Portraits of people and places in the Belconnen Mall (1989-90)
This is a book of 25 portraits taken in the Belconnen Mall in 1989 and 1990. The Belconnen Mall is a big shopping centre in the north-west suburbs of Canberra, Australia’s national capital. The photographic collection is part Canberra’s history, but with a focus on everyday people in ordinary places.
The book includes three sets of portraits taken in different places in the mall. The first series captures scenes at a stairwell landing, with passers-by pausing for the camera as they made their way through one of the mall’s parking areas – effectively a portrait of the stairwell landing. The next includes salespeople, promotional staff and performers working in the mall’s common areas and supermarkets. In the last series, regular customers of one of the mall’s cafes complement their photographs with handwritten messages that lend an extra dimension to their images, making them into something of a self-portrait.
This collection was first exhibited at the Belconnen Arts Centre (Belco Arts), very close to where the photographs were taken, from Dec 2023 until February 2024.
As well as reproducing the images from the collection, the book includes reflections by the photographer on the creation of the portraits, the people pictured, the mall, the nature of the times and the issues related to exhibiting the images for the first time so long after they were created.
(Soft cover, perfect bound, 256x210mm, 66 pages / $5.95 (AUD) flat rate postage applies, even for multiple books)
