THE BASEMENT – Photography from Prahran College (1968-1981)

Photography Book Review: Brian Rope

THE BASEMENT – Photography from Prahran College (1968-1981)

Published by Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh) (2025)

Print production Wilco Art Books, Amersfoort (NL) ISBN: 978-1-876764-88-3

277×208mm, 232 pages, 261 images

                                                            

This significant publication celebrates a key period in the history of the Photography Department at Prahran College, during the years 1968-81. First-hand accounts from people illuminate the related gallery scene and the cultural impact of the College.

It starts with a foreword by the Director of MAPh, an introduction by that gallery’s accompanying exhibition curators, and photos of the Basement’s teachers. There are six chapters covering different aspects – early years and exhibitions, new 1970s photography, street photography, making film, performative portraiture, and student life. Chapters are filled with images, as well as words.

There are illustrated insights into the memories and outputs of three students from the time. And there is an index, lists of students and illustrations, acknowledgments and a colophon. It is a most important new contribution to the published history of photography in Australia.

Contributors include Helen Ennis (who has delivered a number of other significant books about Australian photography – most recently Max Dupain: a portrait – reviewed on this blog), Daniel Palmer (who, with Martin Jolly, produced the excellent Installation view: photography exhibitions in Australia 1848-2020 – also reviewed on this blog), and Gael Newton (who researched and curated the Australian Bicentenary exhibition on the history of photography in Australia).

Ennis writes about the early years, Palmer about exhibitions in Melbourne 1960s-1980s, and Newton provides a visitor’s view. Each essay provides excellent context for the images that follow and the chapters to come.

 

 Quirk_Students Peter Johnson, Peter Burgess, Paul Cox & Unknown Potter Prahran _1972

          

Paul COX Age of Aquarius (Carol Jerrems, Jan Hurrell) 1970 gelatin silver print

Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection 2000.85

donated by the artist through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program 2000

reproduction courtesy of the artist

There are chapters by Stella Loftus-Hills (MAPh Curator), Adrian Danks (Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Media, RMIT University), Angela Connor (MAPh Senior Curator), Bill Henson (a notable leading contemporary photographer) and Susan Van Wyk (NGV Senior Curator), Nanette Carter (photographer turned design historian), Nicholas Nedelkopoulos (contemporary artist), and James McArdle (retired Assoc. Professor, Deakin University). The talent involved with this publication is rather special.

Loftus-Hills’ chapter Down on the Street is about how the conventional art school began to move towards a more progressive teaching approach. A cross-disciplinary approach saw the introduction of a photography department. Teachers fostered creativity and student artists inspired by their desire for personal expression took their cameras to the streets finding and documenting everyday life.

 

Graham HOWE Protester, moratorium to end the war in Vietnam, September 1970

courtesy of the artist

Andrew CHAPMAN Lest we forget 1980

courtesy of the artist

The Danks chapter is about Paul Cox Making Film, frequently casting students as actors and using them as stills photographers and cinematographers, developing their skills and fostering community.

The Performative Portrait chapter has two parts. Connor discovered “many photographic gems” including Polly Borland’s “wonderful student folio from the early 1980s”. And A conversation between Bill Henson and Susan van Wyk is precisely that, with the former responding to questions from the latter.

 

Christopher KOLLER Bauhausler 1980 silver gelatin print

courtesy of the artist

Polly BORLAND Nick 1983 pigment inkjet print

courtesy of the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf (Melbourne)

Stella SALLMAN Sue on the bed, Bondi 1978

courtesy of the artist

Robert ASHTON

Carol Davies, Peter Crowe, Carol Jerrems, Richard Muggleton 1970

courtesy of the artist

Student Life has three parts. Carter - only at Prahran College in 1974 - writes of “a vibrant and dynamic environment that nurtured creativity, experimentation and community.” Her words immediately reminded me of some social media photography groups I am part of, which very much do the same albeit as online communities. The world has changed, but the immense value of such environments continues.

Nedelkopoulos looks back on his Prahran days with fondness because of their value to the rest of his creative life. And McArdle shares many personal memories; Athol Shmith ordering his students to freeze as they were and look around at the various poses of everyone else as doing that with any person would tell them how to photograph anyone. Cox’s challenge ‘Is it possible to photograph God?’ later inspired him to set the assignment ‘Photograph God’ for his own students.

Most readers will know at least some of the contributors mentioned earlier. I recall the first time I saw an exhibition of Henson’s work - Big Pictures (at the Australian National University’s Drill Hall Gallery). I very much value James McArdle’s major contribution to photography through his blog https://onthisdateinphotography.com/. There are a number of pieces on it about this book and accompanying exhibition.

There are, unsurprisingly, various other very well-known Australian photographers who were part of The Basement. They include the teachers Shmith (one of his books was the first acquired for my personal collection), John Cato and Cox. Then there is Carol Jerrems (recently the subject of a major retrospective at Australia’s National Portrait Gallery – also reviewed on this blog).


This review is also available on the author's blog here.

Max Dupain - A Portrait

Non-fiction Book Review | Brian Rope

Title: Max Dupain - A Portrait

Author: Helen Ennis

Publisher: Harper Collins

Helen Ennis, author of this portrait of Max Dupain, one of Australia’s most famous photographers, has previously written numerous other books including an acclaimed biography of Dupain’s first wife Olive Cotton. I have no doubt this almost identically long new book also will be highly regarded.

Ennis starts this book with a 1984 staged photo of Dupain by Melbourne photographer John Gollings, describing it as an “irreverent homage to a dominant figure in Australian photography” and using it to argue Dupain was “obviously determined to exercise as much control as possible over the terms of his own participation” despite appearing vulnerable. 

The author then describes the three worlds of Dupain – his domestic situation, his work, and his world of “his own creation.” Three things he sought to keep separate throughout his life. In the discussion of this there are a few observations I found myself immediately relating to. Another Australian photographer David Moore, one of Dupain’s long-term friends, is quoted as saying about him “he needed to photograph like he needed to breathe.” I would say the same about many people (including myself) – whether their passions are photography, sport, gardening or anything else.

Ennis also tells us that Dupain’s cousin Lucille thought his photography was a way of escaping from what was going on in the world. And that he, himself, saw his creative task as being to get to the essence of things. She also quotes from a foreword to Dupain’s 1948 monograph written by Hal Missingham, then Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, “Whatever he is photographing there is the same penetration of essentials.”

Those observations by Lucille Dupain and Hal Missingham both ring absolutely true for me. Being creative with their photography is the thing which truly motivates many people. No matter how good their documentary photos, their traditional landscapes, or the portraits taken for paying customers, their real joy comes from creativity during those times when they conceive an idea and then seek to produce artworks in response to that concept.

Ennis shares with her readers some unpublished advice Dupain himself prepared for graduating photography students. Drawing on personal experience, he clearly expressed his view they would have to photograph such things as lousy furniture, industrial complexes, brides and babies to earn sufficient money, because it wasn’t possible to live on “art” photography. However, the author’s book goes on to show and speak favourably about Dupain’s commercial photography as well as his artworks.

Amongst those of Dupain’s images reproduced in the 500+ pages, there are shots of his mother Ena (drying dishes), father George (in his library) and his wives (Olive Cotton and Diana Illingworth). There are some of his paid advertising pieces, beaches and beach culture, nudes, flowers and more. As Ennis discusses the images, we learn about photographers Dupain emulated, the “great creative minds” who most inspired him, his relationships with models, his interest in surrealism, his use of darkness to create mystery, his hatred of war, and the interweaving of his life and his art. There is just so much covered providing, as Ennis intended, a detailed and fascinating portrait of her subject.

Max Dupain - Evening wear advertisement for David Jones (Zara Gaden, Francis Bradford and Douglas Channel), 1938, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1984

Max Dupain - Jean with wire mesh, c. 1935, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 2006

Max Dupain - Silos through windscreen, 1935, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1983

There are some famous photos included, including Flight of the spectres made when he was just 21, and which very much impressed another high-profile photographer, Harold Cazneaux. Sunbaker, an impromptu shot of a friend taken in 1938 but not publicly exhibited until 1975, is his most well-known portrait and probably Australia’s most iconic image.

Max Dupain - The Flight of the Spectres, bromoil, 1932, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1979

Max Dupain - Sunbaker, c. 1938, National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1976

Near the end of the book there is another portrait of Dupain - taken in 1991, just seven years after the Gollings one at the start of the book. This latter image is by another well-known Australian William Yang who also says Dupain sought to assert his control over the session, seemingly to project vitality whilst the resultant image actually reveals a “clearly unwell man.”

In her concluding words Ennis talks about Dupain idolising rare individuals who could rise up and create something extraordinary and poses the question of whether he had done so. She tells us he suspected he was not one of the exalted few, but rather an ordinary man with an exceptional talent. Obtain a copy and read this fascinating book, then decide for yourself.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.