Where some of us won't cast a second glance at the flaking signage of an old shop in a tired suburban strip, or see only ugliness in the kitsch garden ornaments favoured by our grandparents, Melbourne photographer Warren Kirk sees the echoes of an era almost lost.
For more than 20 years, Kirk has been photographing suburban houses, sheds, shops, streetscapes and even inhabitants in a bid to capture an aesthetic that's rapidly vanishing.
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Westography: What have we lost?
Warren Kirk investigates the rapidly changing face of Melbourne through the lens of the Western suburbs in his new body of work 'Westography'.
In 2011 Kirk set up a Flickr page for some of his personal archive, specifically his photos from Melbourne's western suburbs, where he has lived for 20-odd years. Using the name The Westographer, he soon gained a cult following for his documenting of old milk bars (try finding many of them nowadays), industrial spaces and retro kitsch.
Now a selection of some of his best photos from Melbourne's west have been published in Westography: Images of A Vanishing Suburbia, providing a permanent record of modest quarter-acre gardens, old-school businesses, the type fast giving way to superstores and malls, and fading weatherboard houses that grow ever-more unfashionable as gentrification extends its footprint beyond the city fringes.
"It's the same everywhere, the destruction of what was," Kirk says of the rapidly changing landscape. "The proliferation of inappropriate developments is on every level ... but they say that's progress, apparently! I don't believe it's progress at all. I think there's a cabal between developers, construction industries, bank, councils – it's just vandalising the suburbs in my humble opinion."
Kirk, 65, is a self-taught photographer and what began as something of a hobby has in recent years become a full-time undertaking. He's driven to document Melbourne – and regional Victoria and beyond; he doesn't only photograph the west – because he sees a certain aesthetic of the city fringe and suburban landscape, and its ageing population, are disappearing
"Every day something goes off the end of the conveyor belts and disappears forever, so I like to be out there, looking to get as much as I can, snooping around."
The images in the book – just a small sample of an archive he estimates at more than 40,000 images – include hand-painted shop signs in Kensington and Footscray, gardens in Seddon and Sunshine West proudly landscaped with topiary hedges, small businesses like bakeries, delis, old-school barber shops – some of which have already disappeared since the book's publication. Perhaps most arresting of all are the images featuring people – mostly older men and women, tending their gardens, sharing their unrenovated kitchens, living rooms and even bedrooms with him.
He often meets them as he's photographing their gardens, or their vintage cars, and he says he's rarely had anybody ask him not to take photos.
"Very occasionally people will be suspicious and won't want me to, and that's their prerogative; I don't like to upset people," he says. "But generally, once they understand what I'm about, people are pretty accommodating, even about letting me into their houses."
He always returns to his subjects with a copy of the photographs for them, even making friends with some of them.
"Sometimes I'll re-photograph them again – they might be more relaxed the next time around, or some of the women might have different outfits on that I want to get. I like to do little series of people."
Only occasionally does someone tip Kirk off to a great car or garden they've seen; mostly he just "runs into places".
"It's often just serendipitous, in a way. If you have an interest in something, or a passion, you tend to be a bit of a magnet for it."
He's never mapped out his previous subjects, and doesn't keep a record of where he's been; he likes to wander, usually accompanied by his dog, Ocky, who sometimes appears in shot.
"It's a bit like prospecting, what I do – it isn't everywhere and you have [to] just get out there and have a prospect and every now and then you hit a little nugget and it's worth the time and the effort," he says.
He's not tempted to shift his photos onto Instagram – and he prefers to think most people view his Flickr account on a larger screen than their mobile phone – and declined to be photographed for this article.
"To me it's the work that's important, not being published or being a little bit 'known'; I'm not interested in that," he says. "That's why I never get my photo taken. I'm not looking for fame or fortune, I'm looking for my images to be seen. I don't want to be anybody. I just like to take photos."
And the book, he says, isn't a culmination of anything; he's still out and about most days.
"Having an audience, as it were, on Flickr, and now the book, I'd put myself under the pump to come up with new stuff, which is good – it makes me keep on digging and digging," he says. "I'm just addicted to it, in a way."
Westography: Images Of A Vanishing Suburbia, by Warren Kirk, is out now, published by echo.