LOVING - Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s & A loving City - Queerberra Revisited

LOVING - Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s

A loving City - Queerberra Revisited

Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG), Gallery 2 | 6 December 2025 to 5 April 2026

Whilst most certainly being complementary, these two exhibitions in adjoining spaces are also very different to each other. LOVING – Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s is, obviously, only about men. The large number of photographs in the display is essentially monochromatic.

Installation image - LOVING – Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s © Brian Rope

But, when visitors walk through into the next space to A loving City – Queerberra Revisited they will immediately see colour images hung against a background of vivid rainbow colours.

Installation image - A loving City – Queerberra Revisited © Brian Rope

The content of LOVING was created by collectors and arts professionals Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell. That married couple discovered an old photograph of two other men in a tender loving embrace at an antique store in Dallas, Texas, 25 years ago. The image sparked a passion which resulted in a global journey searching for other photographs capturing men in love. They searched flea markets, auction houses, family albums and online collections, gradually gathering from all over the world over 4,000 tender images of male couples taken between the 1850s and 1950s - 100 years of social history and the development of photography.

In 2020, they published a book internationally, showing hundreds of the previously unpublished vernacular photographs depicting romantic love between men that powerfully and movingly reasserted both that love is love and that there had always been men who loved each other. It and this exhibition tenderly portray romantic love between men. There are snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied places and situations. Often taken when male partnerships were illegal, the collectors identified the men in the images as couples by what they have described as the unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love, by their body language, and even by coded inscriptions. There is a diversity of image formats - ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, and more.

Three years later, the collection was exhibited for the first time at the Musée Rath in Geneva. Now, it is being displayed in Australia, co-presented by CMAG and the Delegation of the European Union to Australia. The photographs on display have been digitised. They tell stories which have a considerable impact when we consider them. They speak to spirit and resilience. LOVING brings to light the lives and stories of male couples from around the world - giving voice to their courage, intimacy and enduring love for their “other halves”.

Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s © The Nini-Treadwell collection

Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s
© The Nini-Treadwell collection

Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s

© The Nini-Treadwell collection

The second exhibition, A Loving City: Queerberra Revisited, is a return to a 2017 portrait series - Queerberra by photographer Jane Duong and producer Victoria Firth-Smith.

Created between 2015 and 2017, in the lead-up to Australia’s same-sex marriage postal vote, the original project captured over 100 portraits of LGBTQIA+ Canberrans in their homes, workplaces and everyday spaces. Over weekends spent in bedrooms, workplaces, and on the streets, portraits of pride, exhaustion, defiance, love, and hope were captured with grace and honesty. Some subjects were already out. Others came out for the first time. This unique art project set out to portray the beauty of Canberra’s rich array of local identities from LGBTIQ, asexual and cisgender peoples, to drag queens and kings, and beyond. Everyday lives were captured and shared with pride - some had not been ‘out’ publicly, others were very much in the public eye.

On 15 November 2017, Canberra’s voters delivered Australia’s strongest "Yes" vote in support of marriage equality. The Queerberra book was launched the very next day. Eight years later, this revisiting of the book and original exhibition showcases 99 of the original 100 portraits from that book and invites audiences to consider how much things have changed in that time.

Caitlin and Jill, Queerberra - photography by Jane Duong and produced by Victoria Firth-Smith

 

James, Queerberra - photography by Jane Duong and produced by Victoria Firth-Smith

These two exhibitions are simultaneously intensely intimate and deeply political. Each one stands alone in its story and tone; together they form a larger narrative about connection across generations, time periods and other things that often divide us.

This review is also available on the author's blog. And a shorter version is on a Canberra City News webpage.

Under the Sun & Cyscapes

Photography | Brian Rope

Under the Sun & Cyscapes | Jane Duong

Reading Room Gallery, Rusten House Art Centre | 4 February – 25 March 2023

Jane Duong is a Canberra-based photographer. She majored in photomedia at Edith Cowan University in 2003 for a Bachelor of Communications. Then, in 2007, graduated with a Diploma in Museums and Collections from the ANU.

As with her Sunkissed exhibition in 2022, Duong has used the cyanotype technique for this show. Under the Sun is more substantial - both in terms of the number of works and their content. Once again, the works do not shout seeking attention, but quietly encourage visitors in for a closer investigation. The cyanotype process dates back to the dawn of photography and was invented by astronomer Sir John Herschel in 1842. Prints are created with the use of a light-sensitive chemical mixture coated on paper, ultraviolet (or sun) light to expose, and water to wash before drying.

So, what are we looking at here? The artworks result from an exploration and celebration of public spaces and historical places in Queanbeyan - through the magic and coincidence that comes with the cyanotype process. Her subjects include The Dog & Stile Inn, the Queanbeyan River, Rusten and Benedict Houses, and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Each exhibited print is a one-off, handmade on cotton paper. Some have unique borders. Some have been created with negative contact sheets. And some exposed artworks were washed by dipping them directly into the Queanbeyan River.

Cross to bear - Jane Duong

Rusten House I - Jane Duong

When I learned to make prints from negatives in a darkroom years ago, it was drummed into me to use clean water for the processes. Nowadays, a growing number of artists seem to be using “unclean” water. Some collect water from creeks, dams, oceans or wherever to use. Others immerse the paper or other material on which they are printing directly into a water source, as Duong has done here for some works. In the last couple of days I have seen this approach questioned on social media, with someone wondering aloud whether it was appropriate to “contaminate” the ocean with cyanotype chemicals. Responses have been varied. 

Dip your toe in the water - Jane Duong

Cyscapes is a video work previously shown at a 2022 Contour 556 event, the Forest Bathing Night Walk, put on by Localjinni Shinrin-Yoku in the Cork Forest at the National Arboretum. Localjinni refers to itself as an eco-feminist art collective which, traveling in collective safety at night, transforms spaces into places using visual art, poetry, music, film, oral history, and digital stories.

The collective states that it ‘strides’ to bring local culture and active travel together, to reclaim community ownership of the street and public spaces. It asks that we think of the collective’s members as art street vendors. They screen virtual exhibitions, lighting up parks, paths, and plazas on night walks and scooter rides.

Their focus on place recognises the importance of local production and local knowledge. As a Virtual Artist Run Initiative (VARI), including more than fifty contributing artists and artworkers, they bring research and teamwork together to develop and refine new ways of connecting people to place. Checkout their website for more details: localjinni.com.au.

If, like me, you missed the Night Walk, you can view an interesting 2-minute showreel of it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTiKKhoH2J4. 

The video on display in this gallery exhibition is described by the artist as “moving image, colour, sound, 2 minutes 46 seconds”. On a loop, viewers are able to watch the full video of moving images as many times as they wish. I watched them, mesmerised and enjoying windmills and foliage appearing on a tree.

Cyscapes-3 - Jane Duong (Still from video)

Cyscapes-2 - Jane Duong (Still from video)

Cyanotype images cleverly layered and manipulated with Duong’s choice of today’s software (which utilises Artificial Intelligence) created this most worthwhile video exhibit.

This review was first published in The Canberra Times on page 10 of Panorama and online here. It is also available on the author's blog here.

Sunkissed

 Photography Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

SUNKISSED | JANE DUONG

ACT Hub, 14 Spinifex Street, Kingston | Until 25 June 2022

(By appointment or during theatre performances)

The Causeway Hall in Kingston is the oldest hall in Canberra and a listed item on the ACT Heritage Register. It was completed in 1926 with voluntary labour using materials provided by the Federal Capital Commission. The Causeway remains a distinct district within the suburb of Kingston, although now abutted by the foreshore development.

For some time, the Hall served as Canberra's principal place of entertainment. It was, variously, a picture theatre, a dance hall, a concert venue and a place where boxing matches were held.

This year has seen the building transformed and, as ACT HUB, become a venue for independent theatre productions, such as Free Rain’s production of David Williamson’s Emerald City (8 – 25 June). It is also now presenting exhibitions of artworks, with this show by Jane Duong being the first.

Sunkissed is a modest exhibition. Modest in terms of artwork numbers and sizes. Modest in terms of the works being gentle, almost describable as quiet. They do not shout out for attention, but nevertheless encourage visitors in for a closer investigation of their contents. The venue itself is also modest – in terms of capacity and its somewhat understated décor in the particular area where the artworks hang.

Duong is a Canberra-based photographer with a Bachelor of Communications, majoring in photomedia, and a Diploma in Museums and Collections. Her previous photographic projects include Red Brick Road images from another important part of Canberra’s heritage - the Yarralumla Brickworks.

Red Brick Road was an exploration of the Brickworks architecture, landscape and objects and the use of photography to trigger, layer and construct memory. Duong’s works for that show combined film photography with Van Dyke Brown printing, allowing for the study and representation of time and the ephemeral nature of memory.

The heritage listing of the Causeway Hall makes it most appropriate that Duong has again used an old technique to explore and celebrate it and the nearby Jerrabomberra Wetlands. This time, however, the process is Cyanotype which dates back to the dawn of photography and was invented by astronomer Sir John Herschel in 1842. Cyanotype prints are created with the use of a light-sensitive chemical mixture coated on paper, UV (or sun) light and water to develop and fix.

For heritage reasons, it is not possible to attach works directly to the walls as is a common practice today in many galleries. So all the works are framed. They look great hanging - from a “picture rail” - against a wall, the colour of which blends nicely with the frames and shows off the classic blue tones of cyanotypes.

Each one-off print in this exhibition has been handmade by Duong. Some have unique borders, some have been created with a negative contact sheet, while others have been dipped directly into Wetland waterways.

Several of the works show the Hall itself. Duong has created panoramas using her phone, distorting the building a little, and used software to make some adjustments. Then she has used an inkjet printer to create negatives of each finished image on A4-sized film and used those negatives to create her exhibited prints on cotton paper using the Cyanotype process.

Old Causeway Hall II_Jane Duong_2022

Other works show a nearby entrance to, and parts of, the Jerrabomberra Wetlands – which themselves include some important historic relics of early Canberra.

 

Jerra Wetlands_Jane Duong_2022

Biyaligee Boardwalk_Jane Duong_2022

Waterways_Jane Duong_2022

And then there are two very different works. These were made by placing the paper directly into Wetlands waterways. They are dark and moody images, which seem quite an appropriate way to show an underwater area. The resultant works allow viewers to consider for themselves just what they are seeing.

This review was published in The Canberra Times of 5/6/22 here. It is also on the author's blog here.