Australian photographer William Yang and South Korean photographer Koo Bohnchang have created new images inspired by the Clunes-born photographer George Rose.

George Rose used a stereograph camera. This creates two images that are nearly the same. When you view them through the eyepiece, they become a 3D image.

George Rose went to Korea in 1904. His images of the streets of Seoul, and surrounding villages, are highly valued. They are almost the only images of street life in Seoul from the turn of the 20th century.

They capture a time when the Japanese were colonising Korea. The Japanese wear darker clothes in the images, the Koreans are in white. Notice how, in one of the images, a Korean climbs the city wall to gain access without going through the guarded gates. Some of the other images show the Japanese quarter, with their different style of housing and shops. Many of the images show the new electrical and telegraph wires, which had been installed by the Japanese.

George Rose’s guide was Japanese, and that influence can be seen in the way he describes the Koreans. Japanese people, at that time, considered Koreans to be a lesser culture than their own.

George Rose’s guide can be seen in one of the photos, dressed in western clothes, with a child, standing in front of a village.

In the exhibition, Koo Bohnchang used images he took in Clunes, and William Yang used images he took in Korea. Both artists reveal the gaze of the foreigner, they show what someone from outside the culture sees. This is similar to when Australian George Rose visited Korea in 1904, he too was an outsider, looking at another culture.

The curator Catherine Croll, worked closely with the photographers, travelling with them to Victoria and Korea. Below, you can see some of the images she took of the photographers at work. She was the modern-day equivalent of the ‘guide’.

Clunes has a strong relationship to Paju Book City near Seoul, they are both international Booktowns. This exhibition grew out of that relationship.

Their exhibition launched at Clunes Booktown on May 2, 2015, before it travelled around the world.

To learn more about Clunes booktown, visit www.clunesbooktown.com.au

Television broadcasting arrived in Australia in 1956. At the end of that year only about 5% of Melbourne households had a television set. That figure is now closer to 99%.

Fifty years have seen many much-loved shows and celebrities come and go. The technologies of production have changed. Our televisions are no longer the bulky furniture items that once dominated the lounge room.

In 2006 the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) celebrated the 50th anniversary of Australian TV with an exhibition dedicated to its rich heritage.

TV50 brought together iconic objects from the ACMI collection, the television networks and memorabilia accrued in private collections.

Many significant objects were acquired by ACMI from Mr Bob Phillips, whose career as a floor manager/producer - and collecting passion - began in the still pioneering days of the early sixties.

Wal Richards loved weddings. Given a box brownie camera as a young man in 1946, he started cycling on his blue and white bike to weddings in Maryborough and surrounding towns. Uninvited, he would position himself up close to the action and record events in his candid and unorthodox style. 

Wal’s physical and mental disabilities meant that he was an easy person to underestimate and many people assumed that he didn’t have film in his camera. But in 1996, when Wal passed away, his family found more than 20,000 unsorted wedding photographs stored in shoe boxes in his house. 

The collection was donated to the Maryborough-Midlands Historical Society. In 1998 the Central Goldfields Regional Art Gallery held an exhibition of Wal’s work. His striking photos and remarkable story generated broad interest and was written up in Time Magazine. 

Whilst only a small portion of the weddings in Wal’s photographs have been identified so far, the collection is a remarkable and unusual social history of Maryborough spanning almost half a century. 

The collection is housed at the Maryborough-Midlands Historical Society, which is located in the Worsley Cottage Complex.

The world is changing. Change is a natural part of the Earth’s cycle and of the things that live on it, but what we are seeing now is both like and unlike the shifts we have seen before.

Anthropogenic change, meaning change created by humans, is having an impact on a global scale. In particular, human activity has altered the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the world’s climate to change.

Already in the state of Victoria we are seeing evidence of this change around us. In the natural world, coastal waters are warming and bringing tropical marine species to our bays. Desert animals are migrating to Victoria. Alpine winters are changing, potentially putting plants and animals at risk of starvation and pushing species closer to the margins. In the world of humans, island and coastal dwellers deal with the tangible and intangible impacts of loss as sea levels rise, bush dwellers live with an increased risk of life-threatening fires, farmers cope with the new normal of longer droughts, and we all face extreme weather events and the impacts of social and economic change.

This Collections and Climate Change digital story explores how Victoria’s scientific and cultural collections help us understand climate change. It focuses on three Victorian institutions - Museums Victoria, the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Parks Victoria. It looks at how the information gathered and maintained by a dedicated community of researchers, curators, scientists, specialists and volunteers can help us understand and prepare for a hotter, drier, more inundated world.

The story is made up of a short documentary film and twenty-one examples highlighting how botanical records, geological and biological specimens and living flora and fauna provide a crucial resource for scientists striving to map continuity, variability and change in the natural world. And it helps us rethink the significance of some of Victoria’s cultural collections in the face of a changing climate.

Stories of a time in history when holidaying was a grand pastime, and when special and unique places in Victoria began to be appreciated, celebrated and shared in that iconic mode of communication: the picture postcard.

Inspired by postcards in their collections, eight historical societies developed themes to explore the history of the Mornington Peninsula. 

This story is based on a touring exhibition which was initiated by the Mornington Peninsula Local History Network and the Mornington Peninsula Shire.

When WW1 brought Australians face to face with mass death, a Red Cross Information Bureau and post-war graves workers laboured to help families grieve for the missing.

The unprecedented death toll of the First World War generated a burden of grief. Particularly disturbing was the vast number of dead who were “missing” - their bodies never found.

This film and series of photo essays explores two unsung humanitarian responses to the crisis of the missing of World War 1 – the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau and the post-war work of the Australian Graves Detachment and Graves Services. It tells of a remarkable group of men and women, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, who laboured to provide comfort and connection to grieving families in distant Australia.  

In October 1916 and December 1917 two contentious referendums were held in Australia, asking whether the Commonwealth government should be given the power to conscript young men into military service and send them to war overseas.

These campaigns were momentous and their legacy long-lasting. This is the only time in history that citizens of a country have been asked their opinion about such a question, and the decisive 'No' vote that was returned remains the greatest success of the peace movement in Australia to date. Yet the campaigns split families, workplaces and organisations, and left an imprint on Australian politics that lasted for decades.

Many of the actors and events that were central to these campaigns were based in the northern Melbourne suburbs of Brunswick and Coburg. In many ways, these localities were a microcosm of the entire campaign. Against the Odds: The Victory Over Conscription in World War One tells the story of the anti-conscription movement in Australia during World War 1 through this lens.