In a New Light: Australian Photography 1930s–2000 is drawn from the extensive holdings in the National Library of Australia’s Pictures Collection. The exhibition aims to raise public awareness about the photography collection itself—without doubt one of the most important in the country—as well as the National Library’s role in collecting a diverse range of Australian visual material. However, the exhibition hopes to go further than this, by encouraging viewers to think differently not only about the National Library but also about photography and history. The scope and size of the National Library’s photography collection is such that it offers a huge range of narrative possibilities about different aspects of Australian history and society. In a New Light: Australian Photography 1930s–2000 engages with the history of the modern period through photographs taken by many of Australia’s leading professional photographers as well as by amateur or unknown photographers whose work is far less familiar to contemporary audiences. The stories these photographs have to tell about Australian life during the twentieth century relate above all to the processes of modernity. There is a focus on the built environment, the physical realm of the city in which the great majority of Australians were living by mid-century. Also prominent is the desire to define a national character; this can be seen in representations of typical aspects of Australian life and the activities of ordinary Australians. The photographs on exhibition have been acquired by the National Library primarily as visual records whose roles, in accordance with their subject matter, are quite specific. However, these photographs, like all photographs, are multi-dimensional. They offer contemporary viewers an array of possibilities that include the opportunity to re-engage with and re-imagine the past—the very recent past of the twentieth century.