Paper Tigers: Lens On Australian Culture

Levi and Keneisha

Martine Perret started as a freelance photographer and editor at The Australian Financial Review. After forming a working relationship with the United Nations (UN) spent the next decade covering UN peacekeeping missions in conflict zones.

For Perret’s 2016 project, Ngala Wongga (come and talk): Cultural Significance of Languages in the Western Australian Goldfields, she had the opportunity to meet Martu speakers. 

Glenys Williams took Martine on a bush trip with her family to the steps of her childhood, around the Wiluna Mission and the clay pan. They took ‘roo tails, made dampers, and sat around the fire watching the landscape and the slowly approaching storm, as her grandchildren Levi and Keneisha (pictured) floated in the clay pan.

Waiting For The Storm To Pass, Bondi, 2015

John Donegan sold his first photograph to a suburban newspaper as a 14 year old in Melbourne, Australia.

This passing moment, borne from happenstance, has led him to chronicling the best and worst of humankind, revolutions,  politics, cultural and sporting events, and daily life across mainland Australia, and in over 20 countries around the world. 

Marriage Equality

Louise Kennerley is a staff photographer with Fairfax Media, working for The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review for over 20 years. 

Kennerley's Marriage Equality captures Ian Fenwicke with his partner Neville Wills in their Greenwich home on December 1, 2017. 

"I'm glad I lived this long to see it."

Desire for Change

Sylvia Liber began her career as a photojournalist in 1995 for The Lake Times, before working at the Illawarra Mercury from 1998. Liber has covered both local news and sports, and international assignments, and more recently has combined her love of portraiture

Getting Dressed

Penny Stephens is a Melbourne photojournalist who worked for The Age for 22 years, until 2017. Stephens now does a mix of media and corporate work, and believes great photojournalism is more vital than ever.

Getting Dressed profiles the challenges of contemporary fatherhood. James Canty and his wife Dr Christine Canty get the family ready for the day. James and his wife Christine, of Melbourne, both work full-time. 

"It's a difficult thing when you're stressed to be present and to be mindful, to just be with them." James said.

This image was a finalist in the 2015 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize.

Westies

Immersing herself in the ordinary lives of Australians, Meredith O'Shea is able to capture her subjects at their most vulnerable. Her work has brought heartbreaking and inspiring stories of struggle and triumph to the front pages of The Sunday Age for over 15 years. 

Dreaming of becoming the first muslim hijabi ballerina in the world, 31st January 2016

Edwina Pickles is a staff photographer for The Sydney Morning Herald. Born in Sydney, Pickles is interested in environmental portraiture and documenting Australian life. 

Rite of Passage

Nic Walker first picked up a camera at the age of 23, after deciding a career for marketing was not for him. Now an award-winning photojournalist, Walker's works feature regularly across Australia's top news and lifestyle publications.

Rite of Passage was taken on 27th November 2014 and profiles Australian 'schoolies' in Bali, with a Sunshine Coast girl dancing at the Skypool Hotel in Legian.

James PACKER vs David GYNGELL - BONDI FIGHT CLUB (4th May 2014)

Brendan Beirne has over 40 years experience as a photojournalist. His work explores themes of both news and celebrity reportage, and regularly features in leading global websites, newspapers and magazines. 

In this photograph, Australia’s richest man James Packer and then Nine Entertainment Co CEO, David Gyngell, come to blows outside Packer’s Bondi Beach home. Life-long friends James and David, became friends no more! 

The men wrestled for five minutes on the pavement, throwing punches and biting ears, before being separated by Packer’s security team.

This is one of the series of images that won the Nikon-Walkley News Photo Award in 2014.

Gladiators

Max Mason Hubers is a staff photographer at The Newcastle Herald where he started on a cadetship in 2011 whilst still at university. When not focusing on daily news his interest turns to the human condition and our relationship with the natural world.

On a torrential day of rain at a music festival, these young friends wrestled in the mud. The crowd bayed and jeered, as the men measured themselves against each other. Grappling, sliding, falling and writhing like their lives depended on it, they continued until exhausted.

ACTU Leader Bob Hawke, 1974

For more than five decades, Robert McFarlane has been dedicated to documenting critical social issues and performance, primarily in Australian society, theatre and cinema - as poetically, unsentimentally and truthfully as possible. 

In his photograph, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) leader Bob Hawke prepares to speak at the Newcastle Civic Centre in 1974, while listening to a shop steward complaining of fatally dangerous conditions at nearby Cessnock mines.

"I found out about the meeting from a 1970's version of social media - hundreds of Quarto (similar to the current A4) posters scattered on telegraph poles around Newcastle simply saying, 'Bob Hawke, Newcastle Civic Centre Thursday night...'"