In the 1980s I had a photographic studio in Bowden, an old inner city, industrial working class suburb in western Adelaide in South Australia adjacent to the Adelaide Parklands. I taught myself to use large format cameras and to represent a suburb starting to undergo change. I worked part time at Conroys Smallgoods factory in Bowden, and studied for a BA in philosophy and visual arts at Flinders University.
The aim of the project was to represent a historic Bowden before the history of this working class suburb disappeared through the process of urban renewal and gentrification. This renewal was beginning to happen whilst I was living there. These are some of the images from the archive, which I currently going through to select images for a book.
Other images from this project can be seen on The Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia weblog, which is the way a draft of the book is being constructed.
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[…] As mentioned in an earlier post of this blog the first section of The Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia consists of street photography or snapshots that were made made in Melbourne and Adelaide with 35mm cameras and black and white film. This section has been reframed as part of a snapshot culture or snapshot aesthetic and it leads into the second Bowden section. […]