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December 21, 2011
I've just borrowed Helen Ennis's Photography and Australia from the Adelaide City Council Library and started to read it. A central concern of this regional history is the question: 'What is Australian about Australian photography?' and Ennis envisions her text as contributing to the conversation about photography in Australia.
Photography did not receive any attention in Bernard Smith’s Place, Taste and Tradition: A Study of Australian Art Since 1788 (1945) or Robert Hughes’ The Art of Australia: A Critical Survey (1966). Art photography was mostly confined to a medium specific realm, rarely penetrating the larger art world. A strict hierarchy operated in which the traditional art forms of painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture, were regarded as most important, followed by drawing and printmaking. This view prevailed in Bernard Smith’s Australian Painting 1788-1960 (1962), which considered painting as the primary form of visual art.
Hence the the need for photography specific histories. Prior to Photography and Australia we have had Gael Newton's Shades of Light and Anne-Marie's Picturing Australia. In the introduction to her text Ennis says:
I have not wanted to construct a linear history--assuming such a project was even possible or desirable----which gives a seamless triumphal account of social and technological progress. Nor have I wanted to to be reliant on a single methodology, utilizing instead a variety of approaches to elucidate the meanings of different clusters of photographic works. The chapters were written as self-contained essays that discuss particular themes, issues, styles, and ideas. Overlaps in chronology and history , and thematic interconnections , have been welcomed as a means to creating internal complexity.
She make two points, namely that photography in Australia is tied inextricably to the imperialist and colonialist underpinnings of modernity aligning it in crucial ways with that of other colonized countries such as India, Indonesia and New Zealand, thereby making the interaction between indigenous and settler Australia of prime importance.
Ennis's second point is that:
The one constant in photographic practice in Australia is so striking that it warrants identification at the start--the orientation towards realism. Those using photography in Australia have long been preoccupied with the physical, material aspects of life rather than its metaphysical or spiritual dimensions. Consequently, there is a weightiness to the great majority of Australian photographs--overwhelmingly they are of 'things', including actions and events, which have a concrete reality and a verifiable independent existence. This does mean that the expression of individual subjunctives has not had a place, but rather that subjectivity itself has consistently been framed in terms of a relationship with the external world. For most of the twentieth century inward-looking approaches, whether symbolist, surrealist, abstract, never really took hold.
She adds that even in the late 1960's when conceptual and deconstructionist modes of image making began to appear stimulated by the development of feminist and postmodern theories, realist photography has continued to flourish. Indeed, despite the digital revolution the 21st century has seen a continuous engagement with the 'real'.
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