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[OM] OT Max Dupain Exhibition in Sydney

Subject: [OM] OT Max Dupain Exhibition in Sydney
From: "John Wheeler" <wheelej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 09:43:24 +1000
G'day Zuiks,

Max Dupain is described as Australia's most celebrated photographer and I
spent an enjoyable hour at this new exhibition at the Sydney State Library
yesterday. It's a collection of forty of his portraits and the first thing
that struck me was the superb print quality until I saw that on his death in
1992 he bequeathed all his negatives to his assistant Jill White who is able
to create new prints for ongoing showings.

These rarely seen pictures are from his pictures of people both posed and
unposed and comprise examples from the twenties to the seventies. He's
reported as saying that he was more concerned with light, shade, and texture
rather than illustrating the character of his subject and an indication of
how revered he was is that prints of his famous 'Sunbaker' shot are for sale
in the library's shop at $AUD7,020 each.

During WWII he was commissioned to do work in North Queensland particularly
for the sugar industry. In those areas were stationed large numbers of
Australian and American troops in training camps prior to being shipped to
Pacific islands. The caption under one 1943 picture of passengers in a train
(which included a GI) somewhere up north read that an influx of some one
million US servicemen gave rise to 'social tensions' and included lines from
a GI's letter home which read:

"We're somewhere in Australia where the sun is like a curse
And each long day is followed by another slightly worse"

which is interesting seeing as how we now advertise the Queensland climate
to the world tourist trade as being, 'Beautiful one day, perfect the next'.

The exhibition is open to February, 2003 and if you're in Sydney well worth
a look.

John.


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