From the Two Heads Milk Bar in Seddon to Beverly Joy Beauty Salon in Goroke, his photographs record and give a new significance to familiar buildings and streets of suburban Melbourne and country towns around Victoria. The State Library has recently acquired a collection of Warren Kirk's Cibachromes and thirty of these are on display in Disappearing Victoria , the first public exhibition of his work. I don't spend large amounts of time agonising over camera positions and technical details. Colour is one of Kirk's preoccupations and this has influenced his preference for using Cibachromes - transparencies that give exceptional colour brilliance. They are therefore of great value as visual records of Victoria's past.
Every photograph is a piece of history.
I've always collected history My photographs are personal documents of ordinary, everyday objects and places that are survivors of a past within my memory - and that are of interest because of their impending extinction. Strip shopping and small family stores, for instance, will soon only be memories, especially in the city. Disappearing Victoria will be on display in Queen's Hall at the State Library of Victoria from 13 July to 5 October 1998.