Photography

The outsider

Item: 1904
Author: Helen Ennis

by Helen Ennis •

June–July 2005, no. 272

1904: Korea through Australian eyes edited by Rodney Hall

Kyobo Book Centre, $148 hb, 130 pp

Photography

The outsider

by Helen Ennis •

June–July 2005, no. 272

I came away from this book with an unexpected insight – not into George Rose as a photographer, but as a man. His de-facto biographer, Ron Blum, has revealed that Rose was an adventurer who travelled hugely, photographing in at least thirty-eight countries in Europe, North Africa, and Asia. He was also an expert mountaineer who, with his cumbersome photographic equipment, scaled the peaks of New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland during a long and healthy life (he was vegetarian, never smoked and apparently drank only milk and water).

Helen Ennis

By this contributor

Helen Ennis is Emeritus Professor, ANU Centre for Art History and Art Theory and a past ABR Fellow. She is an independent photography curator and writer specialising in the area of Australian photographic practice. Her publications include Reveries: Photography and Mortality (2007) and Photography and Australia (2007). Her biography Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss and Photography (2006) was awarded the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, and the prize for Best Book from the Power Institute of Fine Arts and the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. Her most recent book, Olive Cotton: A life in photography (2019), won the Magarey Medal for Biography and the Non-fiction prize in the Queensland Literary Awards in 2020. She is currently writing a biography of Max Dupain.