the erosion on the Tongaporutu coastline that captured Pat’s interest more than anything else.  In 2001, Pat sat with her tripod on Pilot Rd point, photographing the Three Sisters rocks.  To her dismay, the tripod proved faulty and Pat was forced to abandon her mission.  She made a date to return to Pilot Rd in two weeks to complete her shoot.

Pat did return a fortnight later, only to find that the coastline had completely changed.  The two big table-sized boulders beneath the Three Sisters where Pat had previously sat and eaten her lunch, had vanished.  Pat realised that these boulders and others like them were continually falling from the cliffs.  She made the decision to turn her passion into a 20-year project capturing the entire Tongaporutu coastline – a project with only four years remaining.  We are so fortunate to be able to show this remarkable pictorial narrative.