Imagining a Real Australia
Documentary photography offers one way of looking, but this type of looking is also about feeling. It is a style of making photographs designed to draw people into the world and activate their interest in something beyond themselves.
Australian documentary photography was at its height from the 1950s to 1970s. A time of great flux – social, political and cultural – was reflected in the photographs of Max Dupain, Carol Jerrems, William Yang, Rennie Ellis, David Moore, Mervyn Bishop, Sue Ford and others. A time when the gritty documentary photography that emerged in the US after World War II, hand-held film cameras, instamatic colour film, Polaroid cameras and the arrival of television all pushed photography in a revolutionary new direction. Imagining a Real Australia is a stunning testament to a time when photographers turned their lenses on real people living real lives.
'The photos in Zagala’s book brilliantly capture the period and the sense of change that was occurring at the time. Highly recommended.' – Canberra Weekly
'Step back in time with Zagala, before influencers and selfies, to a period when photographers captured real people in all their messy, marvellous glory.' – Australian Women's Weekly
Stephen Zagala has curated more than 60 exhibitions including ‘Bill Henson shuffles the deck’, Museum of Australian Photography 2014; ‘Tracey Moffatt: Narratives’, Art Gallery of South Australia 2011 (with Maria Zagala) and ‘Afterglow: performance art and photography’, Museum of Australian Photography 2011. He was principle curator at the Museum of Australian Photography between 2006 and 2017, and a research fellow at the South Australian Museum between 2017 and 2024.
