Purposeful Nation-Building: Photography, Modernisation and Post-War Reconstruction in Australia

Abstract

This article considers how Australian photography from the late 1930s to the early 1950s encouraged public engagement with the aims and policies of post-war reconstruction. It examines how the nation’s first photo-magazine, Pix, covered the build up to and early months of the war and emphasised its reach into the domestic sphere. It examines photography’s role in making housing a core social and political issue, considers Australia’s efforts to house its returning service personnel, and the innovative responses of the public and private sectors to shortages of materials and manpower. It analyses how photography established the modern home as the emblem of a new beginning and how it shifted the consumer’s perspective from exterior views of the house to a focus on interiors and the imagined experience of habitation. Appraising Wolfgang Sievers’ popularisation of modern home design, the article will conclude by examining photography’s role in capturing the epic scale of post-war reconstruction’s greatest engineering triumph – the Snowy Mountain Hydro Electric Scheme.