Photographs

Ellis Rowan, Chrysanthemums, ca. 1890, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138089294
Australian artist Ellis Rowan primarily worked in watercolour and gouache, and is best known for painting Australian native flowers. She caused a stir at the 1888–89 Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne when her painting Chrysanthemums won First Order of Merit and Gold Medal. This similar painting, depicting the same type of flower, is a more recent addition to the Library's vast Rowan Collection, the bulk of which was acquired for the nation for £5,000 in 1923.

Alan Dwyer, Caravan park in Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, December, 1974, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-148903604

Yves Coffin, Coffin collection of photographs of Bali, Cham, Javanese, Khmer and Thai art, architecture and sculpture, (196?), nla.gov.au/nla.obj-140366892

Wolfgang Sievers, Interior of National Bank head office, Collins Street, Melbourne, 1941, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-143527488

Australia. Department of the Interior. Property and Survey Branch. & E. P. Bayliss, J. S. & Cumpston, Antarctica, 1939, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-236895938

Soc Hedditch, A youth wearing a gas mask and a Friends of the Earth armband demonstrates against French nuclear testing in the Pacific, Adelaide 1972, nla.obj-146561887

Harold Cazneaux's first camera, 1904, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-141166704
Harold Cazneaux (1878–1953) was perhaps Australia's best-known photographer of the early twentieth century. He purchased this camera in 1904, shortly after moving from Adelaide to Sydney, and made photographs of Sydney's streets and waterways.
In 1909 he became the first Australian photographer to exhibit his works in a solo show.
Cazneaux was a master of the pictorialist style of photography, using soft focus to capture scenes that were - and remain - familiar to many Australians in a new light. He was able to find a timeless, extraordinary beauty in the everyday.