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1. ‘The Public Mode’ by Craig McGregor

(February–March 1984, no. 58)

... I sometimes wonder if there is one at all, except that of universal higher education, and public control of the mass media, and perhaps experimentation with alternative forms like film, photography and ...

2. Nancy Keesing reviews ‘New England from old Photographs’ by Lionel Gilbert and ‘Woollahra - A history in pictures’ by Eric Russell

(April 1981, no. 29)

A colleague questioned my choice of these two books for this page, wondering whether they are too localised for a national journal. This reminded me of a Victorian friend who once aired a theory that the ...

3. Marjorie Tipping reviews ‘Charlie Hammond's Sketchbook’ by Christopher Fr

(April 1981, no. 29)

... His earliest sketches portray a life of gentility and tranquility, of croquet, cricket, skating, and cycling; of receiving prizes at school, dabbling in photography, feeding the family pets and generally ...

4. Bernard Smith reviews 'Augustus Earle Travel artist' by Jocelyn Hackforth-Jone

(April 1981, no. 29)

... South-east Asia, and India. One of the last of the travelling artists to work extensively in the days prior to the introduction of photography, Earle’s work constitutes an invaluable record of life on ...

5. Clive Coogan reviews ‘Antarctic Odyssey’ by Phillip Law

(February–March 1984, no. 58)

... (CSIRO SIP) some years ago. The book is well produced and sports some excellent colour photography, a good deal taken by Law himself. Of course, being only a human product the book has some flaws. To ...

6. EL 47 (★★★★1/2) and Through Rocks and Clouds (★★★★★): The Spanish Film Festival offers two tales of struggle by Angela Viora

(ABR Arts)

... space – snowcapped, infinite, and painfully alive. The opening shot, in which the camera exhales into the horizon, evokes the metaphysical quiet of Luigi Ghirri’s photography. As with Rosi’s Sacro GRA, ...

7. Jack Jones reviews ‘Eagles Hawks and Falcons of Australia’ by David Hollands

(June 1985, no. 71)

... including photography, particularly of nesting behaviour, usually observed from a tower hide, and of flight. The experience is stated in Eagles Hawks and Falcons of Australia for each of the 24 species ...

8. Max Marginson reviews ‘Donald Thomson’s Mammals and Fishes of Northern Australia’ by Joan M. Dixon and Linda Huxley

(June 1986, no. 81)

... us and this book is the latest instalment. It is a scholarly but easily readable book which also contains nearly 100 of his arresting black and white photographs. There is some evidence that his photography ...

9. Olaf Ruhen reviews ‘Seasons of a Hunter’ by Philip Holden

(September 1978, no. 4)

... the process of turning beauty into dead meat. I hunted for a season myself, and know the feeling. But I can approve neither the grammar nor the sentiments of Holden as he advises on photography, for ...

10. Gus van der Heyde reviews ‘Working with Light Sensitive Materials’ by Geoffrey Hindley

(September 1978, no. 4)

... photography and silkscreen printing – which should be of interest to the enthusiastic amateur and the artist in Fine and Graphic Art. In chapter one of this very practical handbook, the reader is given ...

11. Leigh Astbury reviews ‘Anything goes: Art in Australia 1970-1980’ edited by Paul Taylor

(May 1985, no. 70)

... painterly abstraction, minimal art, conceptual art, body art, art photography, feminist art, political art, community-based art and other forms are all included. Yet by the late seventies, as Mary Eagle ...

12. ‘A little college is a dangerous thing’ by D.J. O’Hearn

(March 1988, no. 98)

... and even science and photography; he comes to see there is no certainty unless we choose to believe in human constructs: ‘The law had (certainty); religion had it; Marxism had it: the natural world didn’t ...

13. Maria Takolander reviews 4 Literary Journals

(October 2004, no. 265)

... a bloodhound. The issue begins with an interview with Bob Brown by the editor, David Owen. This is followed by an interesting article by Peter Timms on wilderness photography, its romanticisation and ...

14. ‘The Glass Menagerie: A faithful version of Tennessee Williams’s classic play’ by Clare Monagle

(ABR Arts)

Ensemble Theatre’s The Glass Menagerie offers a faithful but thrilling production of Tennessee Williams’s classic play. This iteration of Williams’s ‘memory play’ retains the historical and geographical ...

15. Gregory Day reviews ‘Enchantment by Birds: A history of birdwatching in 22 species’ by Russell McGregor

(April 2025, no. 474)

... used skins from the Australian Museum to illustrate his bird talks – but that with photography now de rigueur, in this particular instance ‘he was disgusted by Mack’s wanton act of bloodshed’. A few ...

16. Paul Kane reviews ‘At the Louvre: Poems by 100 contemporary world poets’ edited by Antoine Caro, Edwin Frank, and Donatien Grau

(April 2025, no. 474)

... paintings; two composed concrete poems; and three wrote works seemingly unrelated to the project). And what did they all have to say? The Louvre, 2017 (photography by Alessio Mercuri via Wikimedia Commons) ...

17. Richard Leathem reviews ‘Australia at the Movies: The ultimate guide to modern Australian cinema 1990-2020’ by David Stratton

(March 2025, no. 473)

... (1994) is ‘as offensive as it is dim-witted’, Swinging Safari (2017) is ‘a laughless lump of a film’, and of Men’s Group (2008) he says, ‘This grim little film is compromised by tiresome photography (unnecessarily ...

18. Paula Amad reviews ‘A Guide To Gay and Lesbian Writing in Australia’ by Michael Hurley, ‘In With The Tide' by Michael Noonan, and ‘Footprints Across Our Land’ edited by Jordan Crugnale

(April 1996, no. 179)

... Desert women. Though the stories are the focus their meanings are bound neither by their oral origin or their written translations. Photography, painting and text do not capture but provide vital expressions ...

19. Beth Kearney reviews ‘The Use of Photography’ by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie

(March 2025, no. 473)

... jealousy, affairs, desire, and more – she asks her readers to see their lives in her writing. Photography is often a tool in this project; Ernaux uses it to interrogate the ways we look back at life ...

20. Alison Stieven-Taylor reviews ‘Until Justice Comes: Fifty years of the movement for Indigenous rights. Photographs 1970-2024’ by Juno Gemes and ‘Imagining a Real Australia: The documentary style 1950-1980’ ...

(March 2025, no. 473)

Photography finds itself at yet another crossroads. In an era of artificial intelligence, the photograph’s role as a document of evidence has again come under the spotlight. Entering this disruptive space ...

21. ‘William Henry Corkhill and the Tilba Tilba Collection’ by Michelle Hetherington

(November 2003, no. 256)

... in photography, but he had, it seems, read a few books on the subject. Over the next twenty years, he would take thousands of pictures of his family, friends and neighbours, seldom venturing beyond the ...

22. Isobel Crombie reviews ‘Dupain’s Australians’ by Jill White

(October 2003, no. 255)

... and creator of stunning images? Not at all. In fact, I believe that it enlivens our understanding of his photography, not to mention the period in which he worked. Far from existing in some rarefied and ...

23. ‘A Universal Brain’ by Kathryn Favelle

(June-July 2004, no. 262)

... years of collecting at the National Library and contains approximately 200 items. In this exhibition, rare books from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sit beside the contemporary photography of ...

24. Christopher Menz reviews ‘Treasures: Highlights of the Cultural Collections of the University of Melbourne’ edited by Chris McAuliffe and Peter Yule, and ‘Treasures of the State Library of Victoria’ by ...

(June-July 2004, no. 262)

... most of the juxtapositions of images are less jarring. A section on photographs reminds us that the SLV was founded only nineteen years after the invention of photography in 1835, coincidentally the ...

25. Elisa deCourcy reviews ‘Max Dupain: A portrait’ by Helen Ennis

(January–February 2025, no. 472)

... when galleries and libraries around the country established dedicated photography curatorial departments from the late 1960s and 1970s. This would also be the case at the National Gallery of Australia, ...

26. Kevin Foster reviews ‘The Buna Shots: The amazing story behind two photographs that changed the course of World War Two’ by Stephen Dando-Collins

(January–February 2025, no. 472)

Has any photograph ever changed the course of a war? It is a claim as old as photography itself, expressing a profound faith in the power of the image to communicate and move. However, like most religious ...

27. 2024 Arts Highlights of the Year

(January–February 2025, no. 472)

... York) blended photography, biography, and performance – the despair in neglected Pennsylvanian towns rendered ripe, heavy, and intricately networked down generations and across communities. Bangarra’s ...

28. Ruth Balint reviews ‘The Holocaust and Australian Journalism: Reporting and reckoning’ by Fay Anderson

(November 2024, no. 470)

... attention to in a previous book, Shooting the Picture: Press photography in Australia (2016). Ultimately, it was photographs, not words, that exposed the full horror of the Holocaust to the world. The ...

29. The 2025 Calibre Essay Prize | Worth $10,000

(Competitions and programs)

... humour. Boord’s descriptions of a household of relatives cooking and catering their way out of poverty, and enjoying cloud photography on the kitchen wall, are especially poignant. Commended The judges ...

30. 'Lee: The inarticulable cruelty of war' by Tiia Kell

(ABR Arts)

... London, where she later secures her photography job with British Vogue under editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough). With full access to the Lee Miller archives, the film has been adapted from ...