Monthly Archive for February, 2009

Yesterday Marinco ventured out of our photographic studio to record some ‘photo documentary’ shots during lunch and ended up at this wharf at Woolloomooloo where the large passenger ship the Queen Mary 2 was docked. He wanted to capture the vast size of this ship in comparison to the people sitting on the wharf going about their own business.

This passenger liner is the “largest, longest, widest, tallest and most expensive passenger liner in history” according to QM2 . This liner is 345 metres in length and 72 metres high. You can read more about the QM2 on this Sydney morning herald story. Did you go to see this passenger liner?

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0

Large cannon on circular track aimed at Harbour, originally uploaded by Powerhouse Museum Collection.

This image titled ‘Large cannon on circular track aimed at Harbour’ from the Phillips photographic collection has sparked some interesting conversations between members of the Commons project on Flickr. The Phillips collection was acquired in the 1980s without documentation and little information about the photographer, however we believe that Arthur Phillips may in fact be the photographer. One of our Flickr contacts has done some interesting research linking images from the collection to paintings by Tom Roberts including this one. This member (beachcomberaustralia) has also identified the location as Middle Head, whilst another member (lifeasdaddy) has identified the mound on the right hand side of the cannon to be an earthen berm. These were apparently built after the cannons were installed to prevent adjacent cannon to fire upon another. This image from the National Library of Australia’s collection clearly shows a berm in this image title ‘Battery on Middle Head, New South Wales’by Charles Bayliss, c.1850-1897.

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QVB2, originally uploaded by sarahrhodes.

Today’s post is courtesy of the photographer, Sarah Rhodes, who shares her story about taking contemporary comparison shots to match the images from our Tyrrell photographic collection for our group on Flickr Tyrrell Today.

“Armed with several prints from the Tyrrell Collection, I set out to find out exactly how much Sydney’s business district has changed in 100 years. It was strange to find that many of the magnificent examples of architecture I was looking at in my bundle of photographs had been demolished during the 1960s. Forty years ago does not seem to be very long ago to be making, what I believe to be, devastating decisions. The State Premier Wing of the State Office Block replaced the Free Public Library in 1967, and then in 2004 Renzo Piano’s Aurora Place was built on the site. The Australian Club continues to operate from 165 Macquarie St but is no longer the stately building it was. The Australia Hotel on Castlereagh St, known as a wartime landmark and ‘the hotel of the Commonwealth’, was demolished in 1971 and replaced by a 35-storey office block built by its namesake MLC Insurance and Finance group. I tried to imagine why local governments would have agreed to knock down architecture now so highly valued.

After a little research I discovered it was not until the Bicentenary in 1988 that Australians became aware of their national heritage. Since then, restoration and renovation has become very fashionable. The trend has consumed homeowners and fuelled an entertainment industry, by making television shows like Channel 9’s Renovation Rescue.

My Tyrrell ‘Then and Now’ expedition started by visiting the Queen Victoria Building. As you can see in this picture it has seen few changes since it was completed in 1898. At the time it was built, the economy was in deep recession and so the government used the project of building a fresh produce market to employ a large number of workmen. The building was drastically remodeled in the 1930s and faced demolition in the 1950s. Thankfully, it was saved by a Malaysian company, which restored it to its former glory.

This experience has left me looking at every building and analysing its historical value. It has made me ask how we are assessing which buildings have heritage value and which are replaceable. I look around my suburb at gorgeous 1940s and 1950s bungalows being converted into modern townhouses and apartments where rendering and huge panels of glass dominate. Will we look back at those lost homes with regret or will we be happy to have adapted to our climate, creating light and airy suntraps?

I recommend anyone who is interested in architecture or our colonial history to take a walk through Sydney’s CBD with a few print outs that have been geo-tagged from the Powerhouse Museum’s Tyrrell Collection. You may even be pleasantly surprised to find many of the original buildings still standing proudly.”

References: Demolished Houses of New South Wales, an exhibition curated by James Broadbent and Joy Hughes, mounted at Elizabeth Bay House in 1988.

Photography by Sarah Rhodes
© All rights reserved.

This image was taken at the media preview for the exhibition Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination. In this exhibition you can see over 80 models, props and costumes from all six Star Wars films, Luke’s original landspeeder from Episode 1V A New Hope, scale models of X- and Y-wing starfighters, the Rebel Blockade Runner Tantive IV, the Royal Naboo Starship and much more. The exhibition is on until the end of April. You can also see more photos taken on the opening night here.

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0

This image comes from our David Mist photographic archive that was acquired by the Museum in the 90s. This archive covers commercial and fashion photography from London, Sydney, Europe, USA, Asia and Mexico from 1957-1995 and features the work David produced for the publication ‘Sydney, A book of photographs’. This book, first published in 1969, features some fantastic candid images taken around the inner-city suburbs of Sydney including Paddington, Potts Point and Balmain.

This was photographed in Paddington at an antique shop called ‘Emma Chiset’ that was situated in Thorne Street and was taken around the corner from this image also shot by David. You can just see the little girl standing in the doorway on the right-hand side of the shop.

Photography by David Mist
© All rights reserved