Picture Paradise presents photography from India and Sri Lanka, Southeast and East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands to the west coast of North America. The exhibition covers the succession of photographic processes and styles that flourished during this period, from gem-like unique daguerreotype portraits through to the revolution of the wet-plate and dry-plate negative-positive process.

This significant gathering of over 400 original photographs and albums features both pioneer nineteenth-century local photographers as well as European photographers working in the region. The majority of the works in the exhibition are from the Gallery’s extensive photography collection. Most of the images of the Asia–Pacific region have been acquired in the past three years as part of the National Gallery of Australia’s photography acquisition program.

The exhibition features the most famous pioneer foreign photographers such as Scottish-born John Thomson who published the first travel photography books on Asia in the 1870s; as well as works by the first generation of indigenous photographers – Lala Deen Dayal from India, Francis Chit from Thailand, Kassian Céphas from Indonesia, Lai Afong from Hong Kong, Alfred Bock from Australia and Carleton Watkins from California. Their works are complemented by views and ethnographic studies by immigrants such as Armenian, Onnes Kurkdjian in Indonesia; German, J W Lindt, who migrated to work in Australia; and Alfred Burton, an Englishman who worked in New Zealand.

In showcasing the modern era, Surrealist photography work of the 1930s by Australian Modernist Max Dupain is shown in context with the work of Lionel Wendt from Sri Lanka and Osamu Shiihara from Japan.

In 1776, with its American colonies fighting for independence and its jails overflowing, the British government began converting old ships into floating prisons or ‘hulks’ to house convicts sentenced to transportation.

Convict hulks is the first comprehensive exhibition recalling the harsh but fascinating history of convict hulks in Britain and its colonies, including New South Wales. It features more than 600 rare artefacts recovered from beneath the mooring site of the Dromedary hulk in Bermuda, brought to Australia just for this exhibition.

Discover what it was like on a prison ship. Hear stories of convicts’ lives. Step inside a re-created punishment box. Try on some ankle irons. Experience sights and sounds that evoke the daily lives of the hulks’ wretched human cargo.

Justice and Police Museum
Phillip and Albert Streets
Circular Quay
Sydney