Coral EmpireFrom vividly colored underwater photographs of Australia's Great Barrier Reef to life size dioramas re creating coral reefs and the bounty of life they sustained, the work of early twentieth century explorers and photographers fed the public's fascination with reefs. In the 1920s John Ernest Williamson in the Bahamas and Frank Hurley in Australia produced mass circulated and often highly staged photographs and films that cast corals as industrious,