Early Photography in Colonial Australia

Elisa deCourcy

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Melbourne University Pres
01 October 2025

The Arts: General & Reference; Photography & photographs; History; Australasian & Pacific history; Archaeology; Society & Social Sciences; Earth Sciences, Geography, Environment & Planning

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.

By: Elisa deCourcy
Imprint: Melbourne University Pres
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
Weight: 265g
ISBN: 9780522879520
ISBN 10: 0522879527
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 01 October 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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.

Reviews for Early Photography in Colonial Australia

""Elisa deCourcy has given us the most subtle and erudite history of colonial photography yet. For the first time First Nations perspectives are centred within the larger story of photography in Australia."" - Professor Jane Lydon, University of Western Australia ""This is a book from which we could all learn much."" - Professor Geoffrey Batchen, University of Oxford ""This is a book about much more than photography, but the photographs themselves have an astonishing presence and power."" - Professor Emerita Helen Ennis, Australian National University ""An important contribution to rethinking the early history of photography and its imbrication in the practices and history of colonial dispossession."" - Professor Steve Edwards, The Courtauld Institute of Art