Street Photography

Overview

Thanks to a public call-out by Sydney Living Museums, an incredibly rare compilation of our city's photographic history will soon be on display. Street Photography will exhibit at the Museum of Sydney from Saturday, December 8 through Sunday, July 21 presenting black and white, postcard-sized candid photos of everyday Sydneysiders from the mid-20th century.

This form of street photography gained popularity in Sydney in the mid-1930s and continued until the late 1950s, so many of the images that'll be on display depict the everyday life of locals living through the Depression, World War II and postwar periods.

This exhibition has been wholly dependent on public assistance and interaction. Of the 1500 images drawn from private family albums, 250 were chosen to be digitised and enlarged for display — many of which have never been publicly exhibited before.

Running alongside the exhibition is a concurrent showcase by nationally renowned photomedia artist Anne Zahalka. She has restaged nine of the original images using each photo's subject or their descendants, placing them in similar locations from the image. Zahalka's collection also includes new present-day images taken around Sydney, which act as a modern homage to the art.

Access to the Street Photography exhibition is included in museum entry ($15). For more information, visit the website.

Image: Unidentified couple, 1950, Martin Place, Sydney, Ikon Studio. Courtesy of Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums.