GROWING PAINS.

With a desire to unearth Subiaco’s quiet stories, I spent many months visiting and photographing at two of the suburb’s key institutions, one old and one new: King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH) and Bob Hawke High School. Both places are vessels containing layered processes of upheaval, transition and metamorphosis. Throughout its 106-year history, KEMH has remained a steadfast presence within the cultural landscape of Subiaco. Although its maternal health services have dominated the hospital’s representational narrative, the public services provided within its walls have adapted and expanded greatly across the decades to meet community needs. Caporn chose to photograph the staff and patients that occupied three of the lesser-known departments within the hospital: the Sexual Assault Resource Centre, the mental health support at the Mother Baby Unit, and the Perron Rotary Express Milk Bank, which does revolutionary work. As the suburb's newest high school, Bob Hawke College was an ideal counterpoint to the longstanding presence of KEMH. Sitting on the site of the former Subiaco Oval, the importance of this new establishment extends beyond the boundaries of Subiaco, as it becomes a model for public education on a state level. Growing Pains seeks to recognise the stories of the people who occupy these spaces, capturing the self-conscious, awkward unfolding of young adulthood, the life-altering passage into motherhood, and journeys through trauma. It chronicles the figurative growing pains and processes of personal evolution that breathe life into—and personify—these institutions.