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Max Dupain
By HAL MISSINGHAM Director National Art Gallery of N.S.W. (1945-1971)
Let me state quite frankly at the outset that I think Max Dupain one of the most outstanding photographers in Australia to-day. When I look back over the last seven years since my return from abroad I find that my memory of the images of our land is made up in great part of the penetrating camera statements of Max Dupain.
One thing immediately noticeable in this small selection of his work is the wide coverage of his interests, from studies of landscape to portraits, from photographs cf waves, nudes and those curious age-old trees we call black-boys to yachts and surfing. Photographs of out-back pubs and backyards, of the life of the cities and the bush; constant visual images stated anew for us in terms of the still-camera with the utmost precision and clarity, and through the eyes of an artist using an instrument he loves and respects.
Equally noticeable here is that whether he is photographing a group of boys with their yacht or Volterra playing Beethoven there is the same penetration into the essentials. In the portrait of Volterra you can almost hear him breathing as the strong hands are thrust at the keyboard, so intense is the visual statement.
This critical awareness of the scope of his camera and his acceptance of its precision mechanical aptitude is one of the qualities which has kept Max Dupain in the forefront of our photographers. He uses his camera with the same ease and for the same purposes that a painter uses his brush or an etcher his needle to create a visible statement that he feels is important to himself, and through himself, to us.
Early in its development, the camera was hailed as an instrument that could show us moving objects, and indeed one of its major achievements has been the dissection of movement so that we now see the infinite variations that go to the making of one action. Our appreciation of the beauty in the rhythms of life and objects has been immeasurably increased by this particular mechanical development, but in the movie-camera lies the true province of continuous movement, no matter how fast the modern emulsions or how speedy the shutters of the still-camera.
When movement is shown by it, it can only be a synthesis of that movement, not the continuous flow of the action itself, and it is in the selection of that particular moment when a movement is at its apex before breaking or merging into the development of another that the still-photographer shows his quality and his mastery.
Action need not be violent; a smile is as full of movement as a horse-race. In the photograph of "Surf Race Start" the tremendous drive of the surfers as they race into the sea is pointed in the main figures by the exact moment when the energy from the action is at its height, almost at its breaking point, so that we get the impression of great speed and effort.
1 think that we are only at the beginning of what the camera will do, and already the artist-photographer has pointed a few of the ways of using this new, medium. There has, perhaps naturally, been a tendency to decry and belittle the results of the camera because of its commercial and mechanical application, but who will gainsay lithography as an art simply because it has been used as a method of reproducing jam and beer labels?
As with art, so with photography, the technical prowess almost always outstrips the thinking mind; in the battle of the artist to make his technical proficiency subservient to his heart and will, photography also will produce great works.
There are constantly before us innumerable bad photographs and innumerable boring photographs that are technically proficient, but consider for a moment the hundreds of thousands of indifferent drawings and paintings that suffer this same technical proficiency and it must be apparent that equally with good paintings, photographic images are remembered and remain in our consciousness with power and creative force, no matter how removed from us in space and time.
Since its discovery, photography has been greatly and increasingly used as an instrument of realism, of portraying what is felt to be the actual appearance of objects and of persons. Quite a natural tendency when the direction of Western Art had pointedly developed its technical facility and its quest for realism until the emergence of the camera provided artists with an added freedom to .explore other paths.
In essence, photography is merely a method of fixing or creating an image by means of light ("Lichtbild" or Light picture" as the Germans call it.) It is in the control of tones and the juxtaposition of light-dark-light-dark across the surface of the papex that to a great extent make the artist's statement in any of the Graphic Arts. Realism may be the chief but is obviously not the only function of photography.
We need only look at the photographs of Man Ray, Biumenfeld, Steichen or Bill Brandt (to name but a few at random) to see the far-pointing finger into other visual experiences open to the medium in the hands of the creative artist. Max Dupain's prints are always conceived within the realm of photography and he uses his camera with intelligence and humbleness. His technique is never obtrusive, always meticulous, clean, and above all, always photographic.
I cannot do better than use his own notes to outline briefly his general development; since he first began using the camera at the age of fourteen. It reads as the progress charts of all good artists read–hard work and applied concentration to the chosen job; a.passionate belief in it, and then the slow accumulation of technique to aid in making visible the. expression of the personality of the artist.
Max Dupain was born in 1911, and at 14 had already decided that photography was the most important thing in his life (excluding, he says, rowing and athletics). After five years schooling at Sydney Grammar School he began an apprenticeship with Cecil Bostock, continuing, during nights and weekends in a small laboratory at home.
He studied drawing and paintings, at the East Sydney Technical College and at Julian Ashton's evening classes under Henry Gibbons, where he developed an appreciation of form and movement which has been of great help in his selection of phonographic material.
Towards the end of the depression years he began to practise photography in earnest, sharing a small studio and carrying out industrial and commercial illustration. He has sent prints overseas which have been exhibited in London, Paris, Rio de Janiero, San Francisco, Brazil and New York.
During the war he worked with R.A.A.F. camouflage in Australia and New Guinea, an experience which he speaks of as being "the greatest external impression of my life–crowded with new forms and stimulating events."
It was during this period that he came in contact with an old friend, Damien Parer, who was to make such an outstanding contribution to our film-reporting of the war as it affected the front line soldier.
Parer introduced Dupain to Ron Williams of the D.O.I. films division who was instrumental in sending him photographing round Australia. Working on this commission he made literally thousands of exposures and produced a number of outstanding prints.
In 1945 he returned to his Sydney Studio to resume his work there, and since has had accepted by the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., photographs of New Guinea native life for their "Exhibition of New Photographers."
At the end of the notes which I asked him to submit giving factual details, Max Dupain has the urgent line:—
"Here it is Oct. '47—Hell! (May the spring of my career never end.)" a line which seems to me so vividly to sum up that urge to contribute something of himself, that willing acceptance of hard work and further experiment which marks and informs his photography to-day.
(the original dedication)
Dedicated to Diana, to my parents and to Sydney Ure Smith for the consistent encouragement ....
(the original publishing details)
Printed and set up by Pratten Bros. Pty. Ltd., 26 Jamieson St., Sydney.
Blocks Engraved by Hartland & Hyde, Sydney. 1948
Cover Page | Introduction by Hal Missingham | Notes by Max Dupain | List of Photos | The Photographs | Max Dupain main page
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