Joyce Olga Evans (1929–2019)
Joyce Evans OAM was a highly influential pioneer of twentieth-century Australian photography, often revered as the "doyenne of Australian photography". Her six-decade career spanned documentary, landscape, and portrait photography.
In 1976, she established the influential Church Street Photographic Centre in Melbourne, which helped launch the careers of many local artists and introduced major international photography to Australian audiences.
Her own work focused heavily on capturing essential aspects of Australian life, landscapes, and social history. Her extensive life's work archive, containing roughly 110,000 images, is preserved at the National Library of Australia.
She was posthumously awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2019 for her service to the photographic arts.
"...I don't know what sort of photographer I am, but I try to be an honest one..."