Olive Cotton (1911-2003) had a disrupted career as an art photographer. She achieved prominence in the 1930s-40s, then disappeared from public view until being rediscovered by feminist researchers in the 1980s. Her photography and its contribution to Australian art and culture were my initial prompts but I chose to write a biography rather than an art historical monograph. Biography offered the possibility of a more personal and literary approach and greater freedom to consider how Cotton’s story – a woman’s story – relates to our own time.
This session will focus on some of the challenges I faced and my attempts to resolve them. How to deal with the lack of conventional biographical ‘evidence’ so common to the lives of women? How much detail to include? How to ensure Cotton’s two husbands, photographer Max Dupain and farmer Ross McInerney, didn’t overwhelm the narrative? My aim throughout was to make Cotton’s story clearer and more complex.

https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/audio/book-launch-olive-cotton