The Anzac Memorial, Hyde Park

Harold Cazneaux photographed the memorial in 1934, the year it was finished, with Rayner Hoff's servicemen newly set on the buttresses of Bruce Dellit's building. He also photographed the architect's model of it, standing on a trestle.

Dellit won the competition in 1930, one of 117 entries, with a stepped block of Bathurst granite that reads as Art Deco at its most severe, and he gave the sculpture to Hoff: sixteen seated servicemen and women on the buttresses, each holding the equipment of their unit, and reliefs of marching soldiers. Two more of Hoff's groups — *The Crucifixion of Civilisation 1914* and *Victory after Sacrifice 1918* — were never made. Their nudity caused an outcry when the models were exhibited in 1932, and the plaster was destroyed.

The money had been raised long before. The appeal began on the first Anzac Day in 1916, and by 1919 £60,000 had come in by public subscription. Two foundation stones went down on 19 July 1932, one inscribed "A soldier set this stone" and the other "A citizen set this stone", and Kell & Rigby built the memorial over the next two years, giving preference to returned men. Inside, under a dome of 120,000 gilded stars, one for every man and woman from New South Wales who served, Hoff's *Sacrifice* is carried on his shield.

On 24 November 1934 the Duke of Gloucester dedicated it before a crowd estimated at a hundred thousand. Cazneaux's photograph of the day is taken from the flag-hung dais, the steps and the podium solid with people. The records of the time call it the Anzac War Memorial, and the park around it was still raw: new lawns, new paths, and the young trees of the approaches not yet taller than the people walking under them. Look for how few of those people there are.

Then find it at the other distances: from the air; from across the lawn at the far end of the axis; close in against the west front; and once with scaffolding still up behind Hoff's seated servicemen.