I have been going through my digital archives circa 2013 /2014 in order to start to look for, and select, material for the proposed Adelaide book. This builds on The Bowden Archives and Industrial Modernity book which I am currently completing. Sadly, there was less visual material in the 2013 photographic archive than I remembered or hoped for. I was disappointed, but I did come across this mugshot poster by Peter Drews.
The argument in the introduction is that photography was substantively associated with the modernist city in the 20th century. There was a historical relationship between urban spaces, urban representations and the photographic/cinematic form. Photography was part of the experience of modernity, especially that on the flâneur, or citystroller, a figure of modernity characterised by their detached observations of urban life, being simultaneously of the city, and yet distanced from it by their spectatorial gaze.
Prior to mid twenthieth century modernism Adelaide was a planned city of red brick and sandstone within a self-contained rectilinear grid encircled by parks and green space, never to be built upon, with its discrete zoning of dwelling, work, transportation and recreation. It was Colin Hassell and John Morphett who rejected the established classical/gothic revival architectural order in early 20th century Adelaide.
The modernist ethos was to make a modern world, to sweep away the old and, out of chaos, build stability. Concrete was the stuff of dreams of a progressive, dynamic cosmopolitanism. Adelaide did not experience the modernist Brutalist style of building deployed to satisfy the urgent demand for cost-effective post-war housing on a mass scale that was frequently associated with socialist utopian ideals, and dreams of collective living.
One of the themes that I explored off and on when I was living in Adelaide's CBD was the modernist architecture from the 1960s and 1970s. These pictures are of the backs of those overlooked "form follows function" buildings along Pirie St which survived the mindless razing of so much of Adelaide's built heritage from the 1960s to 1980s:
Many of the modernist buildings that are gathered together in the Victoria Square precinct are of the 1970s butalist genre, such as the Department for Education's headquarters on Flinders Street and Wakefield House opposite St Francis Xavier's Cathedral. Whilst photographing these kind of buildings I realised the importance of light to architecture and how it can transform a building completely, both inside and out. This is especially the case with the roughly textured béton brut buildings.
When we lived in Adelaide's CBD in the first decade and half of the 21st century one of my favourite afternoon poodlewalks was in Adelaide's west parklands, especially Park 23 (G.S. Kingston Park or Wirrarninthi) with its sculpture trail plus the heritage listed West Terrace Cemetery. Wirraninthi used to be called Wirranendi, and over the years that I was living in the CBD I witnessed its extensive replanting with trees, shrubs, grasses and the ecological rehabilitation of the stormwater wetlands.
We--the two poodles and me-- would spend many an hour wandering around and exploring the cemetery in the late afternoon. It was safe territory. The poodles could explore the fenced grounds whilst I could take photos. I just had to keep an eye out for the cyclists riding through the grounds and for the occasional graveyard visitor. I usually went to the forgotten, rundown areas, which I found more to be more interesting than the newer, and more flashy Italian/Greek grave stones. I thought that the latter were excessive--over way the top.