PHOTOGRAPHY
Canberra Museum and Gallery collection series: photography
Curated by CMAG staff. Until October 12.
Vivid National Photographic Festival.
Reviewed by Garry Raffaele

SUCH is the breadth of the Vivid Festival that it is going to be difficult covering even a good tasting.
An entrée, then, might be the Canberra Museum’s contribution, an eclectic group of photographs, ranging from obvious to arcane. Obvious, in the sense that these photos are easily accessible by the viewer. Chief among these are the pictures from Ted Richards.
Richards’ prints are not great technically, but full of Canberra in the ‘60s; a real snapshot of the way we were, in a limited sense.
Ainslie Avenue, a Prime Minister (Gorton), the MLC Building and the Kingston shops all figure in a retrospective look at our town 40 to 50 years ago.
At the other end of the scale is the work of Marzena Wasikowska and Marcia Lochhead.
Wasikowska’s nine, large images show a Poland she left at age 11. Without reading the accompanying note, the photos are moody, dark and reflective. The note tells you they are part of her Polish existence and that opens up another area of understanding.
Lochhead’s series focuses on empty swimming pools, mainly in Canberra.
Many Canberrans have seen the Manuka pool full of swimmers, but few as it is in this image, half lit by electricity, bare and alone, its water undisturbed by any frivolity. A very impressive shot.
William Yang, a Sydney photographer with a fine reputation, has one image here – cockatoos in a Canberra street, with the colour reminiscent of hand-coloured photos of the ‘40s and ‘50s. It is a fine image, redolent of this city. Its magical atmosphere contradicts Yang’s words, that we are a conservative bunch.
Denise Ferris’s pix of snow are more painterly than photographic while David Paterson’s tree photos (especially the one taken on the day of the fires that enveloped Weston Creek suburbs and killed four people) is chilling. Finally, Rob Little surprises with a lenticular photo, one of those images that change as the eye moves across it. The first image is of the old Royal Canberra Hospital, the second a view of the building as rubble and dust.
This is not just a novelty, but an imaginative use of technology to tell a photographic story.
If I have a quibble with this small show, it is that it is too small. It felt like just a taste of what CMAG has to offer. Perhaps the museum might consider doing a major photo show if it feels it has the assets, both photographic and space.