Canberra Show

These portraits are from a series captured over three days at the Canberra Show in February 1990. The Show is part of a tradition of agricultural exhibitions held throughout Australia. It’s a mix of competitions for livestock and wood chopping, carnival rides, sideshow alley and, as I recall it, an opportunity to eat things like Dagwood dogs and fairy floss.

My aim was to document Canberra as a community of people rather than through its role as the national capital. I set up a makeshift studio in one of the exhibition pavilions and invited people to be part of the project. Initially, people hesitated. They were puzzled. They didn’t see themselves as subjects for a formal photograph, and it didn’t make sense that I was doing this without trying to sell them the pictures.

To help things along, I would ask people whether they’d be interested in seeing a similar set of studio portraits from the 1960 Canberra Show. For most people, this clicked. They talked eagerly about how much things had changed in 30 years – back then people dressed more formally, men wore hats, Australia was less diverse and Canberra was predominantly populated by the people brought in to establish it. At this stage, my job became much easier. Once people saw themselves as the 1990 version of Canberra’s history, they were in. We agreed we’d all come back in 30 years to see the exhibition.

A dozen of the 1990 portraits eventually found a home in the Parliamentary Library collection and are occasionally displayed in the members’ area of Parliament House.

Although my pitch for a thirty-year reprise at the 2020 Show fell on deaf ears, the portraits remain a unique record of that time and place — an important slice of Canberra’s history. This sample of portraits is a glimpse into that long-promised exhibition — a look back at who we were before another thirty years slipped by.