A lively photographic practice emerged in Queensland through the 1980s and into the 1990s in contemporary art circles. It was often studio-based, informed by new theoretical discourses, and related to the history of visual art as much as to the various traditions of photography. This new work, which was very diverse, challenged the ways that we looked and thought about photographs, and proposed new social and artistic contexts for visual expression.

Many artists continued to be inspired by photography’s modernist traditions and concentrated on its reality-bearing functions, while others such as Marian Drew created staged scenarios in the studio, expressing an internal rather than external world. In a similar way, Joachim Froese explores issues of mortality and decay through art historical references to Dutch still-life painting. Fiona Foley, on the other hand, has used the medium to reclaim and recontextualise nineteenth-century ethnographic photographs of Indigenous Australians.

A newer, younger generation of contemporary Queensland photographers is creating even more diverse and varied approches to photography. Martin Smith carves text from his photographs that is as important as his images in the final work, while Francesca Rosa has photographed a decomposing house some months after its destruction by Cyclone Larry, the photograph becoming a way of classifying and categorising, a modern forensic tool of investigation.

This selection — part of ‘150 Years: Photography in Queensland’ (2009) — demonstrates only a few examples of the proliferation of artistic approaches to photography over the last two decades. Challenging conventions and reinterpreting photographic traditions, photographers in Queensland continue to invigorate the medium with fresh energy and relevance.