Living memories
THE MID-20TH CENTURY saw the world map redrawn in the aftermath of two devastating wars that ushered in an era of unprecedented geopolitical, social and technological changes that transformed society into the one we recognise today.
Australia’s geographical isolation had made a virtue of necessity and forged a rugged kind of self-reliance, but as the 20th century wore on, Australia was influenced by the same global forces as everywhere else and ultimately assumed its place in a new and more interconnected world. Against the backdrop of seismic international events, ordinary Aussies went about their daily lives doing the same things that people always have–living, working, making homes, caring for loved ones and finding opportunities to laugh and enjoy life, no matter how tough the times.
Our new coffee table book, In Living Memory, is a visual celebration of those wonderful Australian lives. It’s also a tribute to those who were there to capture those lives–the photographers who occasionally turned their cameras away from the big events of the day and trained them on arguably the most fascinating of all subjects: us. The remarkable images featured in the book of the way we lived are fascinating, and reflect the fact that it’s often through the prism of the small rituals of daily life that we can detect the bigger picture.
Some of the photographers are known to us by name; many aren’t, but we chose their images because they captured
