Mark Anning
Australia
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Australian photographer & writer & publisher.
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Articles by Mark Anning
Brassaï: The Photographer Called “The Eye of Paris”
For young photographers looking for inspiration, Brassaï shows how much a camera could do with curiosity, patience and a thoroughly unfashionable bedtime. He made night photography a major artistic language, helped turn the photobook into an immersive experience, and gave lovers, workers and people living outside respectable society a place in photography’s enduring history.
SpaceX’s Million-Satellite Plan Sparks Fight for Dark Skies
SpaceX is seeking permission from American regulators, but the consequences would reach far beyond America: across other nations’ horizons, through astronomers’ observations and into the night skies shared by billions of people. The question is who gets to approve a transformation on that scale—and how much say the rest of the world actually has.
Australia’s LNG Boom Cost Australia’s Manufacturing $118 Billion
In 2014, Deloitte warned that exporting Australia’s gas wealth would impose a heavy price on domestic manufacturing. Within years, factories were closing and aluminium smelters were cutting production. Australia was promised a gas export bonanza. Manufacturers were warned to prepare for the bill. In July 2014, as Queensland’s enormous liquefied natural gas projects approached operation, Deloitte Access Economics published a report examining what the transformation would mean for Australian industry.
Musk: The Documentary and the Price of Speaking Out
Alex Gibney’s film has encountered advertising refusals, legal threats and a striking allegation from Ashley St. Clair. The battle over its release raises questions about who controls the conversation. A documentary about a powerful man’s influence over public debate runs into trouble buying space in the places where public debate happens. Hollywood could hardly ask for a more pointed publicity campaign. Unfortunately for the distributor, this one arrived as a rejection notice.
Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture, Introduction — by Wendell Berry
Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture by J. Russell Smith, Sc.D.. Introduction — by Wendell Berry I first read J. Russell Smith’s Tree Crops perhaps fifteen years ago, and since then I have returned to it many times. Having just paid it another visit, I am pleased to say that I still like it as much as I ever did, and am just as much convinced by it. This book contributed to a fundamental rethinking of agriculture in our century.
Alamy Photo Agency Builds Its Future by Cutting Photographer’s
For professional photographers, the latest message from Alamy arrived wrapped in the familiar language of corporate optimism—and with no invitation to negotiate. The stock photography agency called its announcement “Building a Stronger Alamy for the Future”. It spoke of investment, growth, sustainability and a changing marketplace. The new contributor contract, however, was presented as a fait accompli: it will take effect on September 1, 2026. Then photographers reached the commission table.
Homer’s Odyssey contributions to the modern English language
Nearly three thousand years after Homer’s tales were first sung, The Odyssey is again entertaining the masses. Christopher Nolan’s lavish screen adaptation, starring Matt Damon as the long-suffering Odysseus, opened in July 2026 with a global box-office haul of more than US$264 million. Evidently, audiences are still willing to follow a weary Greek veteran as he battles storms, monsters, seductive women, angry gods and catastrophic navigational decisions on his way home from work.
Randa Abdel-Fattah Launches Bendigo Festival Legal Action
Randa Abdel-Fattah is seeking compensation and a public apology from the City of Greater Bendigo and La Trobe University, alleging she was discriminated against because of her political beliefs and activities. Palestinian-Australian author and academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has launched legal action against the City of Greater Bendigo and La Trobe University over the controversy that engulfed the 2025 Bendigo Writers Festival.
Complicated Relationship of Donald Trump and Marla Maples
In the world of celebrity romances, few have been as intriguingly complex as that of Donald Trump and Marla Maples. Their relationship was a whirlwind of passion, controversy, and public scrutiny that captured the attention of the media and the public alike. Donald Trump, the real estate mogul and future President of the United States, first met Marla Maples, an actress and model, in the late 1980s.
Why is Victoria importing Tasmanian forests?
There is ongoing turmoil in the native forest logging industry, as revealed in the ABC’s Four Corners program that aired on 22nd June 2026. The evidence presented was unambiguous: the native forest logging industry has been in financial, social, and environmental decline for decades. Yet it continues to be financially supported by federal and state government subsidies that are detrimental to the economy, environmental integrity and the efficient spending of taxpayer dollars.
Ken Henry’s Future of Native Timber Logging is Carbon Credits
From the ridges above the Manning Valley, the argument can look brutally simple. Below are the forests of Bulga, Yarratt and the wider Mid North Coast: country that has supplied timber for generations, habitat for countless species, water catchments for local communities, and now — increasingly — part of Australia’s climate ledger. Yet the old economic arithmetic still tends to begin and end with a truckload of logs. Dr Ken Henry knows that history from both sides.
Let’s Look at Diane Keaton Photographer
When Diane Keaton first stepped onto the screen and the public’s consciousness in 1977’s Annie Hall, dressed in that iconic mix of men’s vests, ties, and oversized jackets, audiences thought they were witnessing the birth of a new kind of style. Turns out, they were watching a revelation — a woman unafraid to inhabit her contradictions. Keaton, who passed away in 2025, didn’t just redefine how women could dress; she redefined how they could see.
Banjo Paterson’s classic Eaglehawk poem Mulga Bill’s Bicycle
Imagine a time when bicycles were still exciting new machines. When Banjo Paterson wrote Mulga Bill’s Bicycle 130 years ago in 1896, most people travelled by foot, horse, cart, train or boat. Cycling was becoming fashionable, but a bicycle could still seem strange and slightly daring — especially on rough country roads. Mulga Bill comes from Eaglehawk and thinks he can ride anything. He has handled horses, bulls and the hard tracks of the bush, so he is certain a bicycle will be easy.
AFP Commissioner: “Five Eyes to target online harms”
When I became AFP Commissioner last year, I said I would have candid conversations with Australians to inform them about the threats they face. Today, I need to have another confronting but honest conversation. Many readers will already know about the harms associated with online activity, including issues highlighted by this newspaper’s Let Them Be Kids campaign. But parents and caregivers now need to be aware of entrenched and emerging criminal threats because of rapidly-evolving technology.
Suggested objection to registration of “Free Palestine”
Victorians can object to the “Free Palestine” registration under the Electoral Act 2002 (Vic): s45 if the application is defective or the party is ineligible; s47 if the proposed name is legally prohibited. Email rppregistration@vec.vic.gov.au by 2 July. Saying a party’s name disguises its politics may not be enough. Objections must fit the Electoral Act—especially ss45 or 47.
Pulitzer Prize Photograph Winners: Images That Made History
Some photographs report the news. Others become the news. A rare collection of Pulitzer Prize photographs coming to auction through Heritage Auctions on July 1 gathers some of the most famous, harrowing and culturally defining images of the 20th century — pictures that did not merely illustrate history, but helped shape how history was understood.
Cathy Wilcox Cartoon Ruling and the New Culture War Censors
The Australian Press Council’s ruling against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald over a Cathy Wilcox cartoon called “Grass roots” should not be dismissed as another skirmish in the endless outrage wars. Nor should it be lazily waved away as “cancel culture”. The cartoon, published on 7 January 2026.
Submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry
This is my submission to the Aukus Public Inquiry. Feel free to copy any part and use segments in your own submission, or make a comment below if you have issues with my views. Australians deserve to be heard on this issue. I welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Public Inquiry into AUKUS.
Diane Keaton’s Home: The Beauty of a Life Collected
Diane Keaton did not merely decorate houses. She edited them, argued with them, rearranged them, rescued them and, in her own wonderfully peculiar way, turned them into self-portraits. Long before “curated” became the most exhausted word in interiors, Keaton was living inside a collage of her own making: black and white, rustic and refined, comic and severe, deeply Californian but never blandly sunny.
Beat Generation writer Gerald Stern’s Lucky Life
A poem can live on a page, but sometimes it escapes into a room. Gerald Stern’s Lucky Life is one of those poems that seems to ask for more than quiet reading. Its words carry gratitude, strangeness, memory and the sudden shock of being alive. Here, the poem is presented alongside Diane Keaton’s extraordinary reading room in her Sullivan Canyon home in California, where lines from Lucky Life curve around the walls like a private incantation.
Zelensky Putin Letter Warns Russia Is Tiring of Ukraine War
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued a direct open letter to Vladimir Putin, warning that Russia is growing exhausted by a war he describes as Putin’s “personal choice.” The letter is both an accusation and an offer: Zelenskyy points to Ukraine’s growing long-range strike capability, the human cost of Russia’s invasion, and the political fatigue building inside and around Russia, while proposing a direct leaders’ meeting, a full ceasefire during negotiations, and an all-for-all...
Australia’s elusive Quolls headed for extinction
Australia’s diverse fauna is renowned worldwide, and among its unique inhabitants are the quolls. These small to medium-sized carnivorous marsupials, also known as native cats, play a vital role in the ecosystem. Australia leads the world in , with 38 native mammal species and possibly seven subspecies driven to extinction since colonization. Currently, 52 mammal species are classified as either critically endangered or endangered, and 58 mammal species are listed as vulnerable.
AUKUS Inquiry with Terms of Reference That Pre-determine the Outcome
Australia’s most expensive defence project will finally face a public hearing room, though not one convened by the government that signed the cheque. A national Public Inquiry into AUKUS launches today at Federal Parliament, led by former Labor minister, environmental campaigner and Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett.
Michelle Grattan: ‘Reset’ of NACC should revisit public hearings
At the 2022 election “integrity” was a big-deal issue. Then after winning government, Labor ticked off a promise when it set up the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), which began officially in July 2023. By now the NACC should be a well-functioning, well-respected body, kicking goals, enjoying public trust. But, in an extraordinary irony, the NACC has become best known for “own goals”, rocked by internal scandals and attracting a litany of complaints.
Shamrock Hotel Bendigo’s Most Haunted Address
Words and Photography by Mark Anning. Ghosts are typically described as the lingering presence of people who have died—whether as visible apparitions, voices, or subtle impressions tied to a place. The paranormal covers a broader territory: experiences and phenomena that sit outside accepted scientific explanation, from unexplained sounds and movements to sensations of being watched or touched when no one is there.
Grattan on Friday: Taylor’s budget reply – sound & dubious commitments
Angus Taylor might have reckoned he and the opposition are in such deep doo-doo that he might as well throw everything at Thursday night’s budget reply. The result was a mixed bag. The promise to index tax brackets is a bold reform that can’t be faulted in principle, although it would come with a big eventual cost and put a financial constraint on a future Coalition government that it might come to regret.
Former congressman David Brat, new US ambassador in Canberra
US President Donald Trump has finally appointed an ambassador to Australia – David Brat, a conservative former Republican congressman. The post has been vacant since Caroline Kennedy, appointed by the Biden administration, left in late 2024. Brat, 61, still has to be confirmed by the US Senate to take up the post. He served two terms in the US House of Representatives, representing a district in Virginia before being defeated in 2018.
How to Identify Porcelain & Pottery Marker Marks
If ceramics are the story, the mark is the signature—and sometimes the confession. Turn over almost any piece of pottery or porcelain and you’ll find a mark: stamped, painted, impressed, or occasionally scratched in as an afterthought. These marks are the closest thing collectors get to a paper trail. They can reveal the maker, the country of origin, the date, and—if you’re lucky—the difference between a $20 find and something worth locking in a cabinet. The problem? Marks lie.
FEATURE: All About Pottery & Ceramics
Decorative arts expert Al Bagdade quite literally wrote the book on ceramics. His Warman’s English & Continental Pottery & Porcelain remains a trusted reference for collectors trying to separate museum-quality porcelain from everyday wares. Ceramics may be casually called “china,” but that barely scratches the surface. The field spans everything from refined European porcelain to utilitarian stoneware and rustic earthenware.
Hunter S. Thompson’s elk heart prank on Jack Nicholson
When Hunter S. Thompson set out to Jack Nicholson’s house near Aspen to mark his 60th birthday on 22 April 1997, he did not bother with wine, cigars, or anything that might pass for a civilised gift. Instead, he arrived at his friend’s door carrying a thawing elk’s heart—an offering somewhere between tribute, warning, and private joke. Here we have Thompson at full tilt: loyal to his friends, allergic to convention, and operating in a universe where symbolism matters more than sanity.
Bendigo Gig Guide – Vol.1 No.1 April 2026
This is the Archive of our Bendigo Gig Guide for April 2026. For the current guide, please visit the BENDIGO GIG GUIDE What’s The Buzz? Tell Me What’s Happening around Bendigo. The first edition of our Bendigo Gig Guide … this is the collector’s edition! Bookmark if you want, we update our Local’s Guide to Bendigo Events regularly. Please scroll down to contact us if you have an event to include. The 2026 Bendigo Easter Festival has been and gone, so we’ve begun the Gig Guide Archive.
Tiny Homes: A Small Answer to a Growing Housing Crisis
There are now more displaced people on Earth than at any point since records began. Wars redraw borders overnight, climate change quietly erases coastlines, and in wealthy nations the crisis takes on a different disguise—rents rising faster than wages, first homes drifting out of reach, and entire generations quietly giving up on ownership.
Have we stopped worrying – and learned to love Israel’s bomb?
Israel’s nuclear arsenal is modern diplomacy’s worst-kept secret: neither officially acknowledged nor formally denied, yet widely understood to exist. Despite decades of UN resolutions and sustained international pressure to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel remains the Middle East’s only undeclared nuclear power—operating outside the very system designed to prevent the spread of such weapons.
Harvest Under Scrutiny: Tax Office Vineyard Labour Crackdown
The taxman has arrived in wine country—and he’s not here for a wine tasting. In April 2026, a coordinated strike involving the Australian Taxation Office, Fair Work Ombudsman, and Border Force swept through South Australia’s wine regions, conducting surprise inspections on vineyards across the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Adelaide Hills.
The Forgotten Bunkers of Australia’s Strategic Fuel Reserve
Australia is currently rediscovering a hard truth: a nation without fuel is a nation at a standstill. As the Middle East conflict pushes petrol past $2.30 a litre and queues form at Victorian stations, the conversation has turned to our “fragile” national stockpile. But we’ve been here before. During World War II, Australia didn’t rely on overseas leases or hope; we built a hidden, inland backbone of fuel depots designed to survive the unthinkable.
Grattan on Friday: A fuel plan should be on Albanese’s agenda
Using one lens, you could view the present contest between the Albanese government and the Taylor-Canavan opposition as pragmatism versus populism. A week ago the opposition, which perennially berates the government for economic irresponsibility, urged a cut in the fuel excise. True, the Coalition proposed offsets, but it was a policy seen as counterproductive by many economists.
Bendigo Gig Guide – Entertainment News & What’s On in Central Victoria
What’s The Buzz? Tell Me What’s Happening around Bendigo. The first edition of our Bendigo Gig Guide … this is the collector’s edition! Bookmark if you want, we update our Local’s Guide to Bendigo Events regularly. Please scroll down to contact us if you have an event to include. The 2026 Bendigo Easter Festival blends tradition, spectacle, and community celebration across the long weekend, anchored by centenary events marking 100 years of the Bendigo Easter Fair Society.
Collecting Kewpie Dolls & Kewpie Cartoons
Kewpie dolls are collectible vintage dolls known for their unique and charming design. Kewpie cartoons are also collectible and can be valuable. “Kewpie” is derived from the word “cupid,” which reflects the dolls’ angelic or cherub-like appearance. Kewpie dolls are characterized by their distinctive appearance, which includes a chubby, cherubic face with rosy cheeks, a small body, and typically, small wings on their back.
LINA Summit 2026: Local News Is Still Here
There’s something reassuring about a room full of journalists who aren’t trying to conquer the world—just determined to cover it properly, one postcode at a time. This week, that room happens to be in Murray Bridge, South Australia, where the Local & Independent News Association has gathered its tribe for the 2026 Summit. And yes, 1EarthMedia is in attendance—because if you’re serious about where journalism is heading, this is where the conversation is happening.
Grattan on Friday: Albanese government’s Middle East ‘stress test’
Crises “stress test” governments and countries. Memories remain vivid of COVID, which put immense pressures on the Australian economy, the federation and Commonwealth and state budgets. The domestic crisis triggered by the Middle East war is well short of – and certainly less frightening than – the COVID emergency. But it is imposing major strains on supply chains, businesses, federal and state governments and the public.
Harley Parker’s 1970s Live Music Photography in Melbourne
In 1971, Melbourne’s live music scene was gathering momentum — loud, unpredictable, and full of possibility. Bands were finding their sound, audiences were finding their voice, and in the middle of it all was a young photographer with a camera and a front-row view of it unfolding. More than fifty years later, that body of work comes together in Just One in the Crowd, a book and exhibition by Harley Parker, launching at Shedshaker Brewing Company as part of the Castlemaine State Festival.
Gas Giants in the Crosshairs as War Profits Debate Heats Up
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing mounting pressure to tax the extraordinary profits of Australia’s gas exporters, as environmental groups line up behind reports the government is actively considering a new levy in response to global energy shocks driven by conflict in the Middle East.
Francesca Albanese Bearing Witness Even When the World Sleeps
There are jobs that come with prestige, and there are jobs that come with consequences. The role held by Francesca Albanese belongs firmly in the latter category. As the first woman appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, she occupies a role where every sentence is examined, every conclusion contested, and silence is rarely an option.
Another $450,000 Fine: Is Forestry Corp NSW Still Fit for Purpose?
The illegal logging of ancient trees in New South Wales state forests has once again landed the state-owned Forestry Corporation of NSW in court, raising renewed questions about whether the agency responsible for managing public forests is still fit for purpose. In a judgment delivered in March 2026, the NSW Land and Environment Court ordered Forestry Corporation to pay $450,000 after the illegal logging of six giant trees and three hollow-bearing trees in Wild Cattle Creek State Forest in 2020.
Australian Pre-Decimal Coins ° Australian Penny
The Australian penny is a coin that was used in Australia prior to decimal currency in 1966. They are no longer in circulation but remain a collectible item for numismatists and collectors of vintage coins. The story of Australian pre-decimal pennies begins with the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. The transition from colonial to federal governance necessitated the creation of a national currency.
Senate Turns Its Gaze to the Great Gas Giveaway
Sixteen years after then-Prince Andrew brokered a multi-billion dollar deal for BG Group – British Gas – in Queensland, Australia finally has a proposal on the table to properly tax this massive export industry. But will the senate vote for it?
From Australian Spinifex Arts studio to New York art galleries
The art world’s centre of gravity is quietly shifting this month from the red sands of Western Australia’s Great Victoria Desert to the polished floors of Gramercy Park in Manhattan, New York City, as two senior Spinifex artists—Timo Hogan and Kunmanara Patju Presley—present landmark solo exhibitions at the storied National Arts Club in New York. It’s not a group show. Not a side room. Not a polite inclusion. It’s the big stage.
EPA Secures $34,000 Penalty Over Logging in Riparian Buffer Zone
A Mid North Coast logging company has been fined more than $34,000 after a court found it breached private native forestry rules designed to protect waterways and surrounding vegetation. In the Taree Local Court, O’Connor Logging Pty Ltd was ordered to pay the penalty following offences committed at a property in Belbora in 2023. The company’s director, Stephen Sean O’Connor, was also convicted and placed on a two-year conditional release order requiring him to be of good behaviour.
Bendigo Blast Off: LEGO® Rockets, Mars Rovers and Big Ideas
Opening Tuesday 3 March 2026 at the Discovery Science and Technology Centre, CURIOSITY: Building Breakthroughs in LEGO® Bricks lands in Bendigo like a brightly coloured intellectual explosion. Equal parts engineering lab, art installation and childhood fever dream, this major collaboration with Bendigo Art Gallery transforms humble LEGO® bricks into towering feats of science and imagination.
The surprisingly Australian history of Chinese dragon parades
The Chinese New Year of 2026 – the year of the Horse – begins this week. Families and friends will gather to feast, red packets will be gifted to youngsters, and dancing Chinese lions accompanied by strings of crackers will scare away evil spirits and bring good fortune to businesses. In celebration of the new year, much-loved Chinese dragons will parade on Australia’s streets, including Sun Loong in Bendigo and the Millennium Dragon in Melbourne.
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