Vote Now in Boroondara’s Free Photo Exhibition

Sihan Jiang’s photograph ‘The Long Way Home’ won Best in Competition at the 10th annual Boroondara Photography Competition. The public gets the next say: People’s Choice voting at the free Hawthorn exhibition closes on Saturday 20 June.

The ‘Love from Boroondara’ exhibition is on at the Town Hall Gallery inside Hawthorn Arts Centre (360 Burwood Road) until 27 June. It’s free, open weekdays 9am to 5pm and weekends midday to 4pm, and the sort of outing that works just as well with a pram as it does with a coffee in hand.

The display mixes this year’s winning entries with standout images from the competition’s past decade. The brief was simple: capture what you love about the people, places and natural environment of Boroondara. The result is a wall of local pride that makes you look twice at the streets you walk every day.

Two categories split the field: an Open competition for all ages and a Young Photographers’ competition for school-aged entrants. That mix means the gallery walls carry everything from polished landscapes to the kind of honest backyard shot that only a kid would think to take.

Voting for the People’s Choice Award happens in person at the gallery. Ballot papers are available at the exhibition and the winner, who receives a $100 prize, will be announced after the show wraps up on 27 June. If 20 June feels tight, note that the exhibition itself continues for another week after voting closes, so you can still catch it even if you’ve missed your chance to have a say.

The City of Boroondara runs the competition in partnership with Boroondara Library Service, and there is also an online gallery for anyone who can’t make it to Hawthorn. It’s a practical backup, but the physical show is the real experience – the scale of the prints and the quiet of the gallery make the suburb feel bigger than it usually does on a weekend errand run.

Getting there is straightforward. Hawthorn station on the Lilydale/Belgrave line is a short walk, and several tram routes run along Burwood Road. Street parking is available in the area, though the usual inner-east caveats apply on busy Saturdays. If you’re making a morning of it, a handful of cafes within walking distance appear in plenty of the photographs on display.

Ten years of the competition have built a quiet archive of Boroondara moments: autumn leaves in Hawthorn, a familiar shopfront, a family walking home. This year’s exhibition is a chance to see your neighbourhood the way a photographer does, and to cast a vote before the door closes on another year.