This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – a new exhibition at Magnet Galleries in Melbourne surveys the work of one of Australia’s most prolific photographers, Les Chandler.
Plus award-winning photojournalist Adam Ferguson has started a new blog where he shares his insights and experiences shooting for some of the world’s leading publications like The New York Times and TIME. Subscribe here.

Also, Riga Photomonth starts next week. This year’s theme: “Life After Covid?”

Exhibition:
Soldier Settler – Les Chandler
Born in 1888, Victorian Les Chandler was one of Australia’s earliest bird photographers, an interest in photography first emerging in his late teens. By 1915 Chandler was documenting the war on the Western Front, “a 400-plus mile stretch of land weaving through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea.” Chandler took pictures with “a tiny camera hidden under his uniform.” Badly gassed in the war, when he returned, Chandler settled on a soldier’s plot in the beautiful region of Red Cliffs in the Mallee near Mildura (Victoria). Post-WWI, Chandler became a noted ornithologist and lecturer on natural history, but his camera was never far from his side.

There are more than 3500 pictures in the exhibition Soldier Settler. It is an eclectic collection that is representative of Chandler’s work, spanning the war years and his life in the Mallee. Chandler passed away in 1980 leaving behind an extensive archive.
Magnet Galleries’ Michael Silver, a seasoned photojournalist, has been working with the Chandler family and curated an exhibition of Chandler’s work in Mildura recently. Silver is excited to host this exhibition at the gallery in Docklands and says, “It’s a huge mixture of every format you could imagine.”




Until 27 June, Magnet Galleries, Docklands Melbourne