52 SUBURBS
From the Tasman to the base of the Blue Mountains and spanning 1,687 km2 of sandstone shorelines, scrubby hills vast harbour waters, Sydney is home to 680 suburbs and over four million humans. Feel swamped by those staggering numbers? You shouldn’t – chances are, you’ve probably only come face-to-face with only a tiny slice of what Sydney has to offer.
After losing a chunk of her hand from a nasty spider bite, Louise Hawson spent a year travelling with her daughter and then turned to her hometown for inspiration. Counting herself as lucky, Hawson says, “I didn’t lose a leg to get a wake-up call … I thought, this is ridiculous, I’ve got to get out there and do what I want to do!”
The result was 52 Suburbs, a blog and now exhibition and book in which Hawson recorded a different enclave a week through photos and words. The images are primarily paired in striking, mirror-like diptychs, a spiral staircase with a gnarled twist of trees, a peacock’s plumage with an art-deco gate. From Alexandria to Woolloomooloo, Hawson covered more of Sydney in a year than most of us see in a lifetime, although admits: “I didn’t have a process, I just tried to get around the compass a bit.” The blog became so popular people would beg her to visit their little patch of land, “It was very sweet – people would be like, ‘But we’ve got a lovely rotunda’” laughs Hawson.
For Hawson, the stand-outs seem to exist in moments of contrast. On Auburn: “You drive along and suddenly there are minarets and beautiful botanic gardens – minutes away from bone-shaking Parramatta Rd.” Harris Park: “It was a shocking surprise. Inside an unprepossessing building were millions of beautiful sari-clad women.” On Bonny Rigg: “It blew my mind. Down this one street there is a Chinese Presbyterian church next to a Turkish mosque next to a Lao temple and then down the road is a Chinese temple …”
The exhibition will cover every suburb with a few pictures apiece, although all 1200 images will be viewable on an AV loop. The collection has also been added to the State Library’s collection for perpetuity.
But, back to Sydney, and why so many of us know it so little. “It is sprawly,” admits Hawson. “People get complacent, and stuck in their corner of the world. It takes effort, but it’s worth it to open your eyes, to have a sense of aliveness. The shock of the new – it’s a cheap way to get it.”
May 14-Oct 9, Museum of Sydney, cnr Bridge & Phillip Sts, Sydney, $10, 9251 5988, hht.net.au
