Hazel de Berg

Described in a 1961 article from the Canberra times as a ‘tape-recorder enthusiast from Sydney’ Hazel de Berg was a photographer and radiographer and oral historian. She spent much of her life collecting the words and voices of Australian poets, artists, writers, composers, actors, academics, publishers, librarians, scientists, anthropologists, public servants and some politicians. Subjects were asked to speak about their lives and work and while De Berg asked questions, for the most part she edited her voice out of the final recordings. Her archives are not then a repository of interviews, but of voices, speaking directly and intimately to the listener. The recordings take place in the homes or work spaces of the subjects rather than a recording studio. This allows something of these places into the recording whether birdsong, traffic or an r&b song playing in the background. In the recordings, De Berg herself is an enigmatic presence, the ghostly presence operating the machine.