Suppose that you could travel back in time to a Melbourne city street from 150 years ago or even longer. What might meet your eye that has eluded historys gaze?
Shutter City presents city street views spanning the hurly-burly decades of the 1850s to 1870s, between the gold rushes and Marvellous Melbourne. Robyn Annear peers into every shadowy corner to reveal postcard streetscapes as miraculous time-capsules, packed with hidden-in-plain-sight historical detail. Her discoveries she calls them sparks illuminate and decode each of Shutter Citys street views.
Among the sightings: barbers poles, drinking fountains, the three gilded balls of a pawnbrokers sign, gleaming white cups at a coffee stall, street-vendors carts, neighbourhood dogs (and a cat), assorted ghosts, and ladders lots of ladders.
Let Shutter City be your time-machine and Robyn Annear your guide: her lively and insightful commentary weaves the street views and their sparks into a vivid narrative of a near-forgotten Melbourne and the photographers who captured it.
