The photos included in SoS illustrate what the 20th century cultural critic Walter Benjamin theorised about in terms of a photograph's potential "aura" - a strange weave of time and space that takes it beyond being just a reproduced image Not art as such, but something with historical, social function and maybe even asthetic qualities The photos' posers here in SoS seem themselves, separate from the containment of the frame. The text is more than a regional history though. For those who don't know, it's probably helpful to mention that Doyle is an academic who also writes genre fiction (Marlowe style detective-crime novels set in Sydney in the mid 1900's). Doyle's explanations (the book came out of a museum project) are succinct and have an easy sophistication (no po-mo verbocrap here!). Being Australian, I'm a bit biased in claiming the book as a remarkable social and historical text.
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