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‘Just holding the fort’

Two books on documentary photography
by
March 2025, no. 473

Until Justice Comes: Fifty years of the movement for Indigenous rights. Photographs 1970-2024’ by Juno Gemes

Upswell, $65 pb, 325 pp

Buy this book

Imagining a Real Australia: The documentary style 1950-1980 by Stephen Zagala

NewSouth, $59.99 pb, 197 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

‘Just holding the fort’

Two books on documentary photography
by
March 2025, no. 473

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’.

Until Justice Comes: Fifty years of the movement for Indigenous rights. Photographs 1970-2024’

Until Justice Comes: Fifty years of the movement for Indigenous rights. Photographs 1970-2024’

by Juno Gemes

Upswell, $65 pb, 325 pp

Buy this book
Imagining a Real Australia: The documentary style 1950-1980

Imagining a Real Australia: The documentary style 1950-1980

by Stephen Zagala

NewSouth, $59.99 pb, 197 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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