There’s no place like home. And there’s no sense of nostalgia quite like the one we feel when we see a photograph of a home — our house, the house of someone close to us, the house where we spent our formative years. Home: A Suburban Obsession exposes the social and emotional power of house and home, and the myriad connections between where we live and who we are.
This exploration of the social and emotional foundations of our houses is achieved through the incredible legacy of Frank and Eunice Corley. From the 1960s to the 1970s, this entrepreneurial couple drove the suburban streets of Queensland in their pink Cadillac, taking photographs of houses and selling them to homeowners as calendar inserts, Christmas cards or standalone images. Frank and Eunice are thought to have taken over a quarter of a million photographs of houses throughout South East Queensland and as far north as Bundaberg. Around two-thirds of the photographs were sold to householders, and the remaining 61,000 unsold images were donated to State Library in 1995.
Curators: State Library of Queensland (Chenoa Pettrup and Adam Jefford) in collaboration with the UQ School of Architecture (Dr Deborah van der Plaat, Dr Nicole Sully, Dr Andrew Wilson).
Additional contributions by: f[F]lat Architecture, Jennifer Marchant, Ian Strange, Seth Ellis. Corley Explorer designed and developed by Mitchell Whitelaw and Geoff Hinchcliffe at the Data Design Lab, ANU School of Art and Design. Other contributions made by Annerley Stephens History Group.