Side Facade inside operating as Purnell Shoe Company

operating as Purnell Shoe Company by the 1970s before closing as cheap imports contracted Melbourne's footwear industry

operating without interruption for more than 165 years

Vacuum sealer hoses coil across the floor of the Northcote Shoe Factory's production area

Part of The Dairy series

The grinding pans and press machinery retained here represent the same fundamental technology introduced with the industrialisation of brickmaking in the latter nineteenth century

Side Facade inside operating as Purnell Shoe CompanyA side facade in Yubari, Hokkaido, its paint peeling in long strips under a flat grey sky. The building sits within a residential and commercial streetscape shaped as much by decades of cold winters as by the economics that emptied it. Snow load and seasons of freeze thaw have worked steadily on the unheated structure, lifting paint and fading what colour remains. Part of the Streetscapes of Yubari series.