Storer Russell Palmer Daniel (1 results)

Paperback. Condition: Sehr gut. 149 p., mostly colored fotos. Very good condition. -- Australia. Once you get past iconic cliches and generalities, you're left with two things: the weight of its history and the shape of its land. How these unique elements intersect can take on infinitely different forms, and in today's Australia, the landscape and the past press upon us more than ever. The environmental threat of sprawling cities and decades of over-farming; the struggle to become a republic; the battles over Aboriginal native title; the historical anxiety of invasion from the 'North' re-emerging with our treatment of asylum seekers; the definition of our place in the world as part of Asia and/or part of the West these are all urgent issues in Australia, all shaking our self-image to the core. -- Trouble is, we're still working out what that image is. The idea of Australia is well established: kangaroos, Paul Hogan, the Sydney Opera House and so on, but the cracks are starting to show. Australia's official image, before its relatively recent, tentative embrace of Indigenous culture and multiculturalism, for years revolved around the holy trinity of the beach, the barbecue and beer. Everyday hedonism has long been a national conceit, which still serves the tourist industry well. On the official website of the Australian Tourist Commission, the keyword is 'free-spirited'. The typical Australian was easygoing and unpretentious it's the land of'no worries'). Today we're as overworked as everyone else, the barbie's full of satay sticks and marinated lamb, and our beer is boutique. -- -- So often seen as 'other' to the Northern Hemisphere - inverted or exaggerated, familiar yet strange - Australia's identity is constantly in flux. National heroes, such as Ned Kelly or the soldiers at Gallipoli, are based on stories of courageous yet conspicuous failure that are continually being revised. Myths play a crucial part in Australia's sense < t itself. One of the most iconic versions of Australianness, reproduced on postage stamps and quoted time and again, is a photograph from the 1930s by Max Dupain, called The Sunbaker. This picture, of a tanned young man lying on the beach with his arms crossed, has long implied white Australia's relaxed self-possession and a nonchalant confidence in the great southern paradise. The often repeated story of Dupain's model e:ng a visiting English tourist rather than an Australian has not dimmed this image's svmbolic brilliance. -- Of course there are many Australias. This issue of Big proposes a series of elements that together build a picture of this vast country of eternal becoming, here at the crossroads of nature and culture. Without attempting to provide a definitive image of national identity, Big Australia's contributors have taken cues from their own experiences, memories and passions. Some of it may be familiar, some of it strange, and some of it may indeed be both. Our sense of ourselves as Australians - a combination of Indigenes, migrants at home, and ex-pats overseas - has inflected these images and words. What has emerged is a mosaic-of paradoxical beauty: of unexpected icons and evocative reflections, and, as always, immense potential. Australia, ultimately, defies any attempt to reach a sharper definition or final destination. Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 550.