Helen Ennis introduces the Library’s latest exhibition
Something of great interest and consequence has been happening in libraries around Australia in recent years—a re-evaluation of the significance of the incredible pictorial collections they hold. These developments are bound up with contemporary ideas about the accessibility and accountability of our public institutions. The results can be seen in the growing emphasis on exhibitions of visual material and the creation of purpose-built galleries in libraries, as in Melbourne and Adelaide; the National Library’s exhibition venue is also scheduled for remodelling. In the same period, digitisation programs have expanded phenomenally offering online access to pictorial collections. Photography collections are one of the areas to benefit from this new focus—hence the National Library initiative to commission an exhibition, In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s–2000, based on the extensive photography holdings in the Pictures Collection.
From the National Library’s perspective, photographs provide another form of source material that—to paraphrase the inaugural Director-General Harold White—illustrates the life and development of a nation and its people. For the last 50 years the National Library has been quietly and assiduously forming a photography collection that is without doubt one of the most important in the country. It has received some public exposure through the publications program inaugurated by Alec Bolton in the 1980s and a small number of thematic exhibitions, but scholars and researchers have been the principal users. The collection’s overall scope and significance—it now comprises over 600 000 photographic items—has not yet been fully appreciated. In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s–2000 is an ambitious two-part exhibition featuring more than 500 photographs. The first part,In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s–1930s, deals with the processes of colonisation and opens on 9 October 2003. The second part, In a New Light: Australian Photography 1930s–2000, which is concerned with modern life, opens in August 2004 and will be accompanied by a major publication. The exhibitions propose a re-thinking of the value of photographs within the context of the National Library, not simply as support material but as objects in their own right that have compelling stories to tell about the specific historical circumstances affecting Australians since photography’s earliest days. What is immediately apparent is the vigour of photographic practice in Australia, evident in the range of concerns, subjects and processes (especially in the nineteenth century when technological developments occurred at an astonishing rate).
The holdings in the Pictures Collection have a distinctive shape that reflects the orientation of the collecting program. People are predominant in the photographs—in portraits and in the prodigious number of images concerned with varied forms of human activity. The natural landscape rarely appears as a subject in itself, but rather as an arena in which the processes of colonisation are enacted, for example, in relation to exploration, farming, mining and recreation. Realist or documentary approaches are prevalent; because of their hold on the ‘truth’ they have been widely regarded as the best means for creating photographic records. A large number of the National Library’s photographs also include text in varied forms—as personal inscriptions or published captions. Some of these are brief and enigmatic, such as a postcard of an Australian soldier with the address ‘Somewhere in France’, whereas those by Frank Hurley offer lengthy descriptions of the event being photographed. Dame Nellie Melba invariably signed portraits of herself that she gave to friends, her signature an indicator of authenticity and also of her celebrity status.
Another prominent feature of the National Library’s photography collection is its democratic coverage. Photographs of prominent members of Australian society sit alongside those of ordinary, often anonymous individuals whose contributions have been less publicly visible. The plethora of prosaic images relates to contemporary ideas about Australian history as a people’s history not formed solely by great men and grand events but by complex, interactive processes involving those who may have been marginalised in other historical contexts. One of the collection’s greatest attractions is the sheer profusion of images it contains. This has enabled the creation of open-ended, multi-layered historical narratives in In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s–1930s that offer different takes on a person’s life or a major event. For example, Henry Parkes, with his trademark shock of white hair and long beard, is represented in the exhibition in his official capacity as a politician, and unofficially as a family man, pictured with each of his three wives. Similarly, the National Library’s small but rich holdings of World War 1 photographic material lend themselves to complex narrative constructions: Frank Hurley’s exalted composite photographs of the battlefields in France, 1917, are juxtaposed with far less heroic war-related imagery that includes personal portraits of young soldiers, an image of an anti-conscription march, unadorned documentary photographs depicting conditions at Gallipoli, and images of injured soldiers convalescing overseas.
In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s–1930s is arranged in the subject groupings that are part of the Library’s own lexicon; these include important events, occasions, people and places. The events are enormously varied, ranging from weddings, to Dame Nellie Melba’s triumphal return to Australia in 1902, to key moments in Australia’s aviation history. One such photograph relates to the achievements of Mr W.E. Hart, a Sydney dentist who in 1911 was granted the first Australian pilot’s licence and went on to win Australia’s first air race the following year. Federation, like World War 1, is accorded a special section because of its obvious significance in ‘the life of a nation’ but also because of the issues it raises about photography and history. How might such an abstract event as federation be visualised photographically? Those involved in the Federation Movement were highly conscious of the historical import of their activities, commissioning wonderfully formal photographs of the various premiers’ conferences held throughout the 1890s of which the Library has an excellent selection. But it is the images of the federation ceremonies themselves that are of special interest, because they reveal the photographers’ struggles to organise what they see into coherent, meaningful images that would encapsulate the significance of the event. In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s–1930s includes small, intense clusters of work that either elaborate on a theme or highlight one of the National Library’s numerous collections. For example, concentrated displays of portraits of Truganini, Henry Parkes and Dame Nellie Melba offer a means of exploring the relationship between photography and popular culture. The photographs from individual collections relate to a specific community (such as Tilba Tilba, Gundagai and Tumut), or a photographer whose works have been collected in depth. Among the latter are some of Australia’s finest practitioners—Harold Cazneaux, for example, whose beautiful portraits and views of old Sydney are at the pinnacle of art photography in the interwar years, and Frank Hurley whose images of Antarctica are now part of Australians’ geographical imaginings.
Also featured are single photographs that are independent of any subject category, whose role is to enrich the narrative structure, extending photographic vision in some instances, eliciting particularised emotional responses in others. In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s–1930s is an ambitious exhibition. It aims to encourage the viewer to think differently not only about photography and history but also about the National Library itself. In the area of photography, the strength of the collection is such that the National Library is poised to play an expanded and increasingly significant role in Australian visual culture. HELEN ENNIS is guest curator of the Library’s two-part In a New Light exhibition. She is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art at the Australian National University |
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