By the mid 1970s, photography was established as a recognised medium within the Australian art world, and a new generation of art school-trained photographers began to emerge. Emphasising ‘personal expression’, art photography in the 1970s was a means of recording one’s subjective experience of the world. This was not the social truth of the earlier generation of documentary photographers, but was more concerned with the private interior world of the photographer–artist.

The ‘Journeys North’ portfolio is indicative of this individualistic exploration of the medium. Here, Lin Martin concentrated on creating portraits in which the personality of the subject emerges from the rapport developed between photographer and sitter. Similarly, the element of personal narrative appears in Max Pam’s images of the Queensland landscape, as expressed through the eyes of a holidaying family, while Glen O’Malley’s images of everday situations imply a diaristic approach, with work titles including dates or places.