This is one of the behind-the-scenes shots taken for our upcoming exhibition The 80s are back. This was taken in our conservation photography lab as we were using the photographic studio to shoot the audio-visual content that will be featured in a special display in the gallery.
This exhibition will explore the decade’s styles, trends and subcultures, and how they found expression in fashion, design, music, film and television. Keep an eye on our 80s blog where you can nominate someone who was prominent in the 80s for a Q&A series that we will feature online
Photography by Sotha Bourn
© All rights reserved
This stereoview showing the Commercial Bank in George Street was taken from a building located near to the centre of the city in what we now call Martin Place. It is one of a set of images from William Hetzer’s stereoviews. Barrack Lane, now known as Barrack Street, is on the left and one of Sydney’s shortest streets. The Commercial Bank building is no longer in George Street but the façade of the building was donated to Sydney University in 1923. On the other side of the street is the original David Jones building that was built in 1838.
Stereoview by William Hetzer
No known copyright restrictions
We have just released eighteen images taken from the Sydney International Exhibition Album featuring images taken of the Garden Palace from around the 1880s. This palace was the main feature of the Sydney exhibition which was over 244 metres long and had a floor space of 112,000 metres.
Geoff Barker has been contributing some posts to Photo of the Day about the Garden Palace that are from this album. Due to the interest in this collection they have since been added to the Commons on Flickr under no known copyright restrictions. Geoff writes:
“The main feature of the Sydney exhibition, like the international ones that preceded it, was an ornate building, the ‘Garden Palace’, which was over 244 metres long and had a floor space of over 112,000 metres. This building, and a number of smaller ones, was erected in the grounds of the Sydney Domain where it dominated the Sydney skyline for three brief years before the ‘Garden Palace’ was destroyed by fire in 1882.
These photographs are significant to the Powerhouse museum because the ‘Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum’, as the Powerhouse was then known, had earmarked objects on display to be among its first acquisitions. In 1880 a committee started selecting specimens and many of these were housed in the Ceylon court in the Garden Palace building.”
These images are also significant because they give us an insight into what this building was like before it burned to the ground.
Photography by Messrs Richards and Company
No known copyright restrictions
Sydney’s George Street Markets once stood on the site now occupied by the Queen Victoria building, (QVB). At the time that this photograph was taken, photography of interiors was constrained by lighting conditions and it was the presence of skylights or large windows that often determined the production of an image. Even in the available light, many of the people in this scene are blurred due to the length of the exposure that was required.
Photograph by Henry King. Tyrrell Collection
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Kathy Hackett, Photo Librarian
Centaurus A is a radio galaxy that is the nearest active, supermassive black hole in the Universe. This image is the first to show its full extent at radio wavelengths, covering almost 10 degrees from end to end, and twice the extent of the Southern Cross. The huge reddish radio lobes combine data from the Parkes radio telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array at Narrabri. At the centre of the lobes is the optical image of the galaxy known as NGC 5128. This was also discovered in Australia, by James Dunlop, at Parramatta Observatory, in 1826. This inner image (inset right) is pretty stunning too, and includes submillimeter radio data (orange) and Xray data (blue).
Outer image credit: Ilana Feain, Tim Cornwell & Ron Ekers (CSIRO/ATNF). ATCA northern middle lobe pointing courtesy R. Morganti (ASTRON); Parkes data courtesy N. Junkes (MPIfR).
Inner image credit: (Optical), ESO/WFI/AAO (UKST); (Submillimetre), MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al.; (X-ray) NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al.
Inner and outer images combined by David Malin.
Post by David Malin, From Earth to the Universe team.
This great image, which forms part of the David Mist photographic archive, was taken in Paddington in 1969. This glimpse of daily life around the streets of Paddington was one of the images that didn’t make it into David’s book on the life in around the city titled ‘Sydney’ that was published in 1969. Around this time David produced two documentary style photographic publications that were quite different to his commercial fashion photography, one being on life in and around Sydney and the other about Australian women.
This shot features the Dandy Dog salon that used to be located in Paddington which was apparently one of the first grooming salons in NSW.
Photography by David Mist
© All rights reserved
This image was taken by photographer Tom Lennon on board a ship on the 2nd March 1934. There was an inscription on the box that this negative was located in that reads ‘Mr Grant [indecipherable] Zealand / D.B.N. 2/3/34′. The magazine that the man in the centre is holding is a copy of the monthly industry magazine, “The Australian Music Maker and Dance Band News”. This was published in Sydney by the Australian Dance Band News Ltd from 1932 and its editors were Eric J. Sheldon 1932-36 and George Hart 1936-40.
There are a few images from the Tom Lennon photographic archive that I have been loading to the Commons on Flickr recently that were taken around the ship and wharf, including this image Group [farewelling Eric Sheldon and band?] on wharf and possibly this one taken on the ship, Eric Sheldon’s bass drum.
Photography by Tom Lennon
No known copyright restrictions
Welcome to Movember! Formerly known as November, this is the month when thousands of men around Australia bring back the moustache in order to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues, notably prostate cancer and depression. Now in its sixth year, the Movember Foundation has raised almost $62 million globally and continues in its efforts to change the attitude men have towards their health.
Statistics show that men have a shorter life expectancy than women. Though the reasons for this are numerous, part of the problem is the stigma many men associate with openly discussing their health with others. Studies prove that men still access health services less frequently than women, often due to embarrassment in sharing their medical concerns and questions with a doctor. Movember aims to address this issue and change the community’s way of thinking by approaching the subject in a lighthearted manner, encouraging men to feel confident in discussing their health issues with friends, family and their general practitioner.
Curiosity in this upcoming charity event led me to carry out an online search of our collection, which returned several photographs of men sporting some rather impressive moustaches, such as this photograph taken by Hedda Morrison at a folk festival in Stuttgart, Germany in 1931. Wearing a jaunty tri-cornered hat and buttoned vest, I’m sure this gentleman would have had no shortage of admirers.
And for all the men out there wondering about the allure of a moustache to today’s modern woman, please consider the old English proverb ‘A man without a moustache is like a cup of tea without sugar’. On that thought, I’m off to the café.
Photography by Hedda Morrison
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Kate Scott, Assistant Registrar
The association of bats with Halloween may have originated with the discovery of the vampire bat in the 17th century.
These two taxidermy specimens are Australian flying-foxes, otherwise known as fruit bats. They are mammals, and are members of the Pteropodidae family, found mostly on the eastern coast. Flying foxes are very social animals and often roost in large numbers. A cloud of dark winged creatures travelling across the evening sky is a familiar sight in Sydney when members of the Royal Botanic Gardens’ flying-fox colony venture out from their permanent camp in search of nectar, fruit and pollen in the local area.
There is more about the Australian flying-fox at the Botanic Gardens Trust
Photograph: Australian flying foxes, by Henry King. Tyrrell collection
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Kathy Hackett, Photo Librarian
Crux, the Southern Cross, is the smallest constellation in the sky yet one of the most distinctive, at least to those of us who live in the southern hemisphere. It was once part of Centaurus, where the bright stars Acrux and Mimosa could easily be imagined as the rear hooves of the rearing mythical centaur. However, when Christian sailors began to explore southwards in the 16th century, this memorable asterism took on a new significance.
Alongside the Southern Cross is a very distinctive dark shape known as the Coalsack, much used by southern hemisphere astronomers as an indicator of a dark sky. The Southern Cross is visible from most of Australia at some time every night of the year. Its long axis points towards the south celestial pole, so the Cross itself acts as a very convenient circumpolar clock, compass and calendar.
Credit: Akira Fujii/David Malin Images
Post by David Malin, From Earth to the Universe team.
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