On 13 August 1940 three cabinet ministers died in a plane crash. Fatally destabilised, the conservative government gradually crumbled and a year later, John Curtin became prime minister. Although an RAAF officer was supposed to have been the pilot, rumours circulated that the Air Minister had been at the controls. But the bodies were badly incinerated, hampering the identification of those in the cockpit. The RAAF rather than the police had taken control of the crash site and had quickly removed the bodies. Forensic photographs of the victims in situ, which had been standard NSW police practice since the 1920s, were not taken by the RAAF. And for want of these photos among other things, the identity of the pilot will never be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
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Jo Henwood. More Than a Park Bench
In 1816, Macquarie opened one part of his lands to the
public, officially inaugurating the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney with
the completion of the Macquarie Wall, probably the oldest constructed
element of the Garden. Throughout the next (nearly) two hundred years
various people have contributed to the visual impact of the garden with
statues, sculptures, fountains, walls, benches, bridges, steps,
obelisks, pavilions and memorial plaques, to say nothing of the special
plantings also intended as memory markers.
Each work made a statement about the values of the people who
installed it, either aesthetically or in what they chose to remember. In
this talk, Jo Henwood explores how the installations are seen with
different eyes by contemporary viewers, so that some are retired and
others take their place as the garden’s relationship with the people
continues to evolve.Click here to see film
Gary Werskey. The Image-makers of Federation Australia
In this talk, Gary Werskey invites listeners/viewers to contrast our own era — saturated by digitally produced and transmitted images — with the pre-Federation period, when the illustrated press monopolised the production of images which reflected and reinforced how the colonists saw themselves and the making of their country. One exceptional feature of pre-Federation images is that they were mainly produced not by photographers but by some of the era’s leading painters and graphic artists — most of whom were based in Sydney. Unfortunately for Sydney’s artist-illustrators, their art has since been sidelined by the art-world and its chroniclers in favour of the ‘Heidelberg’ painters.One of the notable casualties of this telling of history was the Anglo-Australian artist A.H. Fullwood, who was equally prominent as a painter and black-and-white artist. He was also a close mate of Streeton and Roberts not only in Sydney but later in London at the Chelsea Arts Club and, during WW1, as medical orderlies at Wandsworth Hospital and official war artists. A Bohemian to his velvet boots he returned to Sydney in the 1920s and remained a lively presence in the local art scene until his death in 1930. The talk will feature a full range of his arresting images –so well known in his own day — which should provoke the audience to wonder why some image-makers (and their images) become lost to history.
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Elisa deCourcy. The Body as the Archive
Elisa deCourcy. The Body as the ArchiveMany people know of old family photographs from the turn of the century or even earlier kept in albums or crates in an aunt’s attic or grandmother’s closet. The black and white figures in these pictures look, more often than not, awfully rigid and solemn.
In this presentation, Elisa deCourcy looks at family portraiture, among a number of other styles of photography from the nineteenth century including criminal mug shots, social portraiture and anthropological photography to explain how people were categorised according to class, gender, respectability and health according to how they posed for their picture. How did the angle individuals were asked to stand on, the distance of their face from the camera, their clothes and the props used in the picture, affect how the person within the frame was photographed into holding a particular identity?
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Jesse Stein. Pictures, Pranks and Printers
Isn’t the NSW Public Service the last place you’d find a rich culture of image making and unofficial creative practice? You might be surprised. Research into the history of the NSW Government Printing Office indicates that – far from being a dry account of mundane printing tasks – the final three decades of the Government Printing Office (1959-1989) were years of creative and resistant responses to hard times, resourceful adaptation to technological change, and a good deal of fun.
Jesse Adams Stein will take you on a rollicking ride through the eccentric working life of ‘the Guv’ – as it was known by its employees. Discover the unexpected stories that lie behind posed institutional photographs, and see how the Guv’s employees pictured their workplace through illustrations and amateur film. Witness the Guv awkwardly transform from hot-metal into computerisation, and enjoy the gallows humour that characterised the last days at the Guv in 1989.
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