Reddit reviews City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912-1948

In case you're interested, these are from the book called 'City of Shadows', a collection of police photographs out of Sydney. Great book, you can get it here though Amazon's price is way high. I think I got it for about $40-$60 from book depository though they're out of stock.

This and many like it are featured in a collection at the Sydney Police and Justice Museum after being lost for many years. I forget the exact context but my neighbour worked on the initial collection and many of the old police files were lost due to buildings being transferred between departments. Eventually a building, then belonging to the Historic Houses Trust, was flooded and boxes of hundreds upon hundreds of these glass negatives were found in original condition however the attached notes were destroyed. Peter Doyle has (I'm sure along with many other people) worked for a number of years to put together information on these and created a book called City of Shadows which we gave to our neighbour last Christmas and was captivating just to look into these people's faces, stories, and I really loved the emotion in their eyes.

We went there back in Year 12 a few years ago and they were telling us how the criminals were allowed to adopt any pose they desired, but with the photography at the time (early 1900s) were essentially long exposures so some have blur as one of the men in the picture. Other images can be found here including the man who refused to open his eyes . Doyle has also noted that many faces appear several times with differing names and outfits showing the success of their alias'. Cool Stuff.

I've wanted to buy this book for ages, it's called City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912-1948 by Peter Doyle.
It's on Amazon here but it's rather expensive.

This pic is from a great book called City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912-1948. seems all these guys were freshly arrested and these special photos were made allowing them to pose as they wished.

Pretty sure they're taken from here or here.

the book is 400 usd and up on amazon. it's from australia. however, if you go to australia, the book is much, much less.

http://www.amazon.com/City-Shadows-Sydney-Photographs-1912-1948/dp/1876991208/

http://shop.hht.net.au/Home/Catalogue?productid=e5ebe56a7a9ed9a6

I wholeheartedly agree.

Did some research!

The photographs were exhibited at the Historic Houses Trust, and taken down on Sunday 11 February, 2007. A 239 page book was later formed called the City of Shadows: Sydney Police Photographs 1912-1948, though a little out of my price range. Fortunately there are tons more mugshots floating around for those interested.

Cheers.