As a young man Chris Lermanis shot a series of social documentary images around the inner city suburb of Fitzroy in Melbourne. They are on show at Colour Factory Gallery.
Enthusiast photographer Chris Lermanis is showing a collection of his historic images from the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy at that city’s Colour Factory Gallery.
Fitzroy Narrows 1965, a collection of black and white prints shot around the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy in the 1960s by photography enthusiast Chris Lermanis will be shown at the Colour Factory Gallery began yesterday and will run until June 27.
Following on from Robert Ashton's very successful exhibition Into the Hollow Mountains which covered similar terrain from the 1970s last year, photographer Chris Lermanis goes back a decade earlier to the mid sixties. It was a time where kids still played cricket on the streets of Fitzroy, demolitions took place with a serious lack of OHS procedure, and workers like milk delivery men wandered the streets.
This is the first public exhibition of these photographs and each has been hand printed on silver gelatin fibre paper in the darkroom and processed to archival standards. Lermanis says of the series Fitzroy Narrows 1965, “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.”
He continues, “I was motivated by a youthful urge to record ‘reality’ and these streetscapes 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 1960s life in the streets and lanes was always unpredictable and interesting. I tried not to be obtrusive or voyeuristic and I trust my images are a faithful documentation of the times.”
The exhibition will run until June 27 and there will be an artist’s talk on Saturday, June 13, at 2pm. The Colour Factory Gallery, at 409 to 429 Gore Street, Fitzroy, Ph: (03) 9419 8756 is open Monday to Friday from 11am to 5pm, and on Saturdays from 1pm to 4pm.
See colourfactory.com.au/cf-photographic-gallery-melbourne/
Billiard Room, cnr Fitzroy and Gertrude Street, 1965.
As a young man Chris Lermanis shot a series of social documentary images around the inner city suburb of Fitzroy in Melbourne. They are on show at Colour Factory Gallery.
