As a photo-media artist with an interest in traditional and familiar images, I often reconstruct popular visual forms to set out alternative narratives that reflect on our history and place.
Having recently moved to Wombarra, I was excited to learn that the ubiquitous street photographer was active in the city of Wollongong and the Illawarra between the 1930s and 1960s.
This largely unwritten genre of photography is close to my heart through a personal family album and a love of the vernacular. Curious about the local commercial street photography trade here, I was inspired to develop Snapped! Street Photography in the Illawarra.
This photography project seeks submissions of street photographs from the Illawarra community for an exhibition opening December 2021 at Wollongong City Art Gallery. My aim is to bring this dispersed archive of local street photography to the public in a reconfigured form in order to consider the way the citizens of the Illawarra looked through a contemporary lens.
Existing now only as mementos, these postcard-sized images produced by roving photographers were sold the world over. The significance of this popular form of candid street portrait provides an extraordinary record of the region’s people in a simple documentary style.
The images show the appearance and mannerisms of the community collectively and visualise an exchange between the photographer and the photographed. An encounter that was acquired, preserved and cherished by them, and later their descendants.
Within these portraits lie the simple stories of everyday life: visits to town, outings to the beach, meeting friends, walking to work, going to a football game. But behind these ordinary moments are complex social histories that we can only glimpse. The memories offered by those still living embellish these narratives, providing insight into the times and greater scope for interpreting the lived city. These candid portraits offer a vital record of regional life mapped against the streets and beach scapes of this region.
The call-out began in late October 2020 and has yielded some wonderful submissions.
I was delighted to receive correspondence from a 94-year-old man from Wonoona who was a local commercial photographer. His wife Faylande was one of the original beach photographers working in the mid-1940s. She processed her films in the back of a van and delivered prints for clients within eight hours – speedier than Kodak, which took a week to dispatch prints!
My current personal favourites are images of two young women photographed in headscarves and holding wicker baskets as they walk together along Crown Street, Wollongong circa 1945, and a portrait of two young men holding coats over their arms dressed for the football during World War II.
These street photographs record lost moments, lost people, lost places. They are inherently nostalgic, offering a tangible trace of what was,
and that which remains.
Family photographs prompt a deeper reflection on our forebears, the differences that separate us and the similarities that bind us. These portraits of local people in familiar locations are a way of keeping their memory alive and reminding us of who we once were.
The call-out is still open and I’m excited to see what other gems arrive in my submission inbox!
