Capturing Nature: Early Scientific Photography at the Australian Museum 1857–1893
Publication details
Paperback, 260 x 200 mm, 192 pp, 9781742236209
Author and/or Editor name/s
Vanessa Finney
Author and/or Editor bio/s
Vanessa Finney is a curator, historian and archivist with a special interest in natural history in colonial Australia. At the Australian Museum she manages the country’s oldest and largest natural history archives and rare books collection.
Year of publication
2019
Publisher
NewSouth Publishing
Abstract
In the mid-nineteenth century, scientists around the world were quick to see photography’s huge potential for capturing fleeting moments of life, death and discovery. At the Australian Museum, curator Gerard Krefft and taxidermist Henry Barnes began to experiment with the revolutionary new art form, preparing and staging their specimens — from whales and giant sunfish to lifelike lyre bird scenes and fossils — and documenting them in thousands of arresting images.
Capturing Nature reveals these groundbreaking photographs for the first time, along with the Australian Museum’s urgent quest to become more scientific in its practices.
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