Home > Online Exhibitions

Introduction

Looking South from Dunlop Range

Looking South from Dunlop Range,
Overlooking Louth, Darling River 1886
albumen print; 21.2 x 28.9 cm nla.pic-vn3968207

A Modern Vision: Charles Bayliss, Photographer, 1850–1897 celebrates the contribution of an extraordinary photographer to Australian photographic history. Charles Bayliss produced some of the most famous photographs of the nineteenth century. He was much praised in his lifetime both in Australia and overseas.

Charles Bayliss photographed the city, leisure activities, and the landscape. His images recorded the impact of modernisation on the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales in the decades after the gold rushes. Bayliss embraced the latest technological developments in photography to produce his photographs and large panoramas. He created a distinctive visual style characterised by dynamic, often complex compositions and by an unusual sense of spaciousness.

Together with the exhibition and catalogue of the same name, this online exhibition highlights the National Library of Australia’s significant holdings of photographs by Bayliss, augmented by a small number of important loans from other institutions. Also on display is a selection of photographs from a collection, the existence of which became known only very recently and which has now been acquired by the Library.