photography
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photography & the curators
Alan Davies: Curator of photography, 1989 - 2014, State Library of New South Wales
Photographic historian Alan Davies is Emeritus Curator of Photographs at the State Library of New South Wales. He was the Library’s first curator from 1989 to 2014, overseeing a collection of a more than a million images. Career highlights include identifying the daguerreotypes of Australia’s first photographer George Goodman and elevating previously unrecognized photographers such as Sam Hood and George Caddy to the canon of Australian photographic history.
He previously worked at the University of Sydney for a decade, where in his spare time he read the Sydney Morning Herald for the 19th century and wrote a history of Australian Photography from 1842-1900, which won the inaugural Australian Heritage Award for publications. He also won a Churchill Fellowship to examine Australian photographs in British institutions and spent 18 months touring NSW during the Bicentenary copying photographs for the State Library.
In total, Alan has written six books, 14 catalogues and been responsible for 20 exhibitions on aspects of photographic history and photographers. Alan remains a keen photographer.
The Mechanical Eye in Australia: Photography 1841-1900 (1985) Alan Davies & Peter Stanbury; with assistance from Con Tanre
At Work and Play: Our Past in Pictures (1989)
Sydney Exposures: Through the Eyes of Sam Hood and his Studio 1925-1950 . (1991)
An Eye For Photography: The Camera In Australia (2004)
