In our current political and cultural context, it seems timely to produce a volume that considers this issue. The rise of digital technologies has challenged our faith in the photographic image, yet the tenacious relationship between photography and the real has persisted. As contributor Ian North puts it, ‘viewing photography is like watching the illusion of levitation: we are knowingly enthralled by the fraudulent’.

The texts – by Martin Jolly, Helen Ennis, Blair French, Gael Newton, Sandy Edwards, and North – range widely in subject matter from a consideration of spirit photography to the state of contemporary documentary practice in Australia, but at their core is an apprehension of the tension created by the clash of expectations we have of photography. Specifically, the apparently contradictory roles of photography as ‘intervention’ in, and ‘reproduction’ of, the world, to use Palmer’s terms, incite varied responses from viewers, practitioners and critics of photography.

These battle lines, which, in the past, have defined photography’s role in relation to the real, have become blurred and the texts rightly consider the impact of this blurring on both photography and its attendant discourses. The shifting, yet persistent, notion of documentary is central here, and Gael Newton’s argument for a ‘flexible and subtle critical apparatus for engaging with the range of work that appears under the banner of “documentary”’ is particularly apt in this context.

Photogenic gains its title from Blair French’s essay ‘The Photographic Image: Anne Zahalka’s Leisureland’. French argues that ‘so flooded with photographic imagery has contemporary culture become that [culture] itself might best be described as fundamentally photogenic, where all cultural manifestations, all representations, all commodities aspire to, or more so nowadays actively partake in, the look of the photographic’. His critical use of a term that can be read as both negative and positive drops another layer of discourse over the texts. There is a sense here that a critical engagement with the ‘photogenic’ may emerge as a key strategy for artists and theorists alike, and French makes something of a case for this in his densely argued discussion of Zahalka’s work.

The inclusion of a selection of artists’ work from CCP’s extensive exhibition programme throughout Photogenic locates the texts in the context of the Centre’s core activity. Many of the images featured are the work of emerging artists, and it is interesting to consider this very contemporary practice alongside the mix of historical and contemporary bodies of work discussed in the essays. Their work marks something of a shift away from so-called postmodern concerns that emerged here in the latter years of the twentieth century, and Palmer argues that ‘the critique of “representation”, at least, no longer appears to be a burning issue, and irony alone no longer a viable strategy’. In the context of the debate that continues to rage in the field of both photographic theory and practice, this is a claim that might well be challenged by a different selection of writers and practitioners. This, in itself, signals Photogenic as an important part of the conversation surrounding photography in Australia.