FA Sharr's Photographs of Western Australian Built Heritage (State Library of Western Australia)

Francis Aubie 'Ali' Sharr was the State Librarian of Western Australia from 1955 until 1976. During this time, he planned and delivered a state-wide library and information service for the Library Board of Western Australia. This endeavour took him across much of Western Australia as he sought out how best to deliver the service to a diverse and dispersed population. Noted amongst his other accomplishments is the fact that Sharr was a talented photographer. He was awarded an associateship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1972. The wildflowers of Western Australia were Sharr’s primary photographic subject and interest, but Sharr is also responsible for creating one of the most extensive photographic records of the State's built heritage in the 1970s, documenting many places and buildings before rapid development drastically altered our built environment. A vast array of Sharr's photographs are part of the pictorial collections of the J.S. Battye Library of West Australian History.

In the Annual Report of the Library Board of Western Australia for 1970 (24) it is noted that 'a series of over 150 photographs were taken, at weekends, by F.A. Sharr' of buildings and features of Perth before their demolition. Sharr's photography targeted landmarks notable for their early date or historical associations. These photographs were reported as additions to the photograph collections of the West Australian History division of the Library and Information Service of Western Australia (today known as the State Library of Western Australia). These were in addition to the extensive recording of the public library service undertaken by Sharr in the course of his delivery of a State wide library service (for example, BA313 - a sample of these featured in the Annual Report of 1967 and are reproduced in his memoir).

The post-war era was a time of rapid development for both the Perth metropolitan area and Western Australia more broadly. Historian Jenny Gregory reflects that in the 1950s St Georges Terrace in Perth resembled a 'gracious European-style boulevard, with few buildings higher than four storeys' but by 1990, 'it was lined with skyscrapers and resembled the archetypal modern American city' (35). Gregory states that rapid development in the state was in part driven by a modernist development ethos. Development across the State did need to occur in response to the growing pressures of Western Australia as a result of the 1960s mining boom. However, the State's and local authorities' planning regulations were not adequate to respond to the resulting rapid development, especially in the recognition and protection of heritage.

Recognising that vast swathes of the State's built heritage were about to be lost, Sharr took it upon himself to create a documentary record of those buildings and features before they were demolished or irreparably changed. After the initial c. 150 photographs in 1970, Sharr's documentary project went on to include rural districts (Annual Report 1971: 21), and even street furniture (Annual Report 1973: 25). Sharr’s photographs of built heritage can also be found in two other institutions. Sharr was one of the six members of the convening committee of The National Trust of Western Australia in 1959 and an active photographer in the service of that organisation, and The Western Australian Heritage Committee (est. 1977) also commissioned a photographic survey of public buildings pre-1940 south of Carnarvon (F. A. Sharr, Interview: 159-160).

The photographs taken by Sharr in the Library’s Pictorial Collection were developed by the Library's own Photographic Unit. This photograph collection might therefore be considered as commissioned and executed directly for collection by the Library as a documentary record of the built heritage of the State. This is notable as up until this point the Library's historical acquisitions were the result of acquiring items through purchase or donation. Sharr's decision to proactively create a photograph record of the heritage of Western Australia during this time of rapid change, and to ensure its collection by the State library, guaranteed a record would exist for future reference. In this way the Library engaged in a proactive, contemporaneous, acquisition policy to ensure at least an aspect of the built environment that was available presently to them would be available for future research. They would do this again in 2007 by organising a photograph competition in coordination with the Perth Central TAFE that focused on contributing to the documentary history of Western Australia (McRobert 2007).

The style of Sharr's photography has been described by Gregory Pryor as a 'functional colonial camera' where 'the human element is conspicuously absent' (45). In this we can perhaps read Sharr as limiting himself to what might be considered a documentary or impartial gaze. Romana Javitz, the former Superintendant of the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library describes the intention behind these kinds of photograph collections:

'These pictures are not art, they are not pictures on exhibition, they are pictures at work. They are documents, momentarily cut off from their aesthetic functions to be employed for their subject content. Any picture is a document when it is being used as a source of information instead of being searched for its content of beauty.' (Quoted by Panzer, 2016: 102.)

Photographs have always occupied a place of friction, in that they can be valued as both documents and pieces of art, and Libraries occupy a unique space in that unlike most institutions that collect either art or documents, they collect both (Panzer 2016:110-11). While Sharr may have been intent on making a documentary record of the built heritage of the State, it was always inevitable that the resulting work would also be considered aesthetically. We can compare the modern reception of the photographs of the Farm Security Administration in the United States during the depression era, perhaps the most famous being 'Migrant Mother' by Dorothea Lange, taken in 1936.

The collection today indeed occupies a place between art and documentary resource, but also a social resource. In addition to the SLWA preservation and promotion of this resource (through such projects as the ‘Historical Records Rescue Consortium Project’ supported by Lotterywest for instance), projects, communities and organisations use and share these photographs and others like them, such as ‘Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost – a photo history’, 'Lost Perth', 'Heritage Perth', 'OldPerth and HistoricalPanoramas', 'Streets of Freo', and 'Museum of Perth'. In these spaces the photographs are not just admired and the loss of what they represent reflected upon, but also reflections and memories from people who once visited those places, or those that never could, are shared (Gregory 2015). This activity generates new records and memories of that time or place, as well as encourages civic awareness around the issues of town planning, development, heritage preservation and community. In this way the collection of photographs made by Sharr for the State Library is not a collection of static documents, but a resource that continues to be reformatted, shared and translated, to produce new meanings, new histories, and new testimonials to colour our understanding of our State.

Sharr’s photographs in the SLWA Pictorial Collection can be searched for in their online catalogue.

Figures:
Titles Office, Perth, taken 1969 by F.A. Sharr, State Library of Western Australia 274067PD.

Sources:
'F A Sharr FLAA', Australian Library and Information Service, https://www.alia.org.au/fa-sharr, accessed 21 May 2021.

F. A. Sharr, interview by Stuart Reid (1997, January – March) OH2794, transcript, J. S. Battye Library of West Australian History Oral History Programme, Library and Information Service of Western Australia. https://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b1793923_201.

The Library Board of Western Australia (1970) 'The Library and Information Service of Western Australia 1969-1970', Eighteenth Annual Report of the Board, Perth.

The Library Board of Western Australia (1971) 'The Library and Information Service of Western Australia 1970-1971', Nineteenth Annual Report of the Board, Perth.

The Library Board of Western Australia (1973) 'The Library and Information Service of Western Australia 1972-1973', Twenty-first Annual Report of the Board, Perth.

References:

Jenny Gregory (2009) 'Development Pressures and Heritage in the Perth Central Business District, 1950-90', Australian Economic History Review 49.1: 34-51. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8446.2008.00248.x

Jenny Gregory (2015) Connecting with the past through social media: the ‘Beautiful buildings and cool places Perth has lost’ Facebook group, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21:1, 22-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2014.884015

Carmel McRobert (2007) ‘Photographing Western Australia for posterity’, Knowit. State Library of Western Australia Magazine, no. 279 (January-March): 8–9.

Mary Panzer (2016) ‘Pictures at Work: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library Picture Collection’ in T. Gervais (ed), The ‘Public’ Life of Photographs, RIC Books (MIT Press: Toronto; Cambridge, MA; London): 98–121.

Gregory Pryor (2004) 'To remove a thorn deeply embedded [The photography of Francis Aubie Sharr.]' Photofile 73: 44–45.

F.A Sharr (1992) Recollections. Forty years of Public Library Service (Auslib Press: Adelaide).