The Old and The New

This is the kind of thing you can see while waiting for a bus, all you have to do is bother to look up. It was a bright, clear evening at the beginning of May, 2008, I was on my way to a band shoot and happened to glance up from a city bus stop. The street was deep in shadow but the tall buildings were in sunlight, creating an exposure schism, therefore the opportunity for dramatic contrast. The thematic material was also begging to be recorded: the older building is in the massive, Classical style popular in Victorian times, complete with its Ionian columns and polished granite, an example of Colonial South Australia's pastoral and industrial expansion days. Towering over it is the financially troubled State Bank Building, the tallest building in Adelaide, a product of economic over-reaching in the 1980s. The ancient design elements hark back to the 1st Millennium BC, the Colonial style to the 19th century, while the State Bank represents modern times, the failure of the building organisation being perhaps a subtle commentary on human fortunes across the ages. The picture was subtly enhanced for publication but is substantially as it was taken. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.