Vivid Sydney 2015
It’s as the whole world is a photographer now. Or at least that’s what you might conclude from spending Friday night wandering around at The Vivid Festival at Sydney’s Circular Quay. I took a few photographs myself, of course. But for me, Vivid isn’t a photographic assignment. It’s a wonderful cultural experience.
In my role at 702 ABC Sydney, I was involved in Vivid from the very early days. The station was asked to come on board as a media supporter, which we gladly did. Since then, Vivid has grown and grown and grown, as it’s become a terrific experience for a broad range of people from across the city to experience some wonderful public art.
We were expecting the crowds to be “worse”. I’m not one for crowds at the best of times, and the idea of slowly chugging along in a mass event, compared with walking around in a fairly solitary manner leaves me cold. For the last few times, Sue has often been in Sydney around Vivid time, though sadly it’s often rained when she has been here. Now, living in Sydney, we had more flexibility about when we would visit. Thankfully, the rain held off. And as we walked around, the crowds didn’t seem too bad at all.
If there is still such a thing as Tourism NSW, the organisation has certainly spent some money in Melbourne promoting Vivid. Must be pretty good to see.
I preferred the images on Customs House to those I saw on the MCA but on reflection we didn’t see enough of the latter because of the immense crowds at that location which forced us to move on rather quickly.