graffiti in Bowden

The graffiti in Bowden during the 1980s was  often quite blunt and direct with no ambiguity in the message: I interpreted  it as the signs of the increasing emphasis  on law and order as a response to the local residents /industry politics, … Read More

Bowden’s residential architecture

The residential architecture in industrial Bowden prior to its recent gentrification consisted of cheaply built working class cottages. They were dark inside, full of salt damp during the winter and hothouses in the summer.  This housing  had no insulation and … Read More

Bowden portraits

These are a couple more  Bowden portraits  that  supplement  the ones currently  in  the  Bowden portfolio on my  website. I didn’t do many formal portraits. As I mentioned in the Preface I worked part time at Conroys Smallgoods  in Bowden to buy … Read More

towards another photographic history

In his essay ‘Australian Made’ in Each Wild Idea: Writing , Photography, History  (2000) Geoffrey Batchen  contests the view that  Australian photography after 1945  was a dependent shadow of trends in the United States. He says that  this assumption underpins … Read More

An empty urbanscape

The empty urban streets of the inner suburb of Bowden bear witness to the slow and steady disappearance of the blue collar, inner suburb working class through the process of de-industralization. The streets are the sites of  this trauma and … Read More

Portraits

I only made a few portraits of people in the city of Adelaide during the 1980s. One place was Valentino’s Restaurant in Gays Arcade, off Adelaide Arcade, near Twin Street.  My sister used to work there as a waitress whilst she … Read More