10 Dollar Look

Handwritten "$5" signs are taped to the chest and leg of a mannequin in blue overalls and a red cap, standing behind a dusty shop window on Parramatta Road. Above it the 10 Dollar Look sign has gone grimy and faded. A white arrow points right across the glass and a crack runs through the upper left corner of the pane. The window throws back a reflection of the footpath opposite, a bus stop shelter and a line of trees. The photograph was made in the late afternoon of 4 September 2016.

Discount clothing is one of the trades that has held its position along this stretch while others emptied out. Parramatta Road runs 23 kilometres from Broadway at Chippendale to Church Street at Granville, and the retail along it has always been shaped by what the passing traffic will support rather than by anyone's plan for the street. A shop pricing its stock in marker pen on a sheet of paper is working the same way the road does: fast, legible from outside, and aimed at whoever happens to be going past. The name promises ten dollars and the window is asking five, which is the whole business model in one frame.