E Tuu Kotahitanga

The streets pulse beneath our feet. Feet pressing the asphalt, voices rising and falling like wind through trees. I stand among them, camera in hand, watching, listening, breathing in the rhythm of kotahitanga, the force that binds strangers into a single body, a single intent.

Each sign, each chant, each gaze carries weight. It is not just message; it is history, care, and persistence made visible. I am there to witness, but also to feel, to let the movement touch me, to trace its lines, to hold its energy in the lens and in myself.

Being Māori here is both grounding and reflective, I carry their pulse in my chest. The mauri of action, the insistence to care for something larger than self, threads through every moment. My photographs do not capture everything, but they carry fragments: the pause of a hand lifted, the tension of voices, the unity that refuses to fracture.

And in that unity, kotahitanga, there is a quiet insistence. The world presses on, moments pass, yet this gathering, this shared breath and purpose, lingers. The energy persists long after the streets have emptied, tracing invisible lines through those of us who were there, through time, through memory.