TO SOME, it’s ugly, but it’s ours. And that makes it beautiful.
‘It’ being the people, the places and the way of life that identify the west that have become the subject of a body of work by Seddon photographer Warren Kirk.
Kirk, a Seddon resident for 18 years, has been taking pictures for about 20, capturing the everyday objects, people and their ways of life – from the weatherboard workers’ cottages to the shoe repairers and barbers, who have been in business from more than half a century, their skills spanning generations.
“It’s about capturing it before it goes,” Kirk says. “These things have a certain charm and beauty. It’s sort of ugly, but it’s beautiful with its warts and all. The heart and soul shows through and without any pretensions.”
That sentiment could aptly describe the west, which is the subject of a body of work that has become known as Westography.
“I’m capturing a moment in time, being a documentary photographer capturing something that has a short-time scale. It’s filled with people from around here, people in businesses who’ve been there for a very long time.”
Architect Robin Boyd dubbed it “the Australian Ugliness” in a book of the same name published in 1960. In it, he railed against the “aesthetic crimes” proliferating in the suburbs.
In a similar vein, Kirk is waging a one-man campaign against a new wave of soullessness that is taking over.
“It’s changing, unfortunately and those houses are being replaced by townhouses and apartments and we’ll lose that charm and just become like everywhere else and lose our diversity.
Seddon and Yarraville in 10 to 15 years will be unrecognisable. Every time you drive down the street there’s another house knocked over because it has a bit of land and there’s horrible townhouses in its place. “I don’t see what I do as art. I’m just a documentary photographer, a framer. I put a frame around something we see every day and that helps us see it a lot clearer.”
■Westography opens on May 18 at Post Industrial Design, 638 Barkly Street, West Footscray. More: postindustrialdesign.com.au
