At Flinders Street Railway Station 4 1954

Summary

Mark Strizic (1928–2012) arrived in Australia in 1951, part of the wave of postwar migrants arriving from Eastern Europe. This renowned Australian photographer studied not his chosen art form but rather physics and geology in Zagreb, in the former Yugoslavia. Strizic picked up the camera after arriving in Melbourne, purchasing this from a pharmacy as a means to explore his new home environment. He became a commercial photographer in 1957, building his reputation primarily as an architectural and industrial photographer in an era of intense urban development. He soon became associated with a coterie of Melbourne modernists, including Robin Boyd, Schulim Krimper and fellow photographers Athol Shmith and Wolfgang Sievers. Often framed by his progressive social and political concerns, his work is overwhelmingly sympathetic with modernist ideals: humanist, rational, spare.

The Art and Heritage Collection holds around 40 photographic works by Strizic, almost all of which document the streets, river and life of mid-century Melbourne in expressive monochrome. This photograph of a man collecting a newspaper from a newsboy was featured in the 2005 City Gallery exhibition, Newsboys, curated by Andrew Brown-May.

'In its collective historical subconscious, Melbourne misses its newsboys! The newsboy — that pocket-sized urban anti-hero — was once a familiar figure on Melbourne’s streets, from the mid 19th to the mid 20th centuries, and has been etched into popular memories of the city of old and indeed the city of living memory. Over the last century — apart from the thousands of boys across the metropolis who did the morning paper round in all weathers on foot or bike — some 15,000 boys cried “Erald” in central Melbourne, plying their trade at tram stops and street corners, Under the Clocks at Flinders Street Station, or outside theatres, pubs and emporiums.'