Author(s): Peter Gordon Milne (Artist); Helen Kristina Frajman (Editor); Maurice Ortega (Editor); Michael Stone-Richards; Darren John Tofts; Courtney Brook Pedersen

Photography

Beautiful Lies is a collection of satirical photo media projects by Australian artist Peter Milne.The images in this book create allegorical, visual narratives out of the strangely rich and conflicted history of a young nation still struggling to understand itself.The individual projects employ a wide range of visual languages, formal elements and subject matters but they all share a central concern with the possibilities for reinterpretation of historical narrative through visual allegory.The key theme in the work is the human dynamics involved in the pursuit of power, particularly the tension between utopian idealism and the corrupting disillusionment that inevitably accompanies any successful attainment of authority.Beautiful Lies is intended to be a series of cautionary tales - more emotional than evidentiary. Like the actual historical events it interprets, it is comically improbable (and perhaps just a little sad).