Marking a decent into adelaide’s mysterious, bizarre and murderous history, the exhibition Adelaide 1966-1999 visualises many of the locations that have contributed to the city’s notoriety.

3D’s Anita Connors talks to the aussie photographer Andrew Cowen whose 13 photographs cover 33 years of crime that begins with the abduction of the Beaumont children in 1966 and culminates in the discovery of barrels containing bodies in a bank vault in Snowtown in 1999.

“It sort of started off as a landscape project,” Cowen says. “I wanted to do the pictures kind of made in that classic landscape, outdoor, wide-angled and picturesque environment. And I guess the paradox in it is that all the environments are connected in some way to this horrific set of crimes that have occurred over the years.

“I think of them as landscape pictures, just some are urban environments and some of them are natural environments…I didn’t want it to be a crime exposé,” he says. “You know, portraits of victims or that kind of thing. I just wanted it to be something you could kind of look at the story as a whole and just kind of think about it in those terms.”

Adelaide 1966-1999 begins with the story of the three Beaumont children who disappeared on Australia Day 1966 from Colley Reserve with reportedly a tall, blond man. This unsolved crime changed the way parents took care of their kids.

“This event in Adelaide’s history [is] a bit like when John Lennon was shot or when people first walked on the moon,” he says. “People of that generation remember where they were when they heard this announcement went out on the news – ‘Three children were abducted today’ – ’cause it was a public holiday and all this kind of stuff, and, you know, someone was at home cooking dinner and someone was cutting a tree and someone was driving along Main North Road. No wonder we have a fascination with crime.”

Developing out of a fascination with Adelaide’s history while at the same time, the series was initially a project for the Adelaide Fringe Festival.

“I’m from Adelaide originally and anyone who grew up in Adelaide…there’s this background of this history that occurred in Adelaide – it’s a bit of a freakshow,” he says. “There’s a weird vibe there. There’s nothing happening and it’s kind of a bit freaky. And everything is so organised and tidy, but there’s something in the air there… The thing that’s really wild about Adelaide, I reckon, is that this atmosphere is there. It’s palpable and so, you know, this is what [I’m] kind of attempting to express in these pictures. I hope this sense is conveyed.”

While creatively, Cowen could be described as a photography purist, working with film and shooting in natural light, the exhibition is not absolutely forensically correct.

“One of the pictures is outside of a town called Truro and its shot next to a road called Swamp Road,” Cowen says. “So there’s a case called the Truro murders. The place where I photographed is not the exact spot. So I drove out there, looked around: ‘That’d make a nice photograph’. It is accurate in the sense that’s where…that’s the area…this is what the area looks like. Like anything worth doing it’s to satisfy your own interest as well.”

WHAT: Andrew Cowen: Adelaide 1966 – 1999
WHERE: Monster Children Gallery, 20 Burton Street Surry Hills, 2010
WHEN: Friday 16 May – Thursday 29
MORE: monsterchildren.com