|
November 19, 2008
I've been photographing around the Port River and Port Adelaide industrial environ During the last decade the area has undergone development in terms of disinvestment and urban decay--- eg., the old woolstores--- and urban renewal with the new residential housing around the Port River at Birkenhead.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Outer Harbor, Port River, Port Adelaide, South Australia, 2008
The renewal focuses on the waterfront and middle- income housing has aimed to re-make Port Adelaide as an imaginary place of harmony and prosperity. This is a counter to the postwar decline and devastation and it is different from the working class grassroots efforts to resist decay and disinvestment and craft alternative futures in the 1980s. That craft alternative future never took off.
The images of renewal are the standard ones of the good life---the sun-drenched marina from the balcony of our condominium, wine glass in hand, partner by our side.In this imaginary place of harmony and prosperity the working class past past, as a by gone historical era, is romanticised. It becomes a location for weddings and fashion shoots.
|
comments closed due to heavy spam on this post