At the outbreak of the Second World War, Wolfgang Sivers (1913-2007) fled Nazi Germany to make a new home in Australia. Through his striking images of the post-war manufacturing boom, he would go on to become one of the country’s eminent photographs. In 2011, the National Library of Australia published a volume of his works. At more than 65,000 photographs, the Wolfgang Sievers Photographic Archive is one of the largest formed photographic collection at the Library. Siever’s images celebrate the individuality of the work and the excitement of the modern machine age. The photographer documented the height of Australian industry, recording places such as textile mills, match factories, oil refineries and treatment plants many of them long since gone. In these places, Siever found unexpected beauty and virtue, forming an invaluable record of Australian history, people and cultural. The images in this book are selected from the 2011 edition, republished in a new and affordable format that offers readers invaluable information about Australia’s industrial past, Australian history, culture and the form of photography.
