Picks from PIX: Delight in the detail

Discover the incredible stories of the people and pictures that made the magazine PIX — Australia’s first pictorial news weekly.

What do we see in those sharp black and white images from PIX magazine? Not just news stories and glamour shots, social issues and portraits of Australia … but shop signs, the price of potatoes, apron styles, children’s toys, workers’ haircuts and cracked pavements.

Kate Evans takes us through a selection of images from the pages of PIX whose backgrounds and incidental details are as telling as the subject at the centre of the image. Who and what else do the cameras capture?

Kate Evans is a well-known broadcaster, particularly as co-host of The Bookshelf on ABC Radio National, and a regular interviewer at literary festivals. Photography and cultural history have also been longstanding interests — her PhD focused on press photography in Australia.

Host or Publisher State Library of New South Wales