Echoes of Myself

On a rained down street in Alexandria, an eclectic group are huddled by a small shop window looking in. Inside, a show of used-up furniture, tins, stacked up suitcases. The scene could have captured Lynn Smith’s lens, and perhaps, on another night, it will.

Smith’s photographic exhibition Echoes of Myself is built on the desolate: urban landscapes, abandoned warehouses and beaten up shops, bathed in lamp and neon lights. These lonesome places bring with them poetically captured objects, mirrored images of once lived, down-by-luck city hideouts and roadside places. These are his echoes: reflections arriving at the listener some time after the initial sound.

Smith came to photography later in life. Once an advertising agency message boy, Smith progressed to the dizzy heights of award-winning copywriter and creative director amid New York city lights. En route, he covered the alleyways, the dead ends, industrial wastelands: as tutor, taxi driver, journalist, antique dealer, youth worker, homecare worker and pest control salesman.

“Everything I’ve done, everywhere I’ve been and everyone I’ve loved has prepared me for this show.”

These photographs are echoes of the artist himself: his life and memories rediscovered against the darkened cityscapes. These are also echoes of human lives built against concrete structures, full of frailties.

With their long exposures and eerie colours, urban nightscapes carry the risk of leaving one without hope. Yet, Smith transcends this through the irony of unsuspecting patterns and oddities: ‘Stairway to Nowhere’, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Neon Sax’. ‘$2 Peeps’ against the council rubbish bins. ‘Lighted Billboard’ with dancer’s legs and thorn up ‘Girls!’ billposters. These hardly need the presence of Smith’s signature leather jacket; you’ve already heard him on the echo of his imagery.

As you’ve absorbed the imagery, consider re-looking at the photographs. There are lights, reflections and ghost images, and the more you look into them, the more echoes you see.

The MRA Gallery shares grounds with Mitchell Road Antique & Design Centre. How appropriate that Smith’s photographs should be shown in the place they come from: preloved moments and memories and the new lives thus lived.

Rating: 4 stars

Echoes of Myself
Urban nightscapes by Lynn Smith

MRA Gallery, 76 Mitchell Road Alexandria
Open 7 days a week 10am–5pm
November 24–December 7