Shades of light: Photography and Australia, 1839-1988

by Gael Newton

Gorgeous photos of Australia.

218 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1988

About the author

Gael Newton is the Senior Curator of Australian and International Photography at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra.

From 1974 to 1985 Newton was the foundation curator of photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Newton then moved to Canberra and from 1985 to 1988, was the visiting curator for the Bicentennial Photography Project at the NGA.

During this period she researched and mounted the 900 work exhibition Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988, and published the major Australian reference book in association with the exhibition. She also held the position of Curator of Australian Photography at the NGA before the current position.

Newton has curated many exhibitions - both historical and contemporary. More recently Newton has overseen the establishment of a new significant collection within the National Gallery. This resulted in the landmark survey exhibition in late 2008, Picture Paradise: Asia-Pacific photography 1840s-1940s.

Newton is the author of the standard reference work on the history of Australian photography, Shades Of Light: Photography And Australia 1838-1988 and monographs on several Australian photographers: Harold Cazneaux, Max Dupain, John Kauffmann and Tracey Moffatt. She also wrote Silver And Grey: Fifty Years Of Australian Photography 1900–1950. Newton is a regular contributor to magazines and collections of essays.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gael_Newton)

Reviews

[Velvetink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many early Australian photographers are forgotten or go unrecognized ~ Gael Newton's book is a good introduction. Shades of Light was published to celebrate the Australian National Gallery's programme of exhibitions to mark the Bicentenary of European settlement in Australia in 1988. Shades of light does not seek to tell the story of Australia in pictures, nor the history of photography as the successive arrival of a number of processes. Its nucleus is fine photographs and their makers, and the reasons behind the changing subject matter and physical appearance of photographs in different periods. New prints from old negatives have thus been excluded from the exhibitions and this publication.

Includes detailed Endnotes, Notes & further reading, Glossary, Index.
The images range from watercolours, pen & ink drawings from early 1800, calotypes, cyanotypes, albumen silver photographs, etchings, engravings, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, lithographs, gelatin silver, salted paper photographs, and early colour photography and I have Gael to thank for teaching me to know the difference when I was her girl friday assistant during the preparation for the The Art Gallery of New South Wales first exhibition of Harold Cazneaux’s work in Australia. (AGNSW also holds the finest collection of his work in Australia).

Shades of Light (Australian Photography 1839 - 1988) the online version below of the original Shades of Light published 1998, Gael Newton, National Gallery of Australia. (although nothing beats the scent of paper)
http://www.photo-web.com.au/ShadesofL...