Early Photography in Colonial Australia

Early Photography in Colonial Australia explores the origins of the photographic culture that continues to shape how we see the world.

From its mid-nineteenth-century beginnings photography was more than just a new technology – it was deeply implicated in the colonial project. The invention of photographic technology coincided with the rise of imperial control across the Pacific, and many of its raw materials were extracted from colonised lands.

This book offers the first major study of photography’s arrival and establishment in colonial Australia. It places photographs in conversation with prints, sketches and watercolours to explore how the foreign medium adapted to the Australian environment, artistically and politically. It shows how cameras were put to work, visually redacting Indigenous custodianship and knowledge of Country to celebrate colonial construction and expeditions.

Early Photography in Colonial Australia reveals the complex power of the medium. Elisa deCourcy considers these early images beyond colonial systems of knowledge and their contemporary role in acts of colonial reckoning and First Nations cultural reclamation.

About the Author

Elisa deCourcy is a writer and curator living and working on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. Between 2020 and 2023 she was an Australian Research Council DECRA fellow in the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at the Australian National University. DeCourcy has written on photography and colonial art for the National Portrait Gallery, London; Musée du Quai Branly, Paris and the National Gallery of Victoria, as well as a range of national and international scholarly journals.