In motion and still - six photographs by Max Dupain

 

Sunbaker, original version, 1937.

Harold Salvage sunbathing, variant to Sunbaker, 1937.

Portrait of a Boy in Sunlight, 1936.

Discus Thrower, 1937.

Discus Thrower III, 1937.

In 1937, while on the south coast of New South Wales, he photographed his English friend, Harold Salvage, lying on the sand at Culburra Beach. One of the images taken was entitled Sunbaker; the original negative to Dupain's preferred version was subsequently lost. As a result, the version that went on to become his most famous work was taken from a second negative, and was not printed until a retrospective of Dupain's work in 1975 at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. A print of the photograph was purchased the following year by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, and by the 1990s it was already considered one of the most iconic images of Australia.

Sunbaker, 1937.

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Maxwell Spencer Dupain AC OBE (22 April 1911 – 27 July 1992) was an Australian modernist photographer. Dupain received his first camera as a gift when he was thirteen, spurring his interest in photography. He later joined the Photographic Society of NSW, where he was taught by Justin Newlan. By 1934 he had opened his own studio in Bond Street, Sydney. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, Dupain married Olive Cotton - also a photographer - but they divorced soon after. During the war he served with the Royal Australian Air Force helping to create camouflage. The war affected his approach to photography, fostering a greater desire for documentary truth. He restarted his studio with this new perspective, hoping to abandon what he called the "cosmetic lie of fashion photography or advertising illustration". He also worked extensively for the University of New South Wales and made many trips to the interior and coast of northern Australia; apart from his war service he rarely left Australia, writing: "I find that my whole life, if it is going to be of any consequence in photography, has to be devoted to that place where I have been born, reared and worked, thought, philosophised and made pictures to the best of my ability. And that's all I need". At the end of the forties he married again, and he and his wife had a daughter and a son, Rex, who also became a photographer. The State Library of New South Wales now holds the entire photographic collection of Dupain's work. Along with his best known images, like Sunbaker, it also includes his commercial and architectural photography, studio portraits, and his record of the Ballets Russes.