Gael Newton

Many early Australian photographers are forgotten or go unrecognized ~ Gael Newton's book is a good introduction. Shades of Light was published to celebrate the Australian National Gallery's programme of exhibitions to mark the Bicentenary of European settlement in Australia in 1988. Shades of light does not seek to tell the story of Australia in pictures, nor the history of photography as the successive arrival of a number of processes. Its nucleus is fine photographs and their makers, and the reasons behind the changing subject matter and physical appearance of photographs in different periods. New prints from old negatives have thus been excluded from the exhibitions and this publication.

Includes detailed Endnotes, Notes & further reading, Glossary, Index.
The images range from watercolours, pen & ink drawings from early 1800, calotypes, cyanotypes, albumen silver photographs, etchings, engravings, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, lithographs, gelatin silver, salted paper photographs, and early colour photography and I have Gael to thank for teaching me to know the difference when I was her girl friday assistant during the preparation for the The Art Gallery of New South Wales first exhibition of Harold Cazneaux’s work in Australia. (AGNSW also holds the finest collection of his work in Australia).

Shades of Light (Australian Photography 1839 - 1988) the online version below of the original Shades of Light published 1998, Gael Newton, National Gallery of Australia. (although nothing beats the scent of paper)
http://www.photo-web.com.au/ShadesofLight/

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