Elisa de Corsi

Elisa de Corsi, a historian and curator specializing in 19th-century colonial Australian photography, discusses the fascinating arrival of the first camera in Australia and the initial public reaction. She highlights the 1845 William Bland daguerreotype as the earliest surviving photograph and shares intriguing details about the lost portraits and their global journey. The conversation also touches on photography's role in documenting Indigenous people and the colonial landscape, and how it served both as a celebration of empire and a tool for surveillance.