My Favourite Slides
'The Cup that Cheers' - Discussed by Gael Newton, formerly Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Australia
'The Cup that Cheers' - Discussed by Gael Newton, formerly Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Australia Originating in Thomas Cowper's 1785 poem The Task 'The cup that cheers [but not inebriates]’, refers to the value of tea drinking, a practice enthusiastically endorsed by the temperance movement in the nineteenth century. The quote became an often used automatic expression whenever tea drinking was mentioned in newspapers. Tea arrived with the First Fleet and Australians evidently were the highest consumers of tea in the world by 1900. Drinking strong Indian…
‘The only means of instruction I was ever pressed to repeat’ - Discussed by Chief Investigator Jane Lydon
‘The only means of instruction I was ever pressed to repeat’ - Discussed by Chief Investigator Jane Lydon I must start by admitting that I have been struggling with this assignment because I love so many magic lantern slides and it is very hard to choose just one. In a kind of provisional and reluctant way I decided to write about a magic lantern slide I bought in London at the start of this project, showing scenes from the life of African missionary extraordinaire, David Livingstone (1813-1873). My souvenir is brightly, if crudely, painted. It shows key scenes from the famous explorer and…
Recollections of a Central Australian Lantern slide performance - By Associate Professor David Hansen, curator of the NPG’s current exhibition 'Dempsey’s People'
Recollections of a Central Australian Lantern slide performance - By Associate Professor David Hansen, curator of the NPG’s current exhibition 'Dempsey’s People' At the end of 1973 my brother and I spent some time at the Aboriginal settlement at Yuendumu, some 350 km. north-west of Alice Springs. There was a bit of a family connection. My Baptist minister grandfather Norman had been a friend and contemporary of Rev. Tom Fleming, the missionary at the settlement since 1950, and who my father had visited back in 1953. Tom’s son Jolyon was the same age as my brother. Through…
An Edwardian dinning room in autochrome - Discussed by Lorenzo Iozzi, Senior Collection Manager of Images for History and Technology, Museums Victoria
An Edwardian dinning room in autochrome - Discussed by Lorenzo Iozzi, Senior Collection Manager of Images for History and Technology, Museums Victoria My favourite lantern slide is an autochrome taken around 1925. It is an image of a humble sitting room in an Edwardian home. I love it because it is a celebration of light and as such, a celebration of life. The room is bursting with colour. And what colour! Deep reds, greens, blues, yellows and mauves. This is no accidental combination of colour. Autochromes were created by the additive colour process, whereby the combination of two primary…
'History calling', Discussed by Sydney University Museums' Curator of Ethnography, Rebecca Conway
My job involves contact with thousands of people. They variously go about their business or stare out at me from photographs, most taken more than a century ago. Some faces and images stay with you, continuing to remind you of their presence. It can be intimate and often feels like a form of communication across time. The joyful exuberance of this young Durom girl as she calls to a friend across a valley in the Rigo District, New Guinea caught my attention. I can’t play favourites, but her image in particular is one of a number featuring people that I have wanted to return to and know more…