Kerry Wright - 1953

Kerry Wright

1953

Even though it was so long ago, I can still remember this photograph being taken of me, Kerry Wright, by a Sydney street photographer. I was with my mother, Emily Flora Wright (known as Flora) nee Glover, on one of her shopping expeditions to Sydney. 

I remember we were walking through one of the city's shopping arcades, most likely either the Strand Arcade or the Imperial Arcade, when it was taken. The arcades were beautifully ornate shopping precincts from another era. They were like dazzlingly opulent, gilded microcosms of Victorian London, plonked down in the middle of drab, 1950s, antipodean Sydney. They contained  a rich quantity of highly polished brass in abundance, and lots of beautiful, stylishly decorated shop windows. I loved the double-doored, caged antique elevators that carried shoppers between the different terraced levels. It was an era prior to the advent of  the modern escalator. They were lively places, filled with the noisy hustle and bustle of people hurriedly going about their business, all dressed in their finest and perfumed with their best cologne, as people did in those days when visiting the city. Mum and I would have traveled into Sydney on the 190 double-deck Wynyard bus, from our home at Narrabeen on Sydney's Northern Beaches. It was a one-hour bus trip. Mum visited all the major, glitzy department stores on such shopping expeditions - David Jones, Anthony Hordern and Mark Foys, using  the arcades as short-cuts between streets. 

But I digress. To get back to this photo, I remember Mum and I had just entered the arcade. Mum was walking briskly ahead of me, when I noticed a window display that attracted my attention. I remember it was a women's boutique with dressed mannequins displayed in the window. A £6 price-tag can be seen in the background. The street photographer who took this photograph has captured me in the process of pointing at the window display and calling to my mother to come back and have a look. The selectivity of memory never ceases to amaze me. It's incredible that I still remember so much detail, after so many years. Alas, what's even more amazing, in a worrisome way, is how much I've undoubtedly forgotten of far more important events that have transpired during the intervening years.