Along with sunburn and sandy bum cracks, Aquabumps is synonymous with Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
Veteran snapper Eugene Tan has spent the last 17 years shooting the iconic shoreline and its colourful characters, from grommets and lifeguards to local dog walkers and tourists – there’s no part of Bondi he’s not familiar with. Or so he thought.
Like most of us, Tan had no idea that a spate of gay hate crimes were committed in the area throughout the 1980s and 90s; there were over 80 murders of gay men, thousands more horrific assaults and 30 cases still unsolved today.
The dark underbelly of the city’s most popular tourist destination is the foundation for the new SBS mini-series, Deep Water, which stars Aussie Orange Is The New Black star Yael Stone, Game Of Thrones’ Noah Taylor, Danielle Cormack and William McInnes, plus a bunch more impressive names.
“I had heard of these murders and unsolved cases,” says Tan. “But I had no idea just how many people were killed – and that the majority of the murders happened in Bondi and along the coastline to Maroubra.”
It was a decent-sized challenge for Tan, whose images almost always make you smile when they pop up in your feed, but he was keen to help spread the word on a crime-wave that’s so infrequently discussed.
“I think it’s good to shine a light on both the positive and darker side of places especially if it helps to solve some of these unsolved cases,” he says.
The result? Pretty bloody breathtaking, not to mention v. haunting.
A framed and signed original of Tan’s photo for Deep Water will also be gifted to the Aids Council of NSW (ACON) to auction off, with all proceeds going towards their planned Bondi memorial to honour the victims of the senseless crimes – a pretty generous gift considering his original pics sell for as much as $4,000.
Deep Water premieres on Wednesday, October 5 at 8.30pm on SBS.
Source: SBS.
Photo: Eugene Tan / Aquabumps.
