If a picture paints a thousand words, then the National Archives of Australia’s (NAA) impressive collection of over 11 million images has an endless number of stories to tell. Narrowing the viewpoint, Focus: Australian government photographers invites audiences to glimpse the story of Australia through the lens of government department media.
Continuing at the NAA until 10 June 2024, the exhibition tells the story of 18 photographers. The images on display show their strengths through a small collection gathered during their time with the Department of Information, Australian News and Information Bureau, or the Australian Information Service.
From 1939 to 1996, photographers were employed by government agencies and tasked to take photos for collections, from advertising to documentation. These images captured our culture as it was and as it evolved, the Australian people of the day, employment, and events, as well as our landscape, fauna and flora.
“Now, in the digital age, if you want to know something about a country or a city, you google it, it is easy to find the information. Back then, people in the world, they might have just thought it was all rural kangaroos jumping down the street sort of picture,” says Emily Catt, lead curator of Focus: Australian government photographers.
In a bid to better educate people here and overseas on what the Australian people and country were like, photographers were hired. Ms Catt says as part of the war effort, photographers were sent to the Pacific to photograph soldiers to showcase them to the Australian people. Returning home, these photographers started recording Australia and building the pictorial library we have now.
“In the way you might see a library catalogue, it is broken down into these tiny, tiny themes. The really interesting thing is the photographers could have been really prescriptive, they’re told to go out and photograph a bridge or people on a boat, but they really played around with what they could do.”
Understanding that the Archives audience may not be the same as a gallery and not having the space to show hundreds of images from each photographer, they have created image families. Ms Catt says often it will show various sides to a photographer; it could be serious images paired with fashion, creating a harmonious showcase of the artist.
Inside each family of photos is a brief bio of the artist who created the work. Ms Catt says they contacted the photographers and their families to find out more about each person.
“So little is known about them; they were taking the photos, they’re not usually in them, so with a lot of them I had to reach out to their family to get photographs of them,” says Ms Catt.
One photographer does sit outside the brief the others were held to, Mervyn Bishop, the only Indigenous Australian photographer to feature in the exhibition.
“He was the first Indigenous government photographer that was hired, he was hired by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. So, he doesn’t sit within the government media departments, but his story is really interesting because it’s the first time you see a First Nations eye being turned on the First Nations people.”
Visitors are encouraged to get hands-on and experiment with how the photographer would have developed their photos back in the day. While they can’t have actual liquid developers in the exhibition, they have recreated the process digitally.
“One of the things I always try and explain or communicate with the audience is how things were done. For people now when we think about photographs it’s very digital, but back then it was a physical process, so this recreates the darkroom experience.”
Holding a deep love for the Archives’ photographic collection, Ms Catt says it is paper records not images that people tend to think of when they hear ‘archives’. The curator hopes this exhibition will show people the engaging side of the Archives and a glimpse at the great treasure it holds.
“I love our collection, I think it is fun and interesting and I think there’s so much in it that you don’t expect … I think Archives come off as very serious but we’re not, we have fun things in our collection, you just have to dig a little for them,” she smiles.
Catch a glimpse of history in Focus: Australian government photographers at the National Archives of Australia until 10 June; naa.gov.au
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