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Everyday photographer Jon Lewis hits the streets to document the ever-changing cosmopolitan face of Sydney.
"What I'm trying to say in it is everybody is important, it's not just us long-legged white fellas," he said of the purpose of his work.
"It's also Asian people, it's also Indigenous people, it's also religious people, it's all that."
Over the past four years his daily ritual has involved pulling up strangers to make impromptu portraits with the available light.
Lewis can't predict who he will encounter or what will attract him to certain characters on his journeys.
"I have no idea until I see it, but up until that stage it's always been a time of wondering what's going to surprise me or indeed talk to me."
Last year the State Library of NSW acquired a selection of 50 images from his growing street portraits series that currently includes more than 750 pictures.
Lewis's portraits appear compositionally straightforward, but it's a technique he has worked to perfect over a career spanning five decades.
"I've always loved [photography] through my adult life.
"Anything good is a gift in this world because the world is so buggered."
Born to an Australian father and Jewish-American mother in Maryland, USA, Lewis came to live in Australia in 1951.
In the 1970s he co-founded Greenpeace Australia and rubbed shoulders with other prominent creatives as part of the Yellow House art collective in Sydney's Potts Point.
The profession took him to Europe, Asia, the Pacific and outback Australia, and led to his documentary-styled images being acquired by cultural institutions and private collectors around the globe.
"It's nice to have the world seen in photographs, of things that actually happened and meant something to a great deal of people."
Lewis's assistant Sarah Barker plays a critical role in curating, exhibiting and highlighting the photographs through social media.
"I think it's important work that needs people to see it," Ms Barker said.
"It says a lot about society, our shared humanity and how we have more in common than we do different."
In her opinion the best of Lewis's images are the result of his friendly and transparent approach with the subjects.
"Most street photography is done with the people unaware that they're being photographed, whereas he really wants them to be an active part of what he's doing," she said.
"So that's why he seeks permission; engaging with them, it makes them a very interactive part of the photograph."
"I think it's dignified and the way to get good work is to acknowledge the person that you're photographing," Lewis added.
Although he's a veteran behind the lens, Lewis admitted that approaching people could still be a challenge.
"Every time I make a photograph I get a little frightened; I'm not particularly comfortable.
"But generally speaking people are wonderful and they're most accommodating, and if you're correct and happy with them they will usually be easy to photograph."
While he always carries a light camera kit, Lewis let in on one tip for making engaging portraits of strangers.
"Humour is a wonderful thing to bring along when you photograph people that you don't know."
His exhibition Perfect Strangers is on display at The Photography Room in Canberra until March 4.
Topics: fine-art-photography, photography, human-interest, people, multiculturalism, community-and-society, sydney-2000