"Photography and Australia" focuses on those aspects of photographic practice that can be considered distinctively Australian. It argues that the colonial experience has been crucial in shaping photographers' concerns. The relationship between settler Australians and Aboriginal Australians is regarded as central with photographs of Aboriginal people or by Aboriginal photographers included in every chapter. Also considered are photographers' responses to place, modernity and globalisation. Images include post-mortem studies of bushrangers, wilderness photographs, documentary photographs, and some of the iconic images in Australian photographic history. The book is visually impressive, illustrated with more than 80 photographs from public collections in Australia. "Photography and Australia" provides an original and lively account that will appeal to the general reader, as well as to specialists and students in the field.

About the Author

Helen Ennis is Senior Lecturer in Art Theory at the Australian National University School of Art. She was the former Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia and has also independently curated exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, the National Library of Australia, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She is also the author of Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss, and Photography (2005) and Intersections: Photography, History, and the National Library of Australia (2004).

Reviews

This is a first-rate book. It reproduces some superb and utterly distinctive imagery. Art Newspaper ... prior to Helen Ennis's Photography and Australia arguably only three books of any significance had been published on the topic. Ennis's survey is distinguished however by more than its mere arrival. Central to her inquiry is the argument that photography in Australia has been inescapably shaped by the country's colonial invasion / inception ... One of the most commendable aspects is Ennis's critical analysis of the medium in relation to the complexity of indigenous and settler Australian relations. Source This is an excellent survey of the major developments, practitioners and icons of Australian photography, providing a wide-ranging, inclusive overview ... Generously illustrated with eighty images, and written in a clear, accessible style, seven chapters cover themes and periods ranging across the entire span of photographic practice in Australia since 1841, and constituting a valuable introduction to the medium's main developments in broad historical context. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History