The Allen family albums

Following on from my last post about the An Edwardian Summer exhibition, if you can't make it to the exhibition, or if you did and totally loved it and want more then you should definitely check out the State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW) website's Discover Collections section right now. In conjunction with the exhibition, the SLNSW have put online an interview with photography curator Alan Davies as well as three of the photographic albums created by Arthur Wigram Allen around which the Museum of Sydney show is based.

The albums are stunningly reproduced, brilliantly interactive, each album page presented in amazing detail with all of Allen's meticulous inscriptions and amusing anecdotes. For photography lovers I think this is possibly even better than the exhibition!

It's also enabled me to update some of my dodgier pics I took inside the exhibition as well as add images to my earlier post to better illustrate the Christmas scenes.

I should also add (in light of some of the gripes in my first post) that being able to browse through an album in its entirety, following the ebb and flow of daily life and doings that it documents, allows for a much more complex and satisfying appreciation of Allen's photography and albums. Looking through a complete album and reading his notes, the sense of his family wealth recedes into the background, replaced instead by the man's pervasive and buoyant love for his family and life's pleasures wherever they may be found. Simple things. Summer. Sunshine. Swimming. Things that have very little to do with money or power. Amen.

• Listen to the fabulous short interview with curator Alan Davies about Allen and his photography (click on the image):