Richard Johnstone

3 weeks ago | civilserviceworld.com | Jim Dunton |Richard Johnstone

Former Charity Commission and Student Loans Company chief executive officer Paula Sussex has won the backing of MPs for her bid to become parliamentary and health service ombudsman. Members of parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee gave their approval to Sussex’s appointment following a hearing that took place last week.

Feb 10, 2025 | insidestory.org.au | Richard Johnstone

Running through Anne Maxwell and Lucy Van’s new book, Australian Women’s Historical Photography, is the word “freedom,” sometimes deployed by the authors and sometimes by the photographers themselves. For these women, active at some point between the late nineteenth century and the end of the second world war, photography offered the freedom to assert the self over an otherwise restrictive world. They could compose their own views of that world rather than simply accept someone else’s.

Jun 24, 2024 | insidestory.org.au | Richard Johnstone

Everyone is taking photographs, but who is looking at them, or can hope to see more than a tiny fraction of the total output? Is the vast bulk of photographic production doomed to remain unseen, beyond a casual glance? What are all those photographs for? Artificial intelligence provides a kind of answer.

Jan 22, 2024 | insidestory.org.au | Richard Johnstone

So entirely are we used to thinking of photographic images as records of the past, a past that may have been anything from almost 200 years to an hour ago, that it is hard to come to grips with how this is changing. With the assistance of artificial intelligence, photography looks set to leave behind this fundamental relationship — between the present of the image in front of us and the past it captures or in some way evokes — and replace it with something rather different.

Aug 22, 2023 | insidestory.org.au | Richard Johnstone

Godland, the third full-length feature from Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason, is a study in the frailty of faith and of human connectedness. It is also a masterpiece. Telling its powerful human story by means of a stunningly successful integration of moving and still photography, the film explores the complex role the camera plays in our lives, both facilitating and undermining our connections with others. As the film opens, a young priest walks urgently across the frame.