Andrew Tink. Why John Curtin May Never Have Been Prime Minister
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.
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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 Archive
Many 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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Naomi Parry. Children's Homes, In the Frame
If photographs shape the world, what happens when you have no images of
yourself as a child? This is the reality for many people who grew up in
out of home care in 20th century Australia. Picture research is,
therefore, one of the most satisfying elements of working on the Find
Connect web resource, which is a national digital history project funded
by the Australian Government to assist former care leavers to connect
with their past. Image collections, whether created by the NSW
Government Printing Office, institutional staff or the Australian
Women’s Weekly, provide essential but contentious links to the past. In
this talk, Find Connect’s NSW State-Based Historian, In her talk, Dr
Naomi Parry will unpack some of these collections, and discuss how
historians might navigate their use and reuse, balancing the desire of
some to know with the sensitivities of others about the images they
convey.
If photographs shape the world, what happens when you have no images of
yourself as a child? This is the reality for many people who grew up in
out of home care in 20th century Australia. Picture research is,
therefore, one of the most satisfying elements of working on the Find
Connect web resource, which is a national digital history project funded
by the Australian Government to assist former care leavers to connect
with their past. Image collections, whether created by the NSW
Government Printing Office, institutional staff or the Australian
Women’s Weekly, provide essential but contentious links to the past. In
this talk, Find Connect’s NSW State-Based Historian, In her talk, Dr
Naomi Parry will unpack some of these collections, and discuss how
historians might navigate their use and reuse, balancing the desire of
some to know with the sensitivities of others about the images they
convey.
If photographs shape the world, what happens when you have no images of
yourself as a child? This is the reality for many people who grew up in
out of home care in 20th century Australia. Picture research is,
therefore, one of the most satisfying elements of working on the Find
Connect web resource, which is a national digital history project funded
by the Australian Government to assist former care leavers to connect
with their past. Image collections, whether created by the NSW
Government Printing Office, institutional staff or the Australian
Women’s Weekly, provide essential but contentious links to the past. In
this talk, Find Connect’s NSW State-Based Historian, In her talk, Dr
Naomi Parry will unpack some of these collections, and discuss how
historians might navigate their use and reuse, balancing the desire of
some to know with the sensitivities of others about the images they
convey.
If photographs shape the world, what happens when you have no images of
yourself as a child? This is the reality for many people who grew up in
out of home care in 20th century Australia. Picture research is,
therefore, one of the most satisfying elements of working on the Find
Connect web resource, which is a national digital history project funded
by the Australian Government to assist former care leavers to connect
with their past. Image collections, whether created by the NSW
Government Printing Office, institutional staff or the Australian
Women’s Weekly, provide essential but contentious links to the past. In
this talk, Find Connect’s NSW State-Based Historian, In her talk, Dr
Naomi Parry will unpack some of these collections, and discuss how
historians might navigate their use and reuse, balancing the desire of
some to know with the sensitivities of others about the images they
convey.
Click here to see film
