Beyond Reasonable Drought: Photographs of a Changing Land and Its People

In the absence of words that rise much above ‘prolonged dry weather events impacting on inflow conditions’, we have these photographs that, in the various unpredictable ways of the camera, capture the ancient drama now unfolding, and the hope of resurrection. – Don Watson

There has been nothing like it in living memory. Theories about cycles and seasons struggle to explain it. It is beyond reasonable drought.

Early this century, a group of photographers crisscrossed the nation, and captured a seismic shift in the way Australians were living their lives. Caught in these photographer’s lenses were the faces and the stories of communities caught in this shift. People whose lives were being transformed as the rains over much of Australia’s bread basket and beyond stopped falling regularly and the land altered.

These concerned photographers formed Many Australian Photographers (MAP) Group with the intention of showing us all the true state of the nation – the resilience, the ingenuity, the despair and the hope of Australia – as we leave the safety of history and head into an unknown future.