Photographs now circulate at extraordinary speed. Images appear on screens, travel widely and disappear again within hours. In such a landscape it can seem unlikely that any photograph might remain visible for decades. Yet some do.
Certain images continue to surface long after the moment in which they were taken, reappearing in books, exhibitions and discussions of the medium. They become part of photography’s shared visual memory—pictures that remain recognisable across generations.
A lecture series at the Art Gallery of New South Wales returns to photographs of this kind. Big Shots: Iconic Portraits, Street and Fashion Photographs, presented by the journalist and photographer Tony Maniaty, examines twelve influential photographs drawn from three traditions within the medium: portraiture, street photography and fashion imagery.
The program unfolds across three Saturday lectures in the gallery’s Domain Theatre. Each session focuses on one of these traditions and the images that helped shape it. Rather than offering a broad history of photography, the series concentrates on individual pictures and the stories behind them.
In doing so, the lectures return to a question that has followed photography since its beginnings: why do some photographs remain visible while most others fade from view?
The gallery introduces the series with a photograph that has itself become part of Australia’s visual memory: David Moore’s Migrants arriving in Sydney (1966). The image shows a group of passengers gathered along the railing of a ship approaching the harbour, their attention fixed on something beyond the frame. Over time the photograph has come to symbolise a larger moment in Australian social history, when post-war migration reshaped the country’s cultural landscape. Its continued presence in exhibitions and publications illustrates precisely the kind of photograph that persists within cultural memory.
Tony Maniaty: Reporting and Photography
Tony Maniaty’s engagement with photography developed alongside a long and varied career in journalism and writing. Fresh out of school he began as a cadet journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Over the following decades he worked as a reporter and foreign correspondent, including roles as Diplomatic Correspondent for Radio Australia and as a journalist with the BBC World Service. He later served as the Paris-based European correspondent for SBS television’s Dateline and as executive producer of ABC television’s 7.30 Report.
Photography accompanied that work. He bought his first serious camera—a Leica M3—at the age of twenty-two, and has continued photographing people and places ever since. Today he works exclusively with Leica cameras.
Alongside journalism he has pursued several parallel creative paths. Maniaty has written novels, memoir and essays, scripted television drama, and directed documentary films. His documentary Lithuania: Surviving the Revolution was nominated for Best International Report at Australia’s Walkley Awards, and he wrote the screenplay for Robert Connolly’s film Mr Ikegami’s Flight, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2006 he moved into university teaching and later became Associate Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Technology Sydney. His academic work culminated in a doctoral thesis on the psychology of war correspondents, awarded the Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Excellence.
Maniaty’s writing frequently returns to themes shaped by his own experiences as a reporter: war, political upheaval and migration. Having lived and worked in several countries—including Australia, Britain, France, the United States, Greece and Denmark—he has often approached these subjects from an international perspective. Today he divides his time between Paris and Sydney.
Portraits and the Public Image
The first lecture in the series focuses on portrait photography, one of the camera’s most enduring forms. Portraits circulate widely in newspapers, magazines and books, often becoming closely associated with the people they depict.
Although portrait photographs may appear straightforward, they are rarely simple records. Lighting, framing and pose are carefully arranged, and the photographer works with the subject to shape the final image.
Throughout the twentieth century portrait photography played a central role in public culture. Photographs of writers, artists, performers and political figures circulated widely in print, and in many cases a single photograph came to define how a person was publicly recognised.
Portraits therefore operate not only as likenesses but also as visual constructions of identity.
Street Photography and the Theatre of the City
The second lecture turns to street photography, a tradition closely associated with modern urban life. Unlike portraiture or studio photography, street photography usually takes place in public spaces that the photographer does not control.
Photographers working in this tradition respond to fleeting moments within these environments: a gesture between strangers, a movement across a pavement, an unexpected alignment of figures and architecture.
Street photography emerged strongly during the twentieth century as cities expanded and public life became increasingly visible. Photographers turned their attention to everyday scenes of urban experience, producing images that now serve as records of how cities once looked and how people moved within them.
Such photographs often capture something of the theatre of the street—the shifting choreography of daily life.
Fashion Photography and Visual Culture
The final lecture examines fashion photography, a form that developed largely through magazines and advertising. Fashion photographs are typically produced in carefully arranged settings where lighting, styling and pose are organised to create a particular visual effect.
Through editorial spreads and advertising campaigns, fashion photography has played a significant role in shaping visual culture. Images produced for magazines often reach large audiences and influence how style and identity are represented.
Some fashion photographs later circulate far beyond the publications in which they first appeared, entering exhibitions, archives and histories of photography. Their movement through different contexts helps explain how certain images remain visible long after they were first produced.
The Big Shots lectures return to photographs that have persisted in this way—images that continue to surface in books, exhibitions and discussions of photographic history. Their persistence raises a familiar question: why do some photographs remain in cultural memory while most others disappear?
Lecture Details
Big Shots: Iconic Portraits, Street and Fashion Photographs
Lecturer: Tony Maniaty
Dates: Saturdays, 14–28 March
Time: 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Venue:
Domain Theatre
Naala Nura Building
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
A three-part lecture series in which Tony Maniaty presents twelve influential photographs across portrait, street and fashion photography, discussing the images and the photographers who created them.
For further information and bookings, visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales website.
