Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope
20
Years of Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year I Various
Artists
National Archives of Australia, Canberra I 28 November 2024 – 27 April 2025
The Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year prize is celebrating its 20th anniversary in this exhibition - displaying winning entries from each year since it began. Developed by the South Australian Museum, the exhibition invites visitors to trace the evolution of photographic techniques over the past 20 years.
Australian Geographic magazine says the bioregion that encompasses Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea possesses a unique natural heritage stretching back more than 80 million years, to the break-up of the great southern continent of Gondwana. And, together with the South Australian Museum, it is committed to enhancing general knowledge of this extraordinary legacy by encouraging photography of the region’s nature and landscapes and promoting it in this annual prize competition.
Promoting the show, National Archives Director-General
Simon Froude says “These expertly captured images celebrate the unique
diversity of our natural world. Nature
photography continues to move, amaze and inspire us – and visitors can
experience this best by taking their time to enjoy this exhibition.”
So, what is there to see in the exhibition? The images include one of the eye of a firestorm, a macro shot of mosquitoes on a treefrog, and one of a face-off between a Gentoo penguin and an elephant seal. There is also a rainforest dragon, two fighting egrets and a grey-headed flying fox drinking. And a great deal more.
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| 2006 – Overall Winner. Rainforest dragon. Photographer: Stanley and Kaisa Breeden |
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| 2008 - Overall Winner. Fighting Egrets. Photographer: Allen Peate |
The grey-headed flying fox drinks water in a unique way. They swoop low, skimming the water with their bellies. Then they lick their wet fur as they fly - and after then perching somewhere nearby. And did you know that mosquitoes feast on the forehead of tree frogs? These are just two examples of what can be learned from the images on display and the accompanying words about them.
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| 2011 - Grey-headed flying fox drinking behaviour. Photographer: Ofer Levy |
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| 2006 – Overall Winner. Piercing Headache. Photographer: Matthew McIntosh |
Not having really followed
this major annual competition, I was initially surprised to see Nick Moir’s
2009 Overall Winner Temora Bushfire. It beautifully captures nature's
power and a firefighting aircraft attempting to control it. Speaking about it
at the time Moir reportedly said. "The strong outflow winds from these
storms drove the fires into inaccessible land, making firefighting on the
ground difficult. Dangerous spot fires were hammered by the vigilance of the
fire-fighting aircraft." So, why was I surprised?
I am not a Nature photographer myself but am aware that definitions used by the major photography bodies in Australia and elsewhere as to what is allowable in a Nature photography competition previously excluded anything that might be described as “the mark of man.” However, some research has informed me that is no longer the case.
Nowadays the rules applied by some of the most significant photography bodies worldwide say the most important part of a Nature image is the nature story it relates, that high technical standards are expected, and the image must look natural, and objects created by humans plus evidence of human activity are allowed in them (but only when they are a necessary part of the Nature story.) Clearly, an aircraft is created by humans and a firefighting plane in action fighting the forest fire certainly tells a key part of the Nature story in Moir’s excellent photograph.
There is no question that the exhibition images are all of a high quality. They vary in the approach the photographers have taken to recording their chosen subject matters. They clearly show us something of the diversity of nature in the bioregion referred to earlier. We can all learn things about some creatures and parts of the natural world that we might previously not have known. These things alone make a visit to the exhibition most worthwhile.
This review is also available on the author's blog here.
