In September 1977, amidst increasing interest in the medium and establishment of public collections, at the Australian Centre for Photography (ACP) that had been officially opened by Margaret Whitlam in November 1974, Wayne Hooper of Sydney University convened a conference 'Photography in Australia'[3][4] and set up a committee of members interested in the history of the medium.[5][6]

WOPOP adopted a Marxist perspective, proclaiming that it would "consider photography as a medium of communication as well as an art form,” with a  "focus…on the social usage of photography as on the images themselves,” by “drawing on sociology, history, literature, politics, aesthetics, anthropology and linguistics."[5][11][9]

Amongst its contents the journal published criticism, theory, historical and technical articles, on conservation and preservation, picture collection and communication, reported on research in progress, and listed the grants for photographic research, practice and display available from the Australia Council.[12] When local content was not available it reprinted essays from international commentators including A. D. Coleman, and J.C. Sherer and, as Print Letter reported in 1978,

"articles by John Berger and Artforum’s Alan Sekula, with a liberal dollop of Kozloff (or, if you prefer, a dollop of liberal Kozloff) thrown in for good measure."[13]

The contents of WOPOP Issue No.1 of 1978  included an editorial by Euan McGillivray and Matthew Nickson, and articles; "John Heartfield" by Matthew Nickson; "Futurology & Photography" by Graeme Johanson (Latrobe Library, State Library of Victoria); "LaTrobe Library Picture Collection" by Jenny Carew (acting Picture Librarian, Latrobe Library, State Library of Victoria); "Sontag on Photography" by Ann-Marie Willis;[14] "Silver" by Matthew Nickson; "A Constitution Lost" by Ann-Marie Willis; "Australian Women Photographers" by Jenni Mather.[15]

Issue No.5 December 1979 is headed by McGillivray and Nickson's editorial, and includes articles '...A Not So New Non Silver Process' by ‘the Editors’; 'China Cheesecake'; 'On the Subject of John Szarkowski' by A.D. Coleman; 'Pictures, Words and History' by Jozef Gross; 'Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of representation)' by Allan Sekula; and Ian Cosier 'An Australian Photographic Data Base: A Research Resource'.[16]

In issue 7 McGillivray reported on research into the collection of Richard Daintree negatives at the Science Museum of Victoria[17]

Issue No.8 included Johansen's investigation of German photographer of Australian indigenous people, J. W. Lindt.[18][19][20][21]

Issue No.9 contained, amongst other articles, Nick Lottkowitz, 'Conservation and restoration, some chemical thoughts.'[22]

Finding suitable content for the journal required considerable and far-reaching research, and led to new interests for the editors; on reading Carroll Hart's 'The New Documentation: Oral History and Photography',[23] Nickson, who with McGillivray was then becoming interested in the planning and execution of historical photograph preservation, wrote to the author on January 1, 1983, about her involvement in the project.[24][25] In issue 9, of July 1983, Sherry Konter's ‘Final Report’ on the Vanishing Georgia Project was printed beside the editors' proposal for the Australian Bicentenary; ‘Australia as Australians Saw It. A Comprehensive Pictorial Record of our Heritage: 1839–1939’; and their ‘Position Paper— February 1983’.

Their idea was mercilessly critiqued by Tim Robinson of the Council of the City of Sydney Archives who ridiculed the ambitious scale of a project that would digitise 500,000 images and computerise their cataloguing, storage and retrieval; "It is obvious from the submission and the position paper that WOPOP has not the slightest conception of the logistics of copying such a number of photographs, let alone documenting them and ‘fully’ indexing them. Even with the computer programme they describe, and there is no evidence that it has been tested in any way, the entire project would be of vast proportions with no guarantee of success. The money would surely be better spent on collections already held and in need of attention."[26]

Nevertheless, WOPOP ceased publication that year with issue 9 when McGillivray and Nickson moved on to inaugurate the Museum of Victoria’s Outreach Project in 1985 to realise their ambition, expressed in that last issue, to compile a national archive of Australian documentary, vernacular and historically significant photographs up to 1939, the centenary of the Daguerreotype. To do so, the pair issued a call for Australians: "to sit down with your family, look through your collection of photographs and select those which you and your family think should be included in the heritage of Australia," requesting specifically photographs of “members of your family at work, play, or engaged in leisure time activities…”.[27][28]

Several Australian contributors to WOPOP: Working Papers on Photography, especially Ann-Marie Willis[14] who provided several of its articles, Jenni Mather[29] and Graeme Johanson[30] went on to publish books of substantial photo-historical research, and Jenny Carew's articles for other journals treated historical subjects.[31][32]

• Ennis, Helen; Hall, Susan; National Library of Australia; Ennis, Helen (2004), Intersections: photography, history and the National Library of Australia, National Library of Australia, ISBN 978-0-642-10792-3
• Ennis, Helen (2007), Photography and Australia, Reaktion Books, ISBN 978-1-86189-323-9
• National Gallery of Australia, Australian photography: the 1980s, retrieved 27 February 2020
• Bate, Weston; McGillivray, Euan; Nickson, Matthew (1986), Private lives – public heritage : family snapshots as history, Hutchinson Australia