Skip to main content

Site navigation

  • University of Technology Sydney home
  • Home

    Home
  • For students

  • For industry

  • Research

Explore

  • Courses
  • Events
  • News
  • Stories
  • People

For you

  • Libraryarrow_right_alt
  • Staffarrow_right_alt
  • Alumniarrow_right_alt
  • Current studentsarrow_right_alt
  • Study at UTS

    • arrow_right_alt Find a course
    • arrow_right_alt Course areas
    • arrow_right_alt Undergraduate students
    • arrow_right_alt Postgraduate students
    • arrow_right_alt Research Masters and PhD
    • arrow_right_alt Online study and short courses
  • Student information

    • arrow_right_alt Current students
    • arrow_right_alt New UTS students
    • arrow_right_alt Graduates (Alumni)
    • arrow_right_alt High school students
    • arrow_right_alt Indigenous students
    • arrow_right_alt International students
  • Admissions

    • arrow_right_alt How to apply
    • arrow_right_alt Entry pathways
    • arrow_right_alt Eligibility
arrow_right_altVisit our hub for students

For you

  • Libraryarrow_right_alt
  • Staffarrow_right_alt
  • Alumniarrow_right_alt
  • Current studentsarrow_right_alt

POPULAR LINKS

  • Apply for a coursearrow_right_alt
  • Current studentsarrow_right_alt
  • Scholarshipsarrow_right_alt
  • Featured industries

    • arrow_right_alt Agriculture and food
    • arrow_right_alt Defence and space
    • arrow_right_alt Energy and transport
    • arrow_right_alt Government and policy
    • arrow_right_alt Health and medical
    • arrow_right_alt Corporate training
  • Explore

    • arrow_right_alt Tech Central
    • arrow_right_alt Case studies
    • arrow_right_alt Research
arrow_right_altVisit our hub for industry

For you

  • Libraryarrow_right_alt
  • Staffarrow_right_alt
  • Alumniarrow_right_alt
  • Current studentsarrow_right_alt

POPULAR LINKS

  • Find a UTS expertarrow_right_alt
  • Partner with usarrow_right_alt
  • Explore

    • arrow_right_alt Explore our research
    • arrow_right_alt Research centres and institutes
    • arrow_right_alt Graduate research
    • arrow_right_alt Research partnerships
arrow_right_altVisit our hub for research

For you

  • Libraryarrow_right_alt
  • Staffarrow_right_alt
  • Alumniarrow_right_alt
  • Current studentsarrow_right_alt

POPULAR LINKS

  • Find a UTS expertarrow_right_alt
  • Research centres and institutesarrow_right_alt
  • University of Technology Sydney home
Explore the University of Technology Sydney
Category Filters:
University of Technology Sydney home University of Technology Sydney home
  1. home
  2. arrow_forward_ios ... Newsroom
  3. arrow_forward_ios ... 2024
  4. arrow_forward_ios 09
  5. arrow_forward_ios School photos capture childhood and the changing times

School photos capture childhood and the changing times

30 September 2024

School photos are more than mere keepsakes. These images betray much about our younger selves, wrties Cherine Fahd.

A 1935 school photograph taken in Kandos, NSW. Author provided, courtesy of the Kandos Museum.

A 1935 school photograph taken in Kandos, NSW. Author provided, courtesy of the Kandos Museum.

In the town of Kandos, New South Wales, there’s the local Kandos Museum run by volunteers. The museum holds relics from the cement works that once defined the town, but there are other treasures, too.

As part of the Cementa24 festival, I became fixated on the museum’s collection of school photos. Neatly organised into ring-bound folders by the volunteers, the group portraits span decades of students from Kandos Public School and Kandos High School, from 1924 through to the 1990s.

A photo album made by volunteers at the Kandos Museum. Author provided

I enlarged and cropped some of these photos to turn them into street posters to scatter around town. I asked permission before sticking a few outside the local pub, the radio station, the post office and the op shop. I spot the locals smiling as they pass them, stopping to look for someone they know. I watch them point at the pictures and hear them naming names.

Working on this project, I can’t stop thinking about the weight of these photographic rituals. School photos aren’t just memories; they hold social histories. Through them, you can trace changes in hairstyles, fashion, attitudes and even migration – yet there’s something homogeneous and unchangeable about how they’re made.

School photo rules

There’s always a physical hierarchy in these photos. The photographer organises the group to ensure compositional acuity. The students are lined up in rows, with tall people in the back and shorter people in front – evenly spaced, arranged by height and symmetry.

When was the rule made that says this is how a group should look? Balanced, orderly and with everyone fitting neatly into place, whether they socially do or not. Somehow I always ended up on the edge of the middle row. The social dynamics of the playground found their way into the organisation of our bodies, forever captured in a split second.

A photo of Kandos’ 5th Form, 1967. Author provided, courtesy of the Kandos Museum

Looking at the Kandos photos from the 1940s through to the 1970s, then at my children’s photos from 2013 to 2024, and my own school photos in the 1980s and ‘90s, I can see the difference in public, private and catholic school uniforms. I can see the difference in racial diversity (or lack thereof) between a small regional town, inner-city Sydney and suburban southwest Sydney. I can also see how much photographic technology has changed.

Despite this, the organisational structure of the school photo remains the same. The kids still stand stiffly in their rows, with identical tunics and ties. Standing too close, someone’s elbow digs into someone else’s side.

As a photographer now, I often think about these school photos and the rituals that have remained largely unchanged in Australia. Every year, kids are shuffled onto tiered steps. Those in the front put their knees together, hands in laps, while the girls must “try to look like ladies”. Then there are the “nobodies” in the middle row (or is that just me reading into it?)

The perils of posing

Posing for school photos can be complicated. One year my daughter came home from school and declared the photographer was sexist because he made all the girls sit in the front row while the boys got to stand. I asked her why sitting was sexist. She couldn’t explain – she was eight years old – but she certainly felt the power difference between sitting with your knees pressed together and standing tall.

And what about the solo portrait? I still think about my kindergarten class from 1979. The group photo was fine. I was happy, standing next to my new best friend. But my solo portrait was a disaster. I looked possessed, my eyes half-closed, lashes blurred, caught mid-blink.

My mother didn’t buy the solo photo, but she kept the group one. After that I promised myself it would never happen again. I told myself every year: “don’t blink, don’t blink”. Back then, photography was on film. There were no re-dos, no instant feedback, no photoshop and no AI. Once the camera clicked, that was it.

‘Don’t blink, don’t blink,’ I’d think, while trying to keep my eyes open. Author provided

At the end of primary school, I’d visit my best friend’s house and envy the neat, chronological line of her school photos framed on her kitchen wall. Year by year, there she was, changing just slightly – a slow, steady record of growing up. I didn’t know why, but seeing framed evidence of time passing made me emotional. Maybe it was the certainty of the way her life was so neatly documented.

My own school photos never made it to the wall in such a tidy fashion. But they did make it into my father’s wallet, my mother’s purse, in frames above the piano, on the fridge, in photo albums and in many a drawer.

Small acts of rebellion

The 1950s photos are formal and solemn. Back then you stood straight, faced the camera and no one smiled too much. By the 1970s and '80s, the kids started to smirk – with hair loosened, mullets, and bodies shifting like they were trying to resist the pose. In one photo, the basketball team boys have their shoes off, feet raised above the blistering asphalt in the summer heat. The rules were still there, but you can see them pushing back.

Bare feet raised in a photo of the Kandos High School Open basketball team, 1975. Author provided, courtesy of the Kandos Museum.

What if we invited the rituals to change? What if students could self-organise, be silly, pull faces, wear their own clothes, and resist gender binaries and institutional uniformity?

Some of the photos in the Kandos albums hint at this potential for small acts of rebellion. There’s the girl pulling a face, one laughing in profile. In one photo there’s a kid wearing a non-regulation jumper, and another in which they were clearly allowed to be silly because the teacher is laughing too.

Photographic rebellion in the class of 1996. Author provided, courtesy of the Kandos Museum.

In the pre-digital era, these small mishaps and moments of failure were captured unpolished and unfiltered. Those are the images I find myself drawn to; these are often the best ones. They reveal how uncomfortable it can be being photographed and how forced a pose can feel. Shirking a smile and a stiff stance is maybe the only power we have in that brief moment.

Cherine Fahd, Associate Head of School, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Share
Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn
Back to Culture and sport

Related News

  • A man takes a selfie with Santa with a woman and young girl in the background.
    Tantrums to tinsel
  • CLOAK
    CLOAK unites science and fashion to champion queer visibility
  • UTS Artist-in-Residence, Claudia Nicholson. Nick De Lorenzo
    If The Mountain Is Burning, Let It Burn

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and the Boorooberongal People of the Dharug Nation upon whose ancestral lands our campuses now stand. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands. 

University of Technology Sydney

City Campus

15 Broadway, Ultimo, NSW 2007

Get in touch with UTS

Follow us

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Facebook

A member of

  • Australian Technology Network
Use arrow keys to navigate within each column of links. Press Tab to move between columns.

Study

  • Find a course
  • Undergraduate
  • Postgraduate
  • How to apply
  • Scholarships and prizes
  • International students
  • Campus maps
  • Accommodation

Engage

  • Find an expert
  • Industry
  • News
  • Events
  • Experience UTS
  • Research
  • Stories
  • Alumni

About

  • Who we are
  • Faculties
  • Learning and teaching
  • Sustainability
  • Initiatives
  • Equity, diversity and inclusion
  • Campus and locations
  • Awards and rankings
  • UTS governance

Staff and students

  • Current students
  • Help and support
  • Library
  • Policies
  • StaffConnect
  • Working at UTS
  • UTS Handbook
  • Contact us
  • Copyright © 2025
  • ABN: 77 257 686 961
  • CRICOS provider number: 00099F
  • TEQSA provider number: PRV12060
  • TEQSA category: Australian University
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Disclaimer
  • Accessibility