Dimensions
252 x 273 x 8mm
As Gideon Haigh writes in the foreword to 'Home Ground', the MCG is indeed a repository of "all our yesterdays. Here have been not merely Test matches, Grand Finals and an Olympics, but highland gatherings, ascents by pioneering aviators, concerts, conscription rallies, military encampments, evangelical crusades, papal and royal visits.
It has seen Sir Donald Bradman score nineteen first-class centuries, Wayne Carey kick 400 goals, Betty Cuthbert win three gold medals; it has heard Billy Hughes speak, Billy Graham preach and Madonna sing - or whatever it is she does. But more than that, it is the source of numberless personal moments, musings, meetings, sensations. In offering history to recall, it affords us glimpses of ourselves in the making; one helps navigate the other."
Megan Ponsford's book of photographs foregrounds the northern side of the MCG, just before the wreckers moved in to commence its top-to-bottom refurbishment. It is not the colosseum of cliché, of grand occasions hosted, of mighty deeds done; it is not the ground crammed to the bleachers, plastered with advertising, viewed by television from reverent elevation. It is our MCG - that is, the MCG of the fans, of the faithful, even if, so artful and intimate is Ponsford's perspective, that they may at first have trouble recognising it.
For those who think the name's familiar, you're right: the legendary Bill Ponsford is Megan's grandfather. As she says, "I have always been very proud to have my family's name on such a prominent building and I wanted to have images of it to show my children and their children."
