{"id":350,"date":"2008-07-29T13:22:51","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T13:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=350"},"modified":"2008-07-29T13:22:51","modified_gmt":"2008-07-29T13:22:51","slug":"picture-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=350","title":{"rendered":"Picture Paradise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some years ago when I wrote a feature for a web site on the early years of photography in  Australia (Australian Photography 1840-60) <\/span><\/i> and another on a fine twentieth-century Australian photographer, Frank Hurley, <\/i>unfortunately neither currently available on line.<\/span><\/p>\n

After publishing my piece on the early years, I received an e-mail from an Australian that berated me for not having written a full history of photography in that country. My reply basically but politely told him that I was a pom <\/i>living in England, and if he wanted a history of photography in his country he should get off his backside, do some research and write it. A few years ago there was relatively little material available on line to enable me to do so if I had wanted to, and so far as I was concerned Australia was just one of around 195 countries I wanted to write about.  (Unfortunately this was 194 more than my then employers appreciated, and I only managed to mention something about photography in around 50 of these before they dispensed with my services.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know how many of the pioneers I mentioned – Captain Lucas, George Barron Goodman, Douglas Thomas Kilburn, William Little, Norman and Heseltine, Schohl, Thomas Gill, \u0091Professor\u0092 Robert Hall, J W Newland, William Freeman, John Hunter Kerr, Robert Hunt<\/i> and others – are included in what looks like a fine exhibition by the National Gallery of Australia<\/i>, ‘Picture Paradise<\/a> – Asia-Pacific Photography 1840s-1940s, <\/i>but only Kilburn from that list appears in the 5 images on line covering the same period.<\/p>\n

The show perhaps spreads it’s net too wide by including the Indian subcontinent – I wrote at around a dozen full-length features on India while only scratching the subject, as so many fine photographers from Britain in particular worked there in Victorian times.<\/p>\n

It certainly is surprising not to see a single picture by the great early Indian photographer Lala Deen Dayal<\/a> although he does get a mention in the accompanying essay. Several other photographers I’ve also previously written about, including Felix Beato<\/i> and Samuel Bourne<\/i> are represented by photographs, as too –  rather surprisingly, is Julia Margaret Cameron<\/i>. Although a great photographer, the picture included serves to confirm the popular view that she did nothing of great photographic interest in her return to India, with all of her best work being made on the Isle of Wight, well outside the area of this show.<\/p>\n

Lala Deen Dayal <\/b>(1844-1905) <\/b>is one of relatively few photographers to have been honoured by a postage stamp<\/a> issue, and I was very pleased to receive a commemorative album from his great granddaughter who runs the web site<\/a> about his work containing examples of the 500 Rupee stamp issued in November 2006. Few photographers can claim an edition of 0.4 million!<\/p>\n

So although this is an interesting site and well worth a look, and does bring to our notice several photographers whose work until now has been (perhaps deservedly) fairly obscure, it isn’t really a balanced overall survey of photography in the region, and certainly fails to do Australia itself justice.  There is still time for that gentleman I corresponded briefly with to get his act together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some years ago when I wrote a feature for a web site on the early years of photography in  Australia (Australian Photography 1840-60)  and another on a fine twentieth-century Australian photographer, Frank Hurley, unfortunately neither currently available on line. After publishing my piece on the early years, I received an e-mail from an Australian that … Continue reading Picture Paradise?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-history","category-photographers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}