Light Years: Olive Cotton

Next date: Friday, 08 May 2026 | 06:00 PM to 09:00 PM

A screening of the 1990 film by Kathryn Millard.

Light Years: Olive Cotton is a unique record of the life and work of eminent Australian photographer, Olive Cotton.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Olive Cotton successfully ran a studio in Sydney with renowned Australian photographer Max Dupain. Her work was exhibited both in Australia and overseas.

At the end of the war Cotton married and moved to Koorawatha in central New South Wales. As she and her husband struggled to gain a living from the land and raise a family, it seemed that Cotton had left her career as a photographer behind.

Living for many years without running water or electricity, she continued to take photographs although she was unable to print them. The negatives were carefully stored in an old sea trunk until the 1960s. Eventually friends and family built a darkroom in Cowra, and in the early 1980s Olive resumed exhibiting her work to critical and public acclaim. She then devoted much of her time to printing from her vast personal archive of negatives.

As one of Australia's most accomplished photographers with a portfolio spanning some sixty years, Olive Cotton and her work offer a rich insight into Australian social history and art. This film was completed in 1990, thirteen years before Olive Cotton passed away on 27 September 2003.

Light Years: Olive Cotton has been superbly remastered from original film materials.

Narrator GILLIAN JONES

Written and Directed by KATHRYN MILLARD
Produced by KATHRYN MILLARD and PATRICIA L'HUEDE
Cinematographer JOHN WHITTERON
Editor TONY STEVENS
Sound Recordist LEO SULLIVAN
Music composed by RICHARD VELLA
Sound Designers JOHN DENNISON and TONY VACCHER

Kathryn Millard has directed both drama and long-form documentaries. Her dramas include Parklands (1996) with Cate Blanchett in her first film, and the feature Travelling Light (2003), both of which screened widely in festivals and won awards. Her documentaries (two of which are included in CIFF) have also been internationally recognised and much awarded. Social history and resilience, the arts and psychology are recurring topics in Kathryn’s films. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Screen and Creative Arts at Macquarie University. She lives and works on unceded Gadigal land in Sydney’s inner west.

ADMISSION FREE
AGES: All ages

TO BOOK: Register via Eventbrite or email cowraartgallery@cowra.nsw.gov.au
• Gallery events may be photographed and images used for publicity and promotional purposes on Council’s websites, publications, social media or by newspapers.
• If you do not wish for your image (or the image of your child) to be published, please notify Gallery Staff before the event.

This event is part of the National Gallery of Australia’s touring exhibition Olive Cotton and her contemporaries, presented at Cowra Regional Art Gallery. These programs are generously funded by the Bowness Family Foundation.

Find out more about Olive Cotton and her contemporaries.

Olive Cotton and her contemporaries is a National Gallery Touring Exhibition presented as part of The Bowness Family Foundation Photography Touring Program.

IMAGE ABOVE Still image of Olive Cotton from The Light Years: Olive Cotton and Max Dupain by Kathryn Millard