Until Justice Comes: Fifty years of the movement for Indigenous rights. Photographs 1970-2024’
Upswell, $65 pb, 325 pp
Imagining a Real Australia: The documentary style 1950-1980
NewSouth, $59.99 pb, 197 pp
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‘Just holding the fort’
Photography finds itself at yet another crossroads. In an era of artificial intelligence, the photograph’s role as a document of evidence has again come under the spotlight. Entering this disruptive space are two new documentary photography books: Juno Gemes’s Until Justice Comes: Fifty years of the movement for Indigenous rights. Photographs 1970-2024 and Stephen Zagala’s Imagining a Real Australia: The documentary style 1950-1980. The focus of these books is vastly different. Gemes offers a contemporary history of Australia, whereas Zagala is more concerned with the documentary genre. Their existence affirms that, while the truthfulness of photography may be contested, as it has been since the medium’s nascent years, the intrinsic value of documentary photography remains undiminished. In fact, at this juncture, documentary photography may prove even more important as we grapple with notions of what is ‘real’.
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Until Justice Comes: Fifty years of the movement for Indigenous rights. Photographs 1970-2024’
by Juno Gemes
Upswell, $65 pb, 325 pp
Imagining a Real Australia: The documentary style 1950-1980
by Stephen Zagala
NewSouth, $59.99 pb, 197 pp
ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.
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