The history of Australian photography is most interesting has paved the way for the ever growing form of art, that is photography. The dream of fixing an image onto a surface to be then carried away was one of William Henry Fox Talbot who was the first to invent photography, in 1839. That same year M. Daguerre discovered the photographic process called the Daguerreotype. In 1840 Fox Talbot produced negative images using silver nitrate solution to produce what he called a calotype. 1851 Fredric Scott Archer discovered the collodian wet plate process for producing an image.
The major influences on Australian photography were the European Pictorialists who emulated the styles of the French impressionist's painters. Australia then attempted to emulate the highlights of Australian impressionism.
The aims and practices of Australian photographers was to create a black and white image conveying a sentimental, narrative, romantic, picturesque images of Australia.
To gain recognition they emulated popular painting styles by taking shots of landscape, Australian people and the nationalistic ideas, by taking shots from eye level, using soft focus and sometimes boiling there negatives to increase grain. Appendix 1.
Modernism started in approximately 1930, images now contained bolder content, abstract beauty, clean crisp lines and geometrical shapes. The images created during this time were described as dramatic, simple, powerful and an honest view of the modern age. I.
Max Dupain is an Australian Modernist with the talent to create a powerful, pure and simple black and white image. He along with David More and Wolfgang Stevens were influenced by the Sydney camera circle, thus these four photographers aimed to take people away form the making of pictures that looked like a painting.
Inspired by the photographers overseas, Max Dupain was now using impersonal subject matter, outdoor images in bright dramatic light, aerial, asymmetrical and unnatural angles to capture the image.
