Exposing Sydney: Bryan Cook, Photographer 2025

This is the story of Bryan Cook. A local inner-city photographer and Australian independent music lover who captured some of the most unique, unseen photos around the inner-city pubs like The Hopetoun, The Vulcan, The Sydney Trade Union Club the Evening star, The Strawberry Hills Hotel and more. His love of film and digital photography inadvertently captured a music scene that was never given a lot of attention or documented by the mainstream press. Dr Gregory Ferris, an esteemed academic from the UTS, discovered Cookie's extensive, extraordinary and rarely seen photos and exhibited them at the Powerhouse Museum in an interactive display that recreated the Hopetoun Hotel. Cookie has confirmed that the total number of photographs taken over the years exceeded 80,000, a monumental achievement.