The Students

1988

These images were made by a group of photography students at Edith Cowan University under the tutelage of renowned photographer Kevin Ballantine. Held in the Subiaco Museum, they were commissioned by the City of Subiaco to celebrate the 1988 Australian Bicentenary. Unfortunately, the artist names for the individual photographs were not recorded in the archive and remain unknown. However, this anonymous lens provides an interesting entry point into the subject, leaving space for the viewer to project into, to wonder. As an aggregation of multiple individual perspectives, the archive captures a collective sense of place and reveals insight into the priorities and values of the time. We see images of the inside of Subiaco's typical Federation-era homes, some populated with archetypal figures and families—an elderly couple seated in a lounge room, a nuclear family around their dining table. Many of Subiaco's most loved sites and institutions are also pictured, from the local football club and the primary school, to the Subiaco Hotel and Regal Theatre. There are reflections of life, work and leisure here. What emerges is a portrait of an aspirational neighbourhood growing out of its working-class past and looking forward to a more cosmopolitan future. 

All images shown here are courtesy of and copyright City of Subiaco.

Michelle Taylor

1997

The year 1997 saw the City of Subiaco make two major photography commissions: this one from Michelle Taylor and another from Sonya Sears, also presented in this archive. The focus of these commissions appears to be Subiaco's social and economic make-up, with subjects in Taylor's work including a number of different factories and workshops, as well as the suburb's central train station and markets. Almost all of the buildings and landmarks photographed here have since been demolished or developed. There is also the notable presence here of Subiaco's football history, with images of fans commuting through the train station toward the Subiaco Oval, which closed in 2017—a reminder of the suburb's once definitive weekend activity. 

All images shown here are courtesy of and copyright City of Subiaco.

Sonya Sears

1997

Sonya Sears was a social documentary photographer working in Perth/Boorloo in the late 1980s and 1990s. These images were made under commission from the City of Subiaco over a series of months in 1997. The City's intention was to capture significant changes being undertaken in the area, and as a result the work documents a number of then-prominent factories and workshops, cleared land, and construction sites. This selection is taken from a much larger archive of hundreds of images of the Subiaco area, with a particular emphasis on the areas around the central train station, which underwent modernisation in the period after these photos were taken, and the light industrial streets to its west, much of which is now comprised of medium-density and high-rise housing. Whether consciously or not, the images capture an aspirational suburb-in-the-making. Sears later died from cystic fibrosis.

All images shown here are courtesy of and copyright City of Subiaco.