Who didn't drive along Cooyong St and look up into the public housing flats and wondered about the people who lived there? Pot plants on balconies, children's bicycles, political slogans, clothing on washing lines, glimpses into lives we knew nothing about.
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The Allawah, Bega and Currong apartments were demolished earlier this year, after the ACT Heritage Council opted not to protect the site, saying they did not make any important contribution to the course of the ACT's public housing history. The flats were built in 1956 and 1957.
Photographer Hardy Lohse thought otherwise. He knew these apartments, as well as the Northbourne flats and Red Hill flats which are also slated for demolition, were an integral part of Canberra's soul.
And that the people who lived in them, the people who called these places their home, deserved to have their stories told.
"What I found was a beautiful community of artists, dreamers, intellectuals, battlers and those who faced prejudice and hardship in their everyday encounters," Lohse says, of his exhibition Other People's Lives.
"Some struggled with debilitating illness, others with a series of unfortunate circumstances and some with absolute tragedy.
"All the people I met were proud and appreciative of the support they received and loved the sense of community offered by public housing."
He said many of his subjects were deeply affected by the renewal program, but most could see the upside of it. Many of them had moved to new homes further afield.
"A man who was in Bega Court for 20 something years and is now in Coombs, loves the fact he can get into nature and away from noise and pollution and get some quiet in his life," Lohse says.
"Another is grateful there is space for his grandchildren, and he's doing the best he can to put in a garden.
"I think Housing ACT has really made an effort to rehouse people as best as they can."
Lhose is grateful to Housing ACT who worked with him on this project, as well as Northside and Southside Community Centres, helping him gain access to the tenants.
The project became very collaborative, the subjects involved in the portraits, having some control over what Lohse's final vision would be.
"For my PhD I wrote about this whole idea of how documentary photography has this really huge history of taking what it needs but with very little given back to the subject," he says.
"With this project it was great to be able to go back and talk to them about how I'd shown them, it allowed them to have more agency and control over how they wanted to be shown.
"We worked in consultation about showing their lives, it wasn't just me coming and peeking through the curtains to take a photo of their life."
Lohse said he gained a lot from the project, a greater insight into the lives of some of Canberra's most vulnerable people, about how a "generally affluent" Canberra is out of touch with how some people live.
"Their situation really touches you," he says.
"I take everything for granted, that I'm able to work, I'm able to get myself around, I'm able to go slightly into debt … some of these people can't do any of those things."
Other People's Lives is on show at PhotoAccess, Manuka Circle, Griffith, until November 5, 2017.
