Photographer Allan McDonald’s idiosyncratic ‘found views’ of cities and suburbs often capture wild and out-of-place perspectives of everyday scenes. An urban documentarian since the 1960s, McDonald has produced images of heritage buildings, interiors, bric-a-brac shops, wild gardens, and of state houses in various states of disrepair.

This work is part of a humorous and ironic series of ‘Elvis sightings’, where the artist documented often larger-than-life sculptures or paintings of Elvis Presley in Wellington and Auckland. Taken looking through the plate glass window of Wellington institution Slow Boat Records on Cuba St, this cardboard cut-out evokes a bygone era, where, like the last remaining music stores, Elvis’s legacy and dwindling relevance is romanticised. Reminiscent of rundown museum displays, McDonald’s image focuses on the detailed lettered signage, and the precisely racked but mixed up records, an organisational system navigating a chaotic new world.

Allan McDonald (born 1951, Wellington) graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Photography and has published and exhibited widely. His work is in the collections of Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland University and Te Papa Tongarewa. McDonald is a photography lecturer at the School of Creative Industries, Unitec, Auckland, and won the New Zealand Photobook of the Year Award for his publication Carbon Empire (2017, Rim Books). McDonald lives and works in Auckland.