A vibrant place in the heart of the city, Canberra Museum and Gallery celebrates the region's social history and visual arts with dynamic exhibitions and unique community programs and events.

Housing a permanent collection, Reflecting Canberra, and a variety of local, national and international exhibitions, CMAG provides a refreshing insight to the integration of social history and the visual arts.

Reflections

Garema Place, 1960s,

printed 2007
gelatin silver photograph
40 x 50 cm
Purchased 2007

Ted RICHARDS

born 1937

Ted Richards is a photographer who has lived and worked in Canberra for most of his life. In the 1970s and 1980s he operated a commercial photography business in Manuka. In the 1960s Richards took a series of photographs of Canberra scenes. Although many prints and negatives of his work were destroyed in a fire some years ago Richards was able to locate 38 original negatives, the prints of which are now in the CMAG collection.

These fascinating photographs encapsulate CMAG’s collecting and display policy and represent both social history and the visual arts. The subject matter ranges greatly – from Prime Ministers to Sunday leisure – but the images are essentially about the city of Canberra as it was forty years ago. Regardless of the apparently mundane nature of some of their settings, the photographs are carefully yet subtly composed, and quietly capture the citizens and streets of Canberra’s burgeoning community in the 1960s.