Rosemeadow estate

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Thursday, November 3, 2011 | 5 photos

My name is Amanda Dixon and I am a 24 year old student from Sydney. I have just completed my 2nd year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Photo media (photography) at the College of Fine Arts. Having lived overseas and travelled extensively with a camera always on my hip, I have a passion for travel and capturing experiences through the eye of the camera lens.

I took these photos on a winter afternoon while visiting family in Campbelltown, west of Sydney. A relative told me about the changes that were happening in the area particularly in the suburb of Rosemeadow that has one of the largest council 3M housing estates in the area and is notoriously remembered for the 2009 riots that took place there. The streets of housing commission homes were being knocked down as a response to the riots and an attempt to break up the cul-de-sacs cluster of houses that the Housing NSW department attributed to the "anti social behaviour" in the area. Curious and needing a new project to work on, I took my Nikon to the site to see what I could find. Upon arrival I was saddened and shocked by what I saw. There were streets of abandoned and boarded up houses juxtaposed with houses that still had families living in them. The whole area was a construction site that was blocked off with fences that the people still living in there had to navigate through just to get to their houses. Children played amongst the mounds of dirt and climbed the fences that surrounded them. You couldn't help but feel that these remaining people were being driven out and were being sectioned away from society. With perfect afternoon lighting of the sun streaming through the thick grey storm clouds, I climbed fences and navigated my way through the muddy construction site, creating a series of photos that is concerned with landscape and social documentary photography.