Agents of Empire: How E.L. Mitchell’s Photographs Shaped Australia

Abstract

Agents of Empire: How E.L. Mitchell’s Photographs Shaped Australia is a fascinating biography of commercial photographer Ernest Lund Mitchell, intertwined with a detailed examination of how his photographs, particularly of Western Australia and Queensland, were used to promote Australia to the Empire. The work is based on author Joanna Sassoon’s PhD thesis and journal articles. Joanna Sassoon has extensive experience and knowledge in managing archival photographic collections and is an internationally respected historian and archivist. She brings both a historian’s perspective and an archivist’s focus on context to her examination of E.L. Mitchell’s photographs. The work features extensive reproductions of the photographs under discussion, which allows the reader to appreciate the knowledge and analysis that Sassoon brings to bear on her analysis. Sassoon considers: the content of the photographs; their role in creating a sense of ‘social harmony, economic stability and Australia’s connections to the British Empire’ (p. viii); how they were circulated and made accessible; and finally how their ‘archival afterlives’ are influencing views of twentieth-century Australia (p. ix). Agents of Empire is divided into three parts: