Face of Sydney Revealed on Harbour Highrise

Sydney is a multicultural city with a third of its residents born overseas. So what does the typical Sydneysider look like?

On Friday night, two towering digital portraits of the average Sydney man and woman were projected onto the glass wall of a highrise tower overlooking Sydney Harbour.

The average Sydneysider is not blonde and tanned like the stereotypical Australian beach image, but fair-skinned and dark-haired.

The images were a digitally layered composite of photographs of more than 1400 Sydney residents, the oldest 93 and the youngest two weeks old.

Called "The Face of Sydney", photographers used statistical data of Sydney's diverse city population of 160,00 people to choose subjects and then digitally layered the photographs.

Some 54 per cent of participants described their ancestry as Anglo-Saxon Celtic, 3 per cent as indigenous Australians, 4 per cent as South American and 11 per cent Chinese.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said Sydney, Australia's largest city, was a city of villages and "The Face of Sydney" reflected it diversity.

"The results represent an insight into the visual identity of the broader city of Sydney community – the sum of our differences and similarities at this point," said Moore.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz