Past exhibitions

Left: David Stephenson Sant’ivo alla Sapienza 1645-50 Rome, Italy 1997 © David Stephenson. Right: Fiona Hall Leura, New South Wales 1974 © Fiona Hall

Flatlands examines photography’s role in transforming the way we perceive, organise and imagine the everyday world, by looking at the changing ways photographers have depicted public and private environments.

At its birth in the 19th century, photography seemed the perfect tool for representation and classification of even the most elusive phenomena. Yet by the turn of the 20th century photographic objectivity was under question – limited, as it was, to freezing single moments or viewpoints in time. Technological advancements, such as faster exposure times, have revealed the medium’s ability to show dimensions of our daily environments that have remained hidden from the eye.

Featuring works by 23 Australian and international artists drawn from the Gallery’s collection of 20th-century and contemporary photography, this exhibition explores perceptions of everyday space – realms of emotion, memory and desire – where real and imaginary boundaries become blurred.