A DARK, moody and often violent side of Sydney's past has been revealed with more than 200 snaps recently uncovered in the Justice and Police Museum's forensic photography archive.
The images form a new show titled Suburban Noir, curated by Peter Doyle, following on from the groundbreaking City of Shadows exhibition - a powerful showcase of crime scene photography painting a portrait of 1950s and 60s Sydney far removed from the usual montage of shiny cars, motor mowers and happy families.
Suburban Noir captures the spaces left behind: a moody catalogue of vacant lots, empty roads, desolate interiors and the everyday fragments of life in these hard-bitten slices of Sydney.
"Fifty to sixty years ago, no one, except for cops, photographed and recorded Sydney's streets and suburbs quite like this," says Doyle.
"Detective photographers turned a sceptical and suspicious eye to physical reality, just as artists do."
Not surprisingly, Suburban Noir breaks with the tradition of presenting Sydney as a visual splendour, finding instead a moodier, less glitzy, more reserved and more uncertain Sydney.
The exhibition presents the more than 200 crime scene photographs through a gripping filmic narrative.
Original artworks from 15 artists build on the mood of the film, with some artists drawing inspiration from specific photographs to create works of art that reflect a different way of seeing everyday suburbia.
The result is a hauntingly beautiful multimedia experience that hints at the crime and dysfunction that lies just beneath the most mundane of surfaces.
Featured artists include Rhett Brewer, Peter O'Doherty, Anne Wallace, Ken Searle, Charles Cooper, Reg Mombassa (Chris O'Doherty), Dallas Bray, Bruce Latimer, Vanessa Berry, Frank Littler, Susannah Thorne, Theresa Darmody, Di Holdsworth, Michael Lewy, Peter Doyle.
Suburban Noir is on at the Museum of Sydney until April 6 next year.
Admission: $10/$5. Family $20,
No comments:
Post a Comment