Looking Back captures images of a time when many inner Melbourne suburbs we deemed 'slums', where children scavenged firewood from building sites and derelict houses, men drank regularly in the streets and slept on street benches. And cats sometimes outnumbered people.

Author Chris Lermanis, a self-taught photographer, spent his weekends in the late 1960s and early 1970s photographing the area with his Pentax SV camera and 50mm lens. During this time the houses and factories were being demolished and the new housing commission towers built. He hand-processed the black and white films at home, and made prints in the bathroom or laundry, which was temporarily converted into a darkroom.