Community is easy to talk about, harder to pin down, and harder still to build. In a modern world filled with consumer options and competing life experience we simultaneously long for and resist opening our lives to others. Community has been an intangible but constantly present feature of human life across cultures and time periods, but it requires longevity, localism, sacrifice, kindness, and generosity—habits of heart we are beginning to feel the lack of.
Volume 04 of Flint & Steel magazine aims to look at what community is, and what is in the soil where it grows. What does community offer to us? What are the conditions of place, time, and purpose that community requires in order to grow and survive?
PIVOT had the pleasure of photographing a selection of New Zealand Members of Parliament at the Beehive and House of Representatives, as they spoke about what community meant to them. Those photographed were:
* Carmel Sepuloni: Labour MP (first elected MP of Tongan descent)
* James Shaw: Green Party MP and Co-Leader
* Marama Fox: Maori Party MP and Co-Leader
* Melissa Lee: National Party MP of Korean descent