Photography arrived in South Australia in 1845, only six years after the public announcements of the new medium in Europe, and nine years after the colony was founded. Adelaide was always a city ahead of its time in its regard for photography: photographs were displayed in colonial art exhibitions from the 1840s, and the Gallery began collecting photographs in the 1920s. The selected images span from the earliest known surviving daguerreotype, past leading nineteenth-century photographers such as Townsend Duryea and Samuel Sweet, into the twentieth century’s varied styles, from pictorialism to photojournalism. They include the exquisite, poignant, mundane and amusing (both intentionally and accidentally), as professional and amateur photographers explored the possibilities of the ever-changing technology.

The text comprises chapter essays, followed by brief entries to accompany each image. These compact bites of information encourage enjoyable browsing but can be frustrating if a solid grounding of facts is wanted (a flaw with this popular format of exhibition catalogue). Julie Robinson and her co-contributors offer a fascinating and thoroughly researched overview of this period of photography. A Century in Focus helps to fill a significant gap in this little-known area of Australia’s artistic history, and enhances our knowledge of the development of Adelaide and the state of South Australia.