Ikon Studio

During the public call out for our Street Photography exhibition an extraordinarily rare collection of street photography negatives came to light. The Ikon Studio negatives provide a fascinating visual narrative of the street photographer at work.

Although many street photography companies advertised that they kept their negatives indefinitely, very few negatives have survived. The enormous volume of rolls processed made it unlikely that negatives were kept for more than a few years, and when firms went out of business what remained was probably discarded. Remarkably, 127 rolls of film taken by Ikon Studio photographers have survived. Ikon Studio operated from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, selling prints from Her Majesty’s Arcade on Market Street. Each strip of 35mm film is a complete sequence of images taken, not just those purchased by the public.

All of the 5000 Ikon Studio photos were shot between May and December 1950 in Martin Place, Sydney, and probably represent no more than ten days – or part days – of work. They were taken from a licenced street photography stand located outside the Prudential Building between Castlereagh and Elizabeth streets, and the backgrounds of the images offer glimpses of this bustling city location either looking up Martin Place towards Macquarie Street or down towards George Street. The images offers us a unique insight into how the street photographers worked as they repositioned themselves in response to the flow of pedestrians, and reveal the public’s varying responses to being photographed.

Street photographers soon learned who was more likely to buy these candid photos. The best ‘marks’, according to one street photographer interviewed in 1951 by The Sun, were ‘young romantic couples’, followed by ‘doting mothers’, then ‘middle-aged women’ out for the day, servicemen, and families visiting from the country. The worst marks were ‘plain ordinary men’.

Browse a selection of images from the Ikon Studio collection by clicking on any of the images below.

Published on 
Anna Cossu

Anna Cossu

Curator

Inspired by wonderful history teachers and after her own foray as a high school teacher, Anna found herself drawn to the world of museums and heritage interpretation. In a 20-year career she has worked across a diverse field including visitor interpretation, education, and curatorial. Her great passion is people and their stories and how museums can best craft an experience that reveals something intrinsic and true of those lives and communities.

Candid street photograph of pedestrians taken in Martin Place, Sydney, by an unknown Ikon Studio photographer during 1950.

Ikon Studio: photo galleries

Browse a selection of images from the Ikon Studio collection shot between May and December 1950 in Martin Place, Sydney

Ikon Studio archive finding aid

Ikon Studio Archive

The Ikon Studio archive of candid street photography is a documentation of everyday life on one busy Sydney city street recorded over several days in 1950

Black and white street photograph of three women linking arms standing in the street.

Family photo reunion

Imagine visiting an exhibition and discovering a photograph of yourself and your family that you had never seen before

A man sits at a desk and looks at an album of pictures through a magnifying glass
Latest News

A recent acquisition uncovers rare tintype photographs

Tintypes are photographs printed on thin sheets of metal, rather than card. MHNSW doesn’t hold many in our collections, so this discovery is an exciting one