Max Quanchi (born 20 June 1945) is an Australian academic whose research specialisations have been the South Pacific nations and the role of photography in recording and transmitting its cultures and histories.
[1] Quanchi was born in Victoria on 20 June 1945, third and youngest son to parents Grace and Harry, who moved the family through a series of country towns.
Moem Barracks were significant in housing a battalion newly recruited in PNG's expansion of its army during preparations for self-government and independence.
[2] Quanchi embarked on research into the history of Gippsland in the early 1980s, publishing books on the subject, but by 1983 had turned his attention to the Pacific region.
Carol E. Mayer of the University of British Columbia in reviewing his major work Photographing Papua: representation, colonial encounters and imaging in the public domain introduces as an "idea fundamental to his work; that late-19th and early-20th century photography in the area known as Papua was the product of the convergence of three phenomena: new technology (the camera), new science (anthropology) and the arrival of an entourage of Europeans (missionaries, traders, government officials, travellers).