Harry Seidler Offices, Milsons Point. View from the office c.1971

Max Dupain, Harry Seidler Offices, Milsons Point. View from the office c.1971 NGA collection

Gael Newton AM, 2001

Speaking of his long career as a photographer Max Dupain once described architecture in the words of a lover as his 'long suit'. His professional career started in the 1930s but after World War II he specialised in architectural and industrial commissions.

From 1952 Dupain worked in close association with the Viennese-born Australian architect Harry Seidler who made a gift of a large group of Dupain’s exhibition prints to the National Gallery in 2001 from the Seidler office archive.

For Dupain architecture was like giant sculpture and he was renowned for knowing exactly when the light would strike a particular façade in such a way as to render the structure dramatic and timeless.
Dupain preferred classic black and white photography as a medium of expression but shows his equal skill in this rare colour photograph photographed from inside Harry Seidler's business office and apartment building overlooking Sydney Harbour at Milsons Point on the north shore.

The Luna Park amusement park entrance gate spires appear like a pair of lighted rabbit ears in the lower centre of the window. It is an unusually complex image in which curved and soft geometric shapes in the ceiling are reflected in the glass and compete for attention. One of Seidler's objets d'art sits prominently on the desk; its curve mimicking in reverse the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance which almost seems in the sights of cannon barrel shaped pipes.

Max Dupain had seen the Bridge opened in his youth as an apprentice in the studio of Sydney photographer Cecil Bostock and later made various studies of it as a professional photographer.
Dupain’s affection, however, was for the majestic forms of later 20th century modern architecture rather than the girders and stanchions of 19th century-style engineering.

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