Close your eyes and imagine Sydney, Australia. What comes to mind? For most it’s Bondi Beach, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the iconic opera house – images so commonly associated with Sydney’s magnificence one doesn’t need to have actually visited to conjure. But any Sydneysider (or frequent visitor) will tell you that Sydney (population 4.5 million) is a sprawling metropolis, made up of more than 600 suburbs (similar to the way Los Angeles is made up of neighborhoods, districts and incorporated cities). Louise Hawson has conducted an extensive exploration of Sydney beyond its top sights, a blog project called “52 Suburbs” that has morphed into a photo exhibit at the Museum of Sydney through October 9.
Hawson has lived and worked in Sydney for 30 years, but had never really thought much about her local surrounds until she discovered digital photography, and went on a hunt to find inner beauty beneath, as she writes “the old and faded or revitalized and repurposed.” Sydney’s suburbs, with names as ordinary-sounding as Auburn, Eastwood, Penrith and Glebe are home more often than not to those who don’t resemble the latest Australian Olympic swimming champion or surf bunny, but more likely young and old, and immigrants from countless Asian and Middle Eastern countries celebrating a multitude of cultures. 
Hawson’s year-long (one suburb per week) blog project is part anthropological study. The photo exhibit has cleverly boiled the blog down to approximately 5 or 6 shots per ‘burb, often using diptychs to place seemingly dissimilar objects side-by side. A brick apartment block named “Utopia” next to an outdoor sea pool or multi-colored cakes next to an elderly woman’s hair being set in matching multi-colored rollers.
The people, the foods, the rituals exposed and juxtaposed showcase Sydney’s ethnic, age and architectural diversity like no guidebook can. For those who can’t get to Sydney in time to take in this exhibit, visit the 52 Suburbs blog. Not only will it change touristy perceptions of Australia’s largest city, it will change the way you look at your own backyard.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
