Ingeborg Tyssen: Photographs will encompass the breadth and length of Tyssen’s work, from her early “observational” street life and suburban pieces through the more artistic and graphically inclined billboards, trees and Voices of Silence series. This selection will incorporate both black & white and colour works.

Softcover housed in slip case 208 page with 186 photographs colour and duotoned B/W images. 30.5 (W) x 29.4 (D) cm / 12 x 11.5 in.

ISBN: 9780977579037 (13 digit) 0977579034 (10 Digit)

Foreword: John Williams. Essay on Tyssen’s work by Anne O'Hehir, Assistant Curator of Photography, National Gallery of Australia. Robert McFarlane’s moving obituary of Ingeborg, as published after her death in 2002.

Ingeborg Tyssen was born in Voorburg, the Netherlands, in 1945. Both of her parents were accomplished photographers, although it was some time before Ingeborg herself took up photography on a serious level. She emigrated to Australia with her family in 1957, attending Riverside Girls’ High School in Sydney where she became school captain. (“Quite an achievement”, as her future husband, John Williams, has said, “for a girl who arrived here speaking Dutch, some French and no English.”) In a land that was foreign to her in many ways – culturally as much as physically – she felt herself to be dislocated (“transported” she described herself), and it was this sensation that infused her art with an outsider’s rather than a participant’s approach. After school,Tyssen trained in nursing, including midwifery. She became interested in photography as an art form when she was nearly 30. “My interest in photography arose from documenting my travels to New Guinea, Europe and Africa in the early 70s,” she said in the book “What is This Thing Called Photography”. 

In the mid-70s, frustrated with her photographs, she attended a photography class given by Williams at the Workers Educational Association. This lead to a partnership that would last the rest of her life: they married in 1978, having already set up The Photographers Gallery in Melbourne in 1975 in association with Rod McNicholl and Paul Cox.

Australian customers: 10% GST will be added during checkout.