Rose Street and Tracey Lane, Chippendale on Tuesday, 28 April 2020
Rose Street runs from Cleveland Street, crosses Myrtle and later curves around to end in Buckland Street. There are some discarded household goods, a mattress and a chair. At first, the appearance of chairs in my photos was accidental. But now I am looking out for them. I read them as a metaphor for this state of ‘social distancing’ and isolation from each other. The chairs are empty because we don’t sit on them to be together with people. They are discarded because people have no guests and no parties. This chair is facing the backside of the mattress as if it is a film screen and has a beer bottle sitting on it.
It’s a grey day. The cream and white colours of walls and houses stand out nicely in this light. The grey colours, of which there are plenty, don’t fare so well. The part of Rose Street towards Cleveland Street is the location of The Duck Inn, a cozy and popular pub. The two blackboards on each side of a shuttered door say: “We are Closed for Now”. The other popular pub in the area, The Rose Hotel, is - despite its name - not in Rose but in Shepherd Street. Yellow autumn leaves are scattered on the pavement. Somewhere, red geraniums are still in full bloom. Sydney always has several things from the four seasons at once.
Tracey Lane is a short walk down from The Duck Inn. I had to find it with the navigator, there is no street name. It has an old abandoned factory and flats in other small industrial buildings. A ladder is propped up against a wall and I hear drilling noises and hammering from inside one building.
