EXHIBITION REVIEWS

REVIEW OF PETER DOYLES CITY OF SHADOWS

Katherine Biber

Katherine Biber of the Department of Law, Macquarie University, reviews curator Peter Doyles City of
Shadows. Exhibition by the Justice and Police Museum, Sydney, New South Wales. Entry: adult $8,
child/concession $4, family $17. Showing until 11 February 2007.
City of Shadows is the result of exhaustive and dirty labour by the author and scholar Peter
Doyle, who sorted through four tonnes of photographic negatives and plates taken by the NSW
police between the 1900s and 1950s. Moved between premises, rescued from water damage, and
now stored in the Justice and Police Museum, most of the photographs have become separated
from the documents and files which could aid in their interpretation. Instead, Doyles project
relies on careful deliberation and speculation, chasing clues, drawing inferences, and positing
possibilities.
In the first room, visitors are introduced to an area of Sydney once known as The Horseshoe,
encircling Darlinghurst, Newtown, Redfern and Haymarket, the site of the citys illicit pleasures.
Here we are shown photographs of car crashes, streetscapes, bedrooms, the scenes of industrial
accidents, a mangled pram leaning precariously against a wall, and a photograph of a lost child
with the hand-written note Child, unknown, found wandering at large. From an envelope
marked Tivoli Dressing Room Fire 1945 Doyle has retrieved a photograph of a man in a suit,
probably a police detective, wearing the floor-length tulle skirt of a showgirl.
It is here that Doyles central theme begins to emerge, in which he explores and compares
the nature of photography and the nature of crime. A caption notes that The unsentimental view
of urban life was at odds with the picturesque photographic conventions of that time. Doyle is
reminding us to look at the photographs not only as evidence of human malice or misfortune,
but as haunting and beautiful evocations of times, places and people.
In the next room, visitors can watch three short films documenting the photographic collection,
each accompanied by Doyles voice-over, which manages to capture his sense of discovery and
wonder, but also his painstaking research. The film Our Dark Places (11 minutes) examines
undocumented photographs, mysteries about mysteries, where Doyle points out that we are now
the detectives, examining what he calls details pregnant with meaning. He pores over the
minutiae of the lives that were lived in these places: housekeeping practices, products on shelves,
private habits. Of one image he says, Bedroom in a respectable house. No idea what happened
here, leaving us to imagine some unnamed trauma, before moving onto the next photograph.
The film The Beat (13 minutes) shows the streets and premises of crime scenes. Where the
crime is an accident or fire, a crowd has usually assembled. Often, the streets are depopulated,
and the crime is unknown. Doyle has taken care to find these places and tell us where they are,
sometimes telling us how theyve changed or not since the photograph was taken. The film
Rogues Gallery (13 minutes) documents Doyles examination of mug shots, and the aesthetic
changes that mug shot photography underwent through the period represented in the collection.
Whilst the initial images show a person in both front and profile views, gradually we witness a
change in style, as photographers asked their subjects to assume their own poses. Each photograph
is different: sometimes a group is assembled looking like a motley team, often there are pairs

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likely accomplices standing casually together. Doyle speculates that, for some of these people,
this is the only time that they were ever photographed. Some seem to be dressed in finery. Some
smile, some glare. One has the caption This man refused to open his eyes. Doyle notes that
some of them were frauds and confidence tricksters, as if we might diagnose their dishonesty
from their faces. Later, as the nature of drug abuse changes, the people in the photographs change,
with a sheen of pallor and pain apparent in their faces.
The final room is titled Dead End, and it narrates the murder of Ernst Hofmann in May
1942 and the trial of his killers. A sordid tale of prostitution, gambling and violence, it is told
in a cartoon titled The Fat Sheila Hit Me, written by Doyle and drawn by Eddie Campbell,
parallel to which is exhibited photographs and objects from the case file. The objects are of
particular interest, as they demonstrate the growing reliance on forensic technologies in criminal
prosecutions, including fingerprinting and blood analysis.
Accompanying the exhibition is an impressive publication, City of Shadows: Sydney Police
Photographs 1912 1948 (Historic Houses Trust, $65) by Peter Doyle with Caleb Williams.
With short essays on the nature of police photographic archives, and the stories that are known
about some of the images in this collection, this is primarily a collection of the photographs,
beautifully edited, printed as large format black-and-white reproductions. It contains many more
images than are on display in the exhibition, and captures precisely the tone of Doyles curatorial
voice, which looms like a spectre over this compelling and important archive.

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS