A fascinating exhibition of rare Australian images opens at the National Archives of Australia on Thursday, 25 November at 6 pm. A media preview will be held between 10.30 and 11.15 that morning.

The Policeman’s Eye:TheFrontierPhotography of Inspector Paul Foelsche 1870s to 1890s will be launched by the Chair of the Visions Australia Committee and Director of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Bill Bleathman.

The Policeman’s Eye is an intriguing blend of photography and ethnography and comprises Police Inspector Paul Foelsche’s visual record of Darwin in the late 1800s, along with his striking photo-portraits of the Larrakia and Djerimanga people of the Darwin region.

Few other photographers in Australia have documented the birth of a town in this way, observing both its progress and the people it displaced. The exhibition is the first retrospective of Foelsche’s work and could certainly see him recognised as one of Australia’s leading colonial photographers.

The exhibition was curated by the South Australian Museum, and draws on the collections of a number of Australian libraries and archives.

The Director-General of the National Archives, Ross Gibbs, said that it was the first time the exhibition had been seen anywhere in Australia.

‘The South Australian Museum has allowed us to take this exhibition even before it appears at their own venue’, Mr Gibbs said.

‘It provides a unique glimpse of early Darwin and the nearby landscape, and powerful portraits of Indigenous people who lived in the region’, he said.

Also on display will be a number of Aboriginal artefacts collected by Foelsche in 1890. The exhibition will run until 6 February 2005.