Cover Art

IMAGE

The cover photo is one of several included in Ross Gibson’s fifteen-year project, the World between Wars, a series of crime scene photographs found at the Sydney police station after they had been all but destroyed in a warehouse flood. The original documents accompanying the photographs had been lost and Gibson was given permission to examine them, about 2000 in all, and from these he selected several that resonated for him.

The images are of street scenes and interiors. Sydney homes between the 1945 and 1960 wherein a crime has occurred. The nature of the crime is unknown. The people who collaborated on Gibson’s project did not publish the faces of victims.

Gibson, Professor of Contemporary Arts at the University of Sydney, argues that we bear witness to unwitnessed phenomena from the past, as evidenced in these photos, and we must pay proper attention to their possible significance and meaning in order to better understand ourselves in our present circumstances.