In Westography, renowned photographer Warren Kirk gains exclusive access to the homes and businesses of the last of a generation, re-visiting his subjects many times, capturing once-bustling industrial areas and the old inhabitants of back-street suburbia, along with garages, barber shops, fish and chip shops, milk bars, front gardens, sheds and everything in between.

Warren has developed an impressive body of work documenting fading Australian suburbs and businesses. When he arrived in the area, the topography was rapidly changing; houses were being knocked down to make way for McMansions. People started selling their backyards and a younger generation of renovators began moving in. He was sad to see the area change and began to document the old West before it disappeared.

Westography is a compelling visual diary of an almost-gone Australia.

Warren Kirk has been a documentary photographer for thirty years, twenty-three of them spent living in Melbourne’s west. He has developed an impressive following on Flickr where he has shared his collection of almost 2,000 photographs.

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Kirk and his dog are out there seven days a week. Where the philosopher Diogenes walked with dogs at his feet in search of an honest man, Kirk is looking for people who are on the verge of disappearing – THE AGE

When change is the only constant, it’s nice to find a place stuck in time. Taken over the last few years, these photos of old workplaces around Melbourne’s western suburbs could easily be from the ’80s. – SMITH JOURNAL

Warren Kirk is a renowned photographer from the West of Melbourne who has developed an impressive body of work documenting the fading Australian suburbs and businesses. He has devoted the last 25 years to capturing an Australia that is very unique, is becoming lost and forgotten but is still there if, like Warren, you look hard enough. – THIS ISLAND CONTINENT

In Westography-land, time stands still: The barber shops of old are still open; topiary gardens are in tip-top shape and the shingles still hang above the shops belonging to the last generation to have set up in Melbourne before the digital age changed everything. But, time is running out on this era and Warren is out there every day capturing the last scenes of Australiana before the bulldozers and developers move in and the memories and advertising signs fade. – SEEKER OF THE LOST ARTS

The heavy concrete cute of the lawn animals captured by ‘Westographer’ Warren Kirk … these are whims made in to solidified mass, they are owned. They represent their addresses with a disconcerting candour- the person who lives here chose swans. – EXCERPT MAGAZINE