Fitzroy – half a century ago

CF Gallery is thrilled to present to you Fitzroy Narrows 1965.  Opening next Thursday (4/6) from 6-8pm, join Chris and the CF team as we reflect on a neighbourhood so familiar, yet so vastly changed.  For those of you who attended Robert Ashton’s ‘Into the Hollow Mountains’ late last year, Lermanis’ work will strike particularly hard.  Ashton documented the changing landscape of Fitzroy during the mid 1970s and while Lermanis’ and Ashton shared a common ground, the difference that a single decade made is quite spectacular.

Why take a camera down a suburban street to photograph the ordinary everyday lives of my fellow Australians? The streets in Fitzroy and Collingwood were far from ordinary to a 25 year old living in bayside Brighton. It seemed like a foreign country.  I felt like a tourist.  Motivated by a youthful urge to record ‘reality’, these street-scapes were the ideal subject matter for my style of photojournalism.  Major changes were happening in Fitzroy. The Housing Commission of Victoria was demolishing old houses to build new high rise flats. Over many months I witnessed  the transformation. Only later did I become aware of the impact this ‘slum clearing and urban renewal’ had on the local community.  In the mid 1960’s life in the streets and lanes was, to me, always unpredictable and interesting. I tried not to be obtrusive or voyouristic and trust the images are a faithful documentation of the times.

This is the first public exhibition of these photographs. Each is individually hand printed on silver gelatin fibre paper in my darkroom and processed to archival standards.

RSVP to the Facebook event here.

Image: The bottle-O, Moor St