• Pyrmont Bridge looking across to city.
    Pyrmont Bridge looking across to city.
  • Elizabeth Street near King Street intersection
    Elizabeth Street near King Street intersection
  • Circular Quay near First Fleet Park.
    Circular Quay near First Fleet Park.
  • Children crowd around a ladder.
    Children crowd around a ladder.
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Some of the world’s earliest street photographs, capturing many previously unseen views of Sydney from the 1880s, are on display for the first time in a new exhibition at the State Library of NSW.

Crowd Source presents over 50 rare snapshots of Sydneysiders and Sydney’s bustling streets secretly taken with the world’s first hand-held camera – branded the 'Detective Camera' – by amateur local photographer Arthur Syer.

"Arthur Syer took candid photographs of ordinary people in everyday situations which he supplied to illustrators to use as ‘source material’ to help them create a life-like quality and characters in their drawings," says exhibition co-curator Margot Riley.

"Syer's distinctive low angle photographs evocatively capture the buzz of 1880s Sydney showing the shoe-shiners and fruit sellers, road workers, transport deliveries and barrow shopping, queues at Circular Quay, children playing, shipping and scenes at the horses races,” said Riley.

Syer crossed into the publishing industry through his artist brother Walter, who introduced him to internationally renowned English cartoonist, Phil May. Invited to Sydney by The Bulletin in 1885, May often used Syer’s images to add authenticity to the backgrounds for his illustrations, for example drawings of people at the racecourse.

When the hand-held camera was introduced in Australia in the mid-1880s “it became a craze much like the smart phone or selfie stick of today, with photographs for the first time being able to be taken quickly and unnoticed,” said Riley.

The State Library holds over 170 original Arthur Syer photographs – the most extensive collection of early Australian street photography known to exist. With the help of the Flickr community the Library has been able to label many of the images in the collection.

Crowd Source is a free exhibition at the State Library of NSW until 23 August 2015.

Pyrmont Bridge looking across to city. 
Pyrmont Bridge looking across to City.


Elizabeth Street near King Street intersection
Elizabeth Street near King Street intersection.


Children crowd around a ladder.
Children crowd around a ladder.


Circular Quay near First Fleet Park.
Circular Quay near First Fleet Park.

 

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