Photography Book Review | Brian Rope
EDGE
| Kayla Adams
EDGE, by Kayla Adams, is one of three independently published photo-books about Canberra recently launched. As do the other two, this book explores the author’s personal relationship to the city.
The book looks at the urban and built environment of the Woden town centre through the idea of Edge City. I was not previously familiar with the term but learned that it originated in the United States for a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional downtown or central business district, in what had previously been a suburban residential or rural area.
The term was popularised by the 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau. He argued that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the 19th-century central downtown.
So, it is an urban planning phenomenon where new, separate cities spring up around older, established ones. Is that what Woden town centre is - or is becoming? Adams says, rather than it “springing up”, Canberra chose the edge city form consciously. Whether that is so or not, certainly the city has been changing in recent years and continues to do so.
Adams has approached her exploration by focussing on the Lovett Tower, that 93-metre-tall building in Woden’s town centre which once was the city’s tallest building. Current redevelopment plans would see it grow from 24 to 28 storeys and again become the tallest building. Another developer’s plans could see a similar height building nearby. Whatever changes are made to existing buildings and regardless of new additions in the area, this photobook is timely. The views featured in it inevitably will change or be completely lost. The iconic tower may no longer be easily noticed from surrounding suburbs.
Lyons house study & Lovett Tower 2, 2018 - Kayla Adams
All
the images in EDGE were shot between 2018 and 2021. They are a mixture of black
and white and colour photographs. Around half show the Lovett Tower. There it
is - glimpsed through trees, through the
mesh of a structure in a decaying parcel of land, and above the rooftops of
suburbia during both day and night.
Lovett Tower and trees at Lyons apartments, 2020 - Kayla Adams
Other
images include views from Mount Taylor, the demolition of the Lyons apartments
directly across from the Town Centre, and an assortment of pieces of the
surrounding suburbia. The Pitch’n’Putt, which also has closed, is another featured
subject.
Woden Pitch'n'Putt & Lovett Tower 2, 2018 - Kayla Adams
People
themselves are not seen in the works, but the artist’s presence as author is
nevertheless evident. It is not a book
simply to be flicked through. Time should be taken to examine and consider each
image, looking at their compositions and thinking about why Adams chose their
locations and contents. Doing so, viewers will notice details that reveal
changes during the short period of years in which they were taken. Through her
distinctive use of viewpoints, Adams draws the viewer irresistibly into the
process of seeing, creating an intimate complicity between artist, image and
audience.
As the years pass by, this book will become akin to a time capsule. Be they planned extensions to existing places or organically born structures in and around the Town Centre, changes will bring with them new identities and notions of place. Who knows what buildings will be demolished or remade? What new features will appear where – and will they replace or add to those currently part of this town centre? Today’s youngsters starting out on their life journey’s and regularly vising the town centre may even be intrigued by this book when it becomes a historical document showing what their part of the city once looked like.
The book can be purchased at Photo Access.
This review is also on
the author's blog here. Another version was published in the
Canberra Times on 7.5.22 here as part of a combined review of this and the
other two books launched at the same time.
