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Images of the Australian Male in Photography

The idea of the Australian male conjures up many images in people’s minds. The idea of the down-to-earth, rough as guts, honest, hardworking bloke is prevalent in most people’s minds today, but this is not true for everyone, nor has the stereotype been around forever. In fact, conceptions of the issue male have developed greatly from the time of our settlement until the present, and different artists have expressed these in many different ways in different eras and movements.

Soon after Australia was colonized, the British wanted to be able to see this new land through the use of photography. In this era, photography was used for purposes of documentation, often in a scientific context. However, in this era there was a prevalent mentality to the use of photography, now known as Colonialism, that rather than taking candid photographs or documenting an actual event or occurrence, artists would set up images, place people in the shots, tell them how to sit or stand in the photograph. This is partly because of the technology available in this era that required that the subject stay very still for a period of time while the photographs were taken and they would have to be in a comfortable pose and not move, or the image would blur.