Perth Mint Anzac Day 2024 Al/Br Coin PNC

This issue features portraits of three official war photographers of World War I and II. Briton Herbert Baldwin (1880–1920) was Australia’s first commissioned war photographer, engaged to record Australian troops on the Western Front in late 1916 and early 1917. The first photographer commissioned by the Australian government during World War II was Damien Parer (1912–44). He served behind the lens in the Middle East and North Africa, before joining Western forces in New Guinea in 1942. Parer was tragically killed by Japanese gunfire in 1944. New Zealand-born George Silk (1916–2004) was the second photographer commissioned during World War II. He arrived in the Middle East in May 1940 and produced powerful images in Greece, Syria, Lebanon and Tobruk, before photographing the war campaign in the Pacific.