The John Ellis collections of photographs and memorabilia of political and social events, mainly from Victoria, Australia, 1971-2015, are held by the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA).The John Ellis Photograph Collection is remarkable not only for its size of around 20,000 images, but also for the details of the events and people described in the accompanying catalogue.
John has been able to collate this material because he was not only photographing the events, but was also participating as a progressive activist. Additionally, because of his work in the printing industry John understood importance of accurate details when going to print and applied this standard to cataloguing his own photographic collection. Accuracy of names, dates, places and any memorabilia about the event were considered paramount and important additional information for future users of the collection. Suzanne Fairbanks (Senior Archivist at the University of Melbourne Archives) has said “… the John Ellis Collection is without peer in the holdings of the UMA, without peer in Victoria and possibly Australia. It would be one of the most complete, valuable and useful records of political activism in the past 40 years and an essential memorial to the citizens whose passion about peace, nuclear issues, the environment and a host of other matters led them into activism.” All images on this site are copyright to the University of Melbourne Archives.
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