The roots of Walking Adelaide are in the Bowden Archives photography of the 1980s when I walked into and around Adelaide’s CBD whilst I was living in Bowden. Some of those archival photos can be seen in thmy recent is gallery on the Bowden Archives website. It was reworking of the old MA into the Bowden Archives that reconnected me to the critical writings about the city, modernity and photography — eg., those of Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer.
Those early critical writings about the city, modernity and photography are historically important, and they need to be explored and evaluated in the historical context of Adelaide’s transformation from an industrial to a postindustrial city.
In 2015 we left Adelaide during this transformation when the little bars were opening up, lane ways were being constructed, and the Adelaide City Council was encouraging people to return to living in the CBD. The Covid-19 pandemic has knocked a hole in this shift to a more people friendly CBD. There are less people in the city, the clothes shops in Rundle Street East and the cafes are closed, and the emerging vibrancy of inner city life has evaporated. The city is still car centric.
So the Walking Adelaide project has some historical depth and developing it requires a website rather than a blog. The Posthaven blog has served its purpose. Hence the interest in Square Space. Would it be more useful than WordPress? Or should I stay with WordPress? Hence the playing around with the Square Space demo.
Update: June 21
I have been using the six months trial to build a Walking Adelaide website on Square Space.There are several galleries and a number of blog posts built from working through the digital archives circa 2013-15. I cannot access the film ones as the old Mac Pro (circa 2009) died and I am currently putting a new computer together based on the newly released Mac Studio.
Update: September 15
The demo Walking Adelaide website is no longer. The website is now live. There was more material than I’d remembered in the archives and the project had definitely outgrown the simple blog format. So I am pleased that I have taken the plunge to Square Space. Though the website is looking much better than I expected, the template really needs a designer to give it a facelift. That is the next step.
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