The title of Parke’s current exhibition alludes to a 19th-century faith in the camera’s mechanical vision as superior to human vision – while also complicating that assumption for modern viewers.
In the same week that Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon of Aylan al-Kurdi made the headlines, I’m reminded of another controversial image. In 1840, J M W Turner exhibited what would become one of his most famous…
Porn. Few words come with as many pre-loaded connotations and assumptions. So what are we to make of the rise of “ruin porn”? Should photos of urban decay brighten or darken our day?
We have – in some of the world – sanitised death, but the custom of post-mortem photography reminds us death is closer to us than we might like to think. This article contains images of dead people.
The adage that the camera doesn’t lie is, of course, a lie, as a long history of hoaxes amply demonstrates. And yet we can still be duped by tricksters. We should remain vigilant.
Conflict involving Islamic State has raised the prospect of the destruction of Palmyra, a World Heritage site in Syria. It’s not the first time the region has been invaded, but it may well be the last.
Thomas Hinton’s photographs, and what we can know about his life from other sources, give a rare glimpse into the life of someone suffering a mental illness at the turn of the 20th century.
Although more than 100,000 Australians have lost their lives as a result of war service, photographs of our dead have never been published in newspapers.Perhaps we should reconsider this.
The latest exhibition of photographer Ian North’s work, Antarctica 1915, demonstrates his uncanny ability to tap into the zeitgeist of our socially fractured and culturally fragmented times.
Trent Parke is Australia’s only Magnum photographer. His current show is an immersive multimedia display that captures and celebrates the random wonder of his environments.
A major photography retrospective opened at the Art Gallery of NSW on the weekend, but what does The Photograph and Australia tell us about our present and past?
In the spring of 1950, Gordon Parks, the first African-American photographer for Life Magazine, returned to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas. On assignment for the magazine, Parks photographed his middle…
Faking photographs is not a new phenomenon. The Cottingley Fairies seemed convincing to some in 1917, just as the images recently broadcast on Russian television, purporting to be satellite images showing…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne