City of Shadows

The City of Shadows, compiled by Peter Doyle, brings us a selection of Sydney police photographs from 1912-1948.

Many of the book's images have no accompanying details and so Doyle might gladly be excused for therefore attaching them to the art world. However, is this premise enough for a book, and by making them objects of meditation are we not losing something?

Take photograph #4 and its caption for example: Probably 1930's, details unknown

Some pleasure, I concede, in the mystery, but was it taken to give us pleasure and does it not raise more questions than it answers?

Particularly with these images, taken as crime photography, the argument that the absence of context brings alive ones own imagination feels like a defilement of the police department's intentions, their purpose, I would presume, to document for the purposes of evidence.

In many cases, though, as in the photo #1, I see shades of character behind the eyes, a wary, withdrawn or even slightly defiant look. I see, clothes and indications that provoke my detective spirit. Here we have a phychological document, though soon we're back again to the, who, why, what, where, when? How can I make a case, or be judge?

It's easy to dump these images at the door of art, like the recent flurry of homeless vernacular photography turned arty-fact, ie into art books. Images of these sorts appear so well composed or anti-composed, even modern (save the sepia) and they all contain the holy grail of 'documentary' photography: authenticity, precisely because they were made without artistic intent... we think anyway.

One or two further observations: The book is 233 pages long, many pictures take on the double spread, some are full page. The question is, considering how many pictures there are in the archive and how difficult it must have been to break down to the final choice, why were so few images chosen and expanded over so much page spread? There are other petty niggles, but otherwise, there is pleasure in at least partial knowledge of an old criminal world, a shiver or two at the thought of what might have happened. There is some gain too, for the photograhers eye, for an artistic intention.

Most of the images can be dug out here: http://www.pictureaustralia.org

17 September 2008 - 8:35am — Philip Cartland