The Built Environment
The city is the dominant site in the photographs on exhibition, an appropriate fact given Australia’s position as one of the most urbanised nations on earth. The photographs deal with the different developmental stages of the city, as well as changing attitudes to it.
In the pre-war period the city is represented in relatively gentle and romantic terms. Max Dupain’s image of Sydney commuters is an abstracted play of light and form. The much photographed Sydney Harbour Bridge functions as a triumph of engineering, a thing of beauty and a symbol of modernity, not simply in relation to Sydney, but to Australia as a whole.
By the 1960s the city is seen in increasingly problematic terms, as a site of traffic congestion and pollution. This is strikingly realised in David Moore’s photograph of two struggling bike-riders pictured against the industrial backdrop of the NSW city of Newcastle.
Representations of the built environment have also changed over time, culminating in Wolfgang Sievers’ dramatic images of modern office buildings, bridges and industrial structures.