Eddy Avenue, Invasion Day, Long March of Freedom, Justice and Hope, 26 January 19881988
Brenda Croft was closely involved with Aboriginal art and activism in Sydney during the 1980s. During this period she documented the Aboriginal communities of inner-city Sydney, especially around the streets of Surry Hills where she was living. Unlike her later work, which is critically engaged with discourses of representation, Croft’s early work embraces documentary photography for its immediacy and consciousness-raising capabilities. Her photographs of street marches are remarkable for the way they capture both a sense of historical impatience and community optimism in the lead up to Australia's Bicentennial in 1988.
(2014)
Gelatin silver prints are black-and-white photographic prints that have been created using papers coated with an emulsion of gelatin and light-sensitive silver salts. After the papers are briefly exposed to light (usually through a negative), a chemical developer renders the latent image as reduced silver, which is then fixed and washed. This technique was first introduced in the 1870s and is still used today. Most twentieth-century black-and-white photographs are gelatin silver prints. They are known for being highly detailed and sharply defined prints with a distinguishable smooth, even image surface.
