IN Grove, a small settlement just north of Huonville in Tasmania’s Huon Valley, the Apple & Heritage Museum rests inside an apple-packing shed built in 1947. At first glance it looks like little more than a weathered barn, its corrugated roof flashing in the Tasmanian light, softened by the orchard trees that surround it.
Step closer and you find the timbered entrance, the faint must of age that clings to packing houses, and the promise that history here is told not in marble halls but in the scent of cider presses and the scrape of orchard tools.
Inside, the museum is less exhibition than time capsule: antique machinery lined up against hand-painted signs, dozens of apple varieties arranged in modest displays, black-and-white photographs pinned alongside crates and labels once bound for London.
In this place, once known as the “Apple Isle” — a nod to the orchards that once defined Tasmania’s economy — the story of the industry’s rise, collapse, and slow recovery is not dramatised. It is simply kept — in crates, in memory, in rust and weathered paper.
It is from here that Simone Rosenbauer begins Small Museum, her new photobook published by GOST (May 2025). The project itself first took shape in 2007, when an unplanned detour led her into one of these modest institutions. What began as curiosity grew, over years of revisits, into a typological study. Documenting forty-one institutions across Australia, the book argues that history is sustained not only by marble institutions but by improvised spaces, volunteer hands, and the fragile persistence of memory.
Only later, as the pages unfold, do the custodians’ voices enter. Their words are modest but resonant — the plainspoken affirmations of those who guard fragile histories. One caretaker puts it directly: “We just wanted to share the heritage with the world.”
Over four years of travel through every state and territory, Rosenbauer amassed what amounts to a museum of museums: a typology of buildings, collections, custodians, and objects that together form a portrait of the country’s cultural memory. The 192-page book features 137 images, each assigned a catalogue number as if entered into a ledger. This numbering advances Rosenbauer’s thesis of photography as an archival act, where images function like accession records. The design mirrors this discipline — white margins, measured sequencing, typography that does not intrude.
In spirit, the book aligns itself with the German tradition of typology. Where Bernd and Hilla Becher, renowned for their grids of water towers and blast furnaces, catalogued industrial forms with clinical precision, Rosenbauer applies a systematic gaze to provisional community spaces. Her work seems to ask a pointed question: can the vernacular and improvised be treated with the same gravity as monumental structures? The answer, implicit on every page, is yes — fragility itself can deserve the weight of history.
Yet the very rigour that gives the project its force also carries a risk: typological discipline, while meticulous, can flatten difference, turning eccentric spaces into entries on a grid. Rosenbauer resists this not by abandoning her system, but by allowing texture and irregularity to remain visible — the improvised displays, the quirks of scale, the stubborn traces of use. These elements temper the formality with atmosphere and warmth. Still, the spectre of austerity lingers at the edges. Some readers may also find the design austere, its catalogue rhythm cool against the eccentricity of the museums themselves — but that, too, underlines the book’s central argument: that fragility, eccentricity, and scarcity are not signs of weakness but qualities worthy of preservation.
That theoretical frame deepens the book’s resonance: Small Museum is not merely a vessel but an argument. By sequencing buildings, people, interiors, and objects, Rosenbauer acknowledges photography’s archival impulse while crafting a narrative that balances rigour with affection. She avoids simply monumentalising these small museums. Instead, she situates them within broader discourses of cultural memory and photographic history. The photobook itself becomes part of that lineage, standing in dialogue with typological series from the Bechers to Candida Höfer, whose meticulous interiors often render public spaces with uncanny stillness — but here Rosenbauer turns such cool methods toward the eccentricity and warmth of the Australian vernacular.
The project has grown beyond the page, with more than a hundred images acquired by the National Library of Australia and over one hundred works exhibited in 2024 at Maitland Regional Art Gallery — the starting point for a touring exhibition. Small Museum has also been shown internationally at Paris Photo and AIPAD with Laurence Miller Gallery in New York, placing these fragile Australian histories in a global conversation.
Small museums in Australia rarely have endowments or marble staircases. They are housed in former telegraph stations, gaols, dormitories, pharmacies, banks, and sheds. They hold together with volunteer labour and community pride, and often with little else.
Rosenbauer’s project reveals a paradox: they are at once provisional and enduring, eccentric and vital. Her photographs lend them a dignity rarely afforded to corrugated iron or improvised displays. She does not polish away their strangeness; she lets it remain, recognising that in these rooms — where an elephant’s foot is placed on a podium or a mannequin reclines in a lawn chair — imagination flourishes precisely because resources are scarce.
The eccentricity here is not failure but testimony: proof that memory survives even when institutional polish does not. By welcoming the “wrong note” of display, she demonstrates how scarcity itself can become a kind of aesthetic, and even a form of care.
The book unfolds across Buildings, People, Collections, and Objects, each chapter framed by a question posed to the custodians themselves.
In Buildings, the question is simple: “What is the history of the building?” Each museum is introduced with a vignette — a miners’ bank, a pharmacy, a gaol in Newcastle, a dormitory for orphaned boys, even an underground hospital or an opal mine.
Rosenbauer’s exteriors follow, frontal and consistent, echoing typological traditions while softening them with atmosphere. This balance between systematic approach and human warmth distinguishes Rosenbauer’s work from the austerity of her German forebears. Where the Bechers insisted on neutrality, Rosenbauer allows light and atmosphere to seep into the frame. The result is faithful yet alive — a record that still breathes.
In People, the custodians step forward to answer: “What is your connection to the community and where did your ancestors come from?” They are teachers, psychiatric nurses, mayors, social workers, geologists, even a surfboard painter.
Their words describe why they stayed, why they tend to these collections, why memory matters. Rosenbauer photographs them outside the very buildings they protect, as if to insist that the museums are not only walls and shelves but human gestures of care.
Including these voices prevents the book from becoming a purely typological exercise; it becomes instead a dialogue between image and testimony. One custodian explains their motivation simply: “We keep it going because nobody else will.”
By weaving these voices into the typological frame, Rosenbauer shifts the weight of authority — the museums become collaborative acts of care, not just entries in a visual ledger.
History here is told not in marble halls but in the scent of cider presses and the scrape of orchard tools
In Collections, the custodians are asked: “Can you tell us about this collection?” Interiors dominate. Rosenbauer shows museums as places of ingenuity: a planetarium patched with corrugated plastic; a vault of obsolete currency; a recreated gaol cell.
In Boyup Brook, the Carnaby Collection of Beetles and Butterflies glitters in cabinets of iridescent wings.
In Tingha, the Wing Hing Long & Co store remains almost intact, a ledger of Chinese-Australian mercantile history.
In Winton, the Australian Age of Dinosaurs grounds deep time in the outback.
In Kalgoorlie, the W.A. School of Mines arranges minerals like folklore.
In Chiltern, Dow’s Pharmacy still smells faintly of tonics.
In Mount Isa, an underground museum preserves drills and helmets in situ.
In Objects, the framing question is: “How does your collection fit into the history of Australia?” The custodians’ responses position their holdings in terms of origin and meaning, while Rosenbauer photographs modest still lifes: a golden nugget, a hearing trumpet, a toy soldier, a worn shoe, a bone, a butterfly.
These are not relics chosen for market value or official prestige. They are chosen because they matter — because they carry stories across time, because they are, in their ordinariness, the truest vessels of identity.
Rosenbauer’s still lifes have the sobriety of catalogues and the intimacy of keepsakes; they argue that tenderness, too, is a mode of historical attention.
Taken together, the book reads not as a catalogue but as a dialogue: between buildings and people, collections and objects, words and images. It is rigorous but affectionate. It has the coolness of a typology, the intimacy of a family album, the discipline of archival practice, and the tenderness of a personal diary.
This hybridity — a systematic approach infused with intimacy — is what makes Small Museum more than documentation. It is a meditation on what deserves to be remembered, and who decides. In this sense, Rosenbauer subtly shifts authority: from national institutions to the local witness, from official halls to improvised rooms.
One senses, too, the traces of Rosenbauer’s training in Germany — echoes of August Sander’s portraits, Candida Höfer’s interiors, the Bechers’ grids — but transplanted into Australian soil.
The difference lies in the subject. These are not factories or state halls, not the anonymous workers of Weimar Germany. They are volunteer custodians in small towns, buildings of corrugated iron, objects held together by sentiment and rust.
By bringing typological discipline to such vulnerable subjects, Rosenbauer performs a subtle inversion: she grants permanence to what might otherwise be overlooked, and in doing so she questions what kinds of spaces are deemed worthy of history. Her practice becomes a bridge between European system and Australian vernacular, where method serves devotion.
The production of the book itself, by GOST, furthers this point. It is not ostentatious but steady, bound like a ledger, its design amplifying the sense that this is an archive as well as an artwork. The sequencing is careful, the rhythm even.
Each section builds on the last, leading the reader from exterior to portrait to interior to still life, from the public face of a building to the intimacy of a personal object. The inclusion of the custodians’ words is crucial: their voices ground the images, reminding the reader that these museums are not about display alone but about people who care.
Without their testimony, the project would risk becoming anthropological. With it, it becomes collaborative. The photobook here is not simply a container but a pact — between artist, custodians, and reader.
And yet a sense of impermanence runs through it. Many of these museums may not survive: buildings decay, volunteers age, funding falters. The book is a hymn and a warning at once, documenting what exists while noting what may be lost.
For Rosenbauer, the project is also a deep exploration of belonging. To photograph these spaces and listen to their custodians is to join the narratives shaping the country’s identity.
Her earlier projects, Like Ice in the Sunshine and Like Ice in the Clouds, were ephemeral by design, using melting ice pops as fleeting meditations on transience. Small Museum marks a deliberate shift toward archival persistence, documenting enduring cultural artefacts. Across her practice, time remains the constant subject — how it passes, how it is held, how it is remembered, whether briefly as melt or doggedly as ledger.
The achievement of Small Museum lies in its balance. It is conceptual yet empathetic, affectionate without sentimentality, rigorous without austerity. Rosenbauer’s photographs are formally consistent — frontal, evenly lit, composed with typological discipline — but what they attend to is anything but monumental.
A faded sign above a trestle table; a child’s sketch tacked to a noticeboard; beetle wings pinned with patient precision. They are both provisional and enduring — eccentric, yet vital. These fragments crystallise the project’s premise: objects preserved not for their market worth but because someone cared enough to keep them.
In reminding us that history survives when someone decides it should, Rosenbauer’s Small Museum circles back to the atmosphere of that apple-packing shed — a reminder that cultural memory is as much an act of care as of record.
My camera serves as a tool to systematically collect and document — to hold and preserve moments, objects, and people in a way that reflects their significance.
– Simone Rosenbauer
IF the review maps the terrain of Small Museum, Rosenbauer’s own words give it depth and resonance. They reveal not only how the project came into being but why it carries the weight it does. What follows lets her voice carry the critical thread the book itself initiates.
The origins of Small Museum lie in an unexpected detour. Rosenbauer recalls that the project began in 2007, less with a grand plan than with the simple curiosity of travel. What emerged, however, was something much larger: a project unfolding through every state and territory of Australia.
“What began as a simple road trip evolved into a four-year journey because I was fascinated by the unique, community-run museums I encountered during my travels. These institutions, often in rural and remote areas, hold personal and collective histories that are vital to understanding the broader narrative of Australia. I was compelled to return and document them because their stories and objects deserved a wider audience and lasting record.”
Her description makes clear that Small Museum grew out of encounter and respect, rather than being imposed from the outside. The road trip becomes method; fascination becomes discipline. The typological frame arrives later, as a way to honour rather than flatten difference. That sense of return and responsibility shaped her understanding of the book as not merely a personal undertaking but, as she has described, a “gift” — a gesture that operates on many levels at once.
“Small Museum is a gift on many levels. It honours the individuals and communities who care for these small museums, preserving stories that are both local and nationally significant. At the same time, it’s a way for me to share my appreciation of living in this country — a place with many layers and extraordinary beauty — through the people I met, the places I visited, and the unexpected stories I encountered. It celebrates both the custodians and the depth of history and experience held within these small museums.”
That generosity resonates through the book’s structure — not as gesture but as architecture. The structure reflects this archival impulse: each image is assigned a catalogue number, grouped across buildings, people, collections, portraits, still lifes, and cherished objects. In this way, Small Museum functions as both typology and testimony.
“The structure of Small Museum emerged from my desire to approach photography as an archival act. My camera serves as a tool to systematically collect and document — to hold and preserve moments, objects, and people in a way that reflects their significance. By organising the images into categories—buildings, people, collections, portraits, still lifes, and cherished objects—I aimed to mirror the cataloguing systems used in museums. This approach creates a visual record that honours the meticulous care these institutions invest, while the typological framework reveals the patterns, relationships, and diversity of these small museums.”
Her words underline the critical tension at the heart of the book: it is both conceptual and intimate, ordered and idiosyncratic.
Yet what emerges most strongly from Rosenbauer’s encounters are not the typologies but the people who inhabit them. The custodians of these museums are not anonymous caretakers; they are teachers, nurses, social workers, even surfers. Their reasons for maintaining these places are often personal, born of attachment and memory.
“What struck me most was their deep connection to the objects and stories they preserved. Their encounters revealed a profound sense of responsibility and pride in safeguarding cultural heritage, which reshaped my understanding of cultural preservation as both a communal and personal endeavour.”
In her interiors, strangeness and resourcefulness walk hand in hand. The visual logic shifts: odd objects no longer feel misplaced, but necessary.
“These elements reveal the character of small museums as spaces where the unexpected and the ordinary coexist, creating environments that are both whimsical and poignant. They reflect the creativity and resourcefulness of the communities that maintain them.”
By asking caretakers to choose items meaningful to them, the project brings the smallest object into relation with national history.
“At each museum, I asked the caretakers to select an object that was either significant to the collection or personally meaningful to them. Through these objects, I sought to highlight how everyday items can encapsulate identity and history, serving as tangible links to the past that resonate across time. These modest yet deeply personal items reveal the care, memory, and stories that make each museum unique.”
The project’s institutional recognition came when more than a hundred of her images were acquired by the National Library of Australia — a gesture of permanence.
“It is deeply fulfilling. It signifies that the project has achieved its goal of preserving these stories and objects within a national archive, ensuring their accessibility for future generations and acknowledging the importance of these small museums in the broader cultural landscape.”
Yet permanence is tempered with fragility. Many of the museums she captured exist under the veneer of everyday neglect.
“I view the book as both a record of what could be lost and a celebration of what is still alive. It serves as a reminder of the fragility of cultural heritage and the importance of preserving these spaces while they endure.”
For Rosenbauer, this work has also shaped her own relationship to place.
“Engaging with these communities has deepened my connection to Australia, allowing me to appreciate the diverse narratives that shape the nation’s identity.”
Her earlier projects, ephemeral in nature, anticipated this shift toward archival persistence.
“While those projects focused on transient moments, Small Museum takes a more archival approach, documenting enduring cultural artifacts. Together, they reflect my evolving exploration of how memory and identity are preserved and represented.”
These objects are not relics chosen for market value or official prestige. They matter because they carry stories across time
The photobook as medium becomes central to that shift.
“The photobook offers a tactile, immersive experience and a curated journey through the work that can be revisited over time. It can travel to more places and reach more people globally. In many ways, the book becomes a building for my collection — a historical document whose content changes over time, carrying new meaning as it is encountered by different viewers.”
Exhibited internationally, Small Museum has engaged audiences unfamiliar with Australian vernacular history, yet they often respond with recognition.
“Audiences abroad often respond with curiosity and appreciation. While the specific cultural references may differ, the universal themes of identity, history, and community resonate widely, fostering cross-cultural understanding and dialogue.”
Rosenbauer’s balance of sensitivity and precision is not ad hoc but intentional.
“It is both instinctive and intentional. Each project presents unique challenges and opportunities, and I consciously shape the approach to reflect the subject matter’s nuances, ensuring the work is engaging, thoughtful, and respectful.”
The achievement of Small Museum lies in its equilibrium — conceptual without being cold, affectionate without being sentimental, rigorous without being severe.
What distinguishes the work is its poise — systematic yet intimate, documentary yet poetic. Rosenbauer’s sequencing is measured, her aesthetic disciplined, yet the warmth of her encounters keeps the project from slipping into austerity. The result is a photobook that feels alive even as it catalogues, a record that breathes while it preserves.
Her future direction is clear: attentive to time, environment, and memory. “I’m drawn to the intersections of time, environment, and humanity, exploring how our surroundings and the passage of time shape memory and identity. Photography for me is both a reflective and generative tool — it captures moments, evokes empathy, and invites new ways of seeing. In my future work, I hope to create images that inspire attentiveness, care, and a deeper connection to the people and environments we inhabit.”
IN the end, Small Museum is less about the preservation of objects than about the preservation of care. The photographs catalogue buildings, collections, and objects, but the true subject of Rosenbauer’s project is the devotion that keeps these places alive. Her typological method echoes European precedents, yet the heart of the work lies in the Australian vernacular — fragile, improvised, deeply human.
The book itself performs an act of translation: what exists at the margins of towns, patched together with corrugated iron and conviction, is re-presented as part of a national and even international archive. By bringing these museums into dialogue with contemporary photographic practice — typology, sequencing, the poetics of everyday objects — Rosenbauer grants them a permanence they might otherwise never claim. The photographs do not simply document; they insist that care itself deserves to be recorded.
What lingers, after the turning of its pages, is not just an inventory of small museums but a meditation on belonging. In apple sheds and gaols, in reconstructed cells and improvised displays, we glimpse how memory survives against the odds. Perhaps nothing embodies this more than the worn shoe chosen by one custodian: preserved not for its monetary value, but because someone once walked in it. In that humble gesture lies the argument of the entire book — that history endures when someone decides it should.
Book Details
Small Museum
Simone Rosenbauer
Published May 2025 by GOST Books
195 × 248 mm, portrait format, 192 pages, 137 photographs
Standard edition ISBN 978-1-915423-82-5
Signed edition ISBN 978-1-915423-84-9
For more information, visit simonerosenbauer.com and gostbooks.com.
All images courtesy of the artist and GOST Books
- Further Photobook Reviews on M-ARTLENS:
- Ying Ang – Fruiting Bodies
- Nina Viviana Cangialosi – The Snow Abides
- Robin Mudge – Framed by Code
- Olivia Arthur – Murmurings of the Skin
