A brief note in the Daily Mirror of September 1973, headed ‘Camera Men to Get A Gallery’,1 foreshadowed the arrival of the Australian Centre for Photography (ACP). Initially called the Australian Foundation for Photography, the new body was to promote photography as an art form: to collect photographs; to publish books; to exhibit Australian and ‘overseas’ photography; and to organize seminars and award scholarships. Such an organization will have many histories, depending on the narrator. The Australian Centre for Photography has had a turbulent twenty-five years (1973–98), with its internal machinations as fraught as its public battles. It has been the epic entre of debate around photography in Australia for a quarter of a century, often standing, simultaneously, against the tide of mainstream and grassroots photographic activity. In this it is not unusual, and the Centre's history is useful to recount if only because it has so many parallels elsewhere. In unravelling the background to the Centre's formation it is clear that it holds a very contradictory position. While the ACP has been the single most important institution for the growth and recognition of photography in Australia, its presence has also denied the development of other organizations. It has, at times, fostered a narrow range of practices and has contributed to the maintenance of divisions within the photographic community.