Arianne Martin, Publicity Assistant with the Historic Houses Trust, recently interviewed Caleb Williams and Holly Schulte, the curators of a new Archive Gallery show presenting the work of retired police photographer, Walter Tuchin.
Arianne: This exhibition is the first time the museum has focused on the work of a single crime scene photographer, as opposed [...]
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The archive reveals many aspects of daily life interrupted by terror or misfortune. The form of the archive is almost as diverse as the subject matter it depicts, comprising numerous media types ranging from large-format glass plate negatives to small, curling photographic prints. My mind often turns to the specifics of the camera and darkroom [...]
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Jean McDonald was a fraudster and confidence trickster. She looks drab and resentful here but her sob stories were ambitious, florid and well-told. Through 1923-24 she methodically extracted money and favours from a gullible Randwick benefactress with tales of heroic war service, sick children and missing husbands. When she needed to [...]
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A window in the upstairs bedroom rattles in its frame, and the shamus knows that his enemies are coming for him. It’s a gentle but potent image, as though the house itself had taken a sharp breath. It’s from Dashiell Hammett’s story, the ‘House on Turk Street’. It replays one of the oldest [...]
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Recently I strapped on my walking boots and joined the Justice and Police Museum guides for Walk the razor’s edge. The walking tour begins on Oxford Street and snakes through Darlinghurst visiting the haunts associated with underworld vice and crime. Much of the terraced landscape remains unaltered from the 1920s and 30s when it served [...]
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