Simone's extensive travels across Australia culminated in a photo book, Small Museum, which is the result of her in-depth interviews and 3,000 photographs capturing local museums. These institutions, often maintained by devoted individuals, serve as vital repositories of community history. The project highlights the significance of building, people, collections, and objects tied to these museums, revealing how personal narratives and cultural nuances are preserved. This deeper exploration celebrates the efforts of volunteers and locals dedicated to safeguarding their heritage and showcasing the diverse architectural landscapes of these museums.
Years of travel around the country produced 3,000 photographs that built on in-depth interviews Simone conducted with the people keeping these museums alive: "The extended interviews were a critical component of the project. They provided invaluable context, uncovering local histories, diverse identities, and personal stories often hidden within the spaces themselves," she shares.
Much like the project itself, many of these museums were a labour of love, "maintained by passionate individuals committed to keeping their community histories alive", Simone shares. What began as simply an aim to document these spaces, became what the photographer described as a much deeper exploration of "how lived histories and cultural nuances are held, honoured, and passed on".
These conversations and images were compiled into Small Museum, a photo book published by Gost, that saw the series come together in four key parts: a showcase of the buildings, the people, the collections and the objects behind each of Australia's smallest museums.
Simone's portraits of museum custodians frame volunteers, teachers, nurses, policemen, mayors, social workers, senior lecturers in Geology and surfboard painters - people of all ages and all walks of life intent on preserving Australia's local history.
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