11 January to 15 February 2026
PRESENCE (PERFORMANCE)
Jaxon McKie, E.F.P. Matto Lucas, Tyler Tippy, Kevin Bernardin, Edwin Surijah
An overview of our passion in photography. From the famous to the soon to be and some that should be famous. This is a survey show that covers our collecting over the last few years and some work by two outstanding locals.
Featuring: Jessie Dinan, Gerry Angelos and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Anne Noble, Eve Arnold, Wolfgang Sievers, John Gollings, Robert Capa, Pedro Meyer, Weegee, Tina Modotti, George Washington Wilson and others
An introduction:
This is our summer show. It is an opportunity to give first time viewers a sense of what the gallery is about. We accept that photography is a medium used for many different motivations, it might be to sell, to make people think, to be a memory personal or public it may be many other things. As a gallery we are interested in this breadth and history of the medium, displaying photographs from the 1840s until now. Our emphasis is on being a place that people who love photography can be see what is happening around them in Victoria and see the vast history of the medium. In this exhibition we have on display photographs the gallery has purchased over the last 18 months alongside two of the most interesting and talented local photographers we come across in our survey exhibitions.
This catalogue is a little different than our usual ones, in that through the works on display the text will be as concerned with explaining issues around collecting that a print in each artist/theme set brings up. This follows on from our exhibitions, From Dags to Digital which spoke to the commercial print processes from the history of photography and This Thing; Photography which looked at photography’s cultural force. We see ourselves as a place to be inspired to learn more about the medium and its history and that enthusiasm might be the gateway to being a collector of this thing we love.
Since the 1970s photography has been on the radar of the big and important galleries around the world. In 1988 it was possible to buy important photographs for USD300 now they sell for USD5000+. It is not just the first tier work that is worth collecting. I posit that second and third tier is also important. We are interested in history and importance of photographs. Some photographs, like band publicity photos were made in great numbers and thus are not expensive to buy, yet you can get a silver gelatin image made by an important photographer for AUD10-100. The influence of images is often great on our culture. Though we do not have any of these in this exhibition we do have many other photographs made for various reasons from photos on file to show perspective clients to prints made to the rigors of perfection to be exhibited.
Photography is the only one of the major art media that one can have a masterpiece on the wall at a weeks basic income. It may not be true if you are seeking a ‘tick all the boxes’ exhibition print but it is if you are seeking out objects that have touched the artist’s hands and are in their preferred photographic process.
Unknown UK Photographer ~1860s
This is a suite of 14 photographs and provides one of the joys of collecting. There is no indication of the photographer and locations. So the fun of the research hunt begins. The auction house is convinced that they were made on Wye Valley & Welsh Borders, dated then to 1860s. The prints are Albumens which started to make their mark in 1855 and gained momentum by 1860, and was popular until the 1890s. The other thing that is interesting is this was the period of the great documentation in the UK and other places around Europe. To have and album of photographs of somewhere you visited or wanted to visit became popular. In a united kingdom context this meant famous churches and other buildings and places of great beauty. This body of work is unusual, as it is very local. An educated guess is this is the work of a photographic studio that was based near where the photographs were made. The question is exactly where and who made the photos.
Anne Noble
Anne Noble is an important New Zealand/ Aotearoa photographer. This from one of her earlier bodies of work. They are silver gel prints. Two are notated and signed on verso the other does not have anything versa. The project was the documentation of the sugar refinery in Auckland. Anne is presented as a contemporary artist rather than just a photographer. This puts her work in that category. As such it brings to the table the contemporary art collectors and they tend to pay much more than people who only are interested in photography. In the 1970s the place of photographs in collections fundamentally changed. Major galleries opened photography departments. This coincided with two social developments, the rise of feminism and of gay rights. In Australia women were graduating from art colleges looking to take up positions in curation. These new departments were open to them in a way that contemporary or traditional art departments were not. Thus in art photography in Australia we have a female bias where as most other media has a male bias.
George Washington Wilson and others
George Washington Wilson was one of the England’s most prolific and important photographers of the 19thC. He documented much of England, commissioning photographers to make work in his style and standard across the empire, including Melbourne. He was not alone in doing this survey of the country and its places of interest. The three images displayed are of places that Shakespeare was associated with, the house and room he was born and the church he was buried. GWW signed his prints on the glass plate, of which the room photographs shows. The other two photos are by an unknown photographer/s. There were a group of photographers working in the United Kingdom at this time. The gallery is currently putting together a set of all of England’s most important cathedrals by G.W.W. Although his work is relatively cheap examples are in the NGV, Albert and Victoria, the Getty and The Met. Each year the number of prints available reduces as museums collect them, never to enter the market again. These prints were mass produced and are relatively common though they do fade over time when exposed to UV light. These introduce a second aspect of collecting, photographs of/or associated with fame. Further these are in excellent condition considering they are around 140 years old, in collecting condition is very important.
Eve Arnold
Eve Arnold was the first female to become a member of Magnum photo agency. She was trained in photography by Alexey Brodovitch the art director of Harper’s Bazaar. Her perspective on life was unlike the male photographers that dominated the industry at the time. Through Magnum she was commissioned by the important magazines like Picture Post and Life. She photographed many of most important figures of the 20th century. Like Marilyn Monroe and other famous women, whom she became friends thus she was able to make images that express a same gender understanding, rather than a male gaze. Since the 1970s there has been a lot of research into the archive and a reappraisal of many of the ignored women from the past. Arnold had her first exhibition in 1980. A couple of notes. This print has major damage to the top right corner which devalues it however it also has two notations verso. For my beloved friend Robert - without whom etc - but in case it is true - i would not have written these books - Love and gratitude Eve 1994 Sailor and his family Newport (two words we can’t understand) 1956 Eve Arnold Thus signed by the artist. The provenance of this work includes Eve signing twice, once just ‘Eve’ the other her full name. The notation confirms it was in the hands of the artist and that it is a gift adds kudos. So there is a play off between the damage and the intimacy of the print to the artist, thus not appealing to the collector who is willing to spend 10K+ but for those of us who can overlook the damage...
Weegee
If you have an image in your head of what a 1930/40s press photographer looked like and how they acted, it is most likely that you are imagining Arthur Fellig aka Weegee. He spent a lot of energy self promoting. He stamped his prints with ‘credit photo by Weegee the famous’. It took some time before he was actually famous. He made his reputation photographing human drama, car crashes, murders, fires and other mishaps. In the late 1930s, he started to photograph the effects on the living. in this downtime he photographed at bars, in theatres and anywhere else he could get a human interest story to sell to the press. The image above is considered one of the key images moving from the obvious to the profound. We love Weegee most for this period, for its immediacy, and being part of a culture that has echoes but not the oddness. Later he moved to LA and pushed the making and printing with distorted portraits and scenes. This work has been shunned most of history, but is now being reconsidered. The two are exhibition prints based on the 1982 prints by Sid Kaplan, and were printed 1992 for an exhibition at Amber Film & Photography Collective, Newcastle upon Tyne. Providing that timeline is correct. In 1982, there was a portfolio of 45 prints made and has reappeared on major action sites. I can not find any information as to this set or date. I have contacted Side Gallery but no response. Are these much later digital prints based on the original portfolio? Or are they a later set of Silver Gels? If the 1992 date is correct they are darkroom prints. I will continue to research.
Wolfgang Sievers
We have prints from the beginning and the later parts of his career. The early prints are silver gelatins the later are colour prints. Sievers grew up in Germany his father was an art and architecture scholar and his mother an educator. He made photos for his father’s books, which includes this photograph. His thinking was very much in line with New Objectivity. Being Jewish and the rise of the a difficult political class he decided to leave in 1938, first to the UK then Melbourne. Here he met Helmut Newton and his wife June Browne (aka Alice Springs). New Visions in Photography was a joint exhibition that introduced Australia to the Bauhaus and other new German perspectives, and changed the industry here. Sievers went on to be the most in demand industrial photographer though the second half of the 20thC. The early prints were ‘agency prints’ that is prints made to be on file to keep a record of the best work with a view to sell licenses to use the photo. This image is stamped verso with hand written notations regarding the subject. It also comes with a slip with studio details, including the note that a vintage print was sold to the National Gallery of Australia. The later prints were made for exhibition, both art and for commerce.
John Gollings
John Gollings has been Australia’s foremost architectural photographer since the early 1970s, though he participated in other genres. He recently retired and sold off much of his archive. I often wonder about Gollings success in the Art world. He is an older white heterosexual male, who makes commercial work. In his favour is the skill shown in the making of the images and the following he built up through the display of his images via magazines and other media. His work is often colourful, loves late light and blue hour. He had a lot of freedom in making of the images, even for clients. He also had passion projects, like documenting the Gold Coast, Vijanagara, South India. We often forget that until the late 19th Century most painting that we consider great was commissions. Great works of art often have patrons. Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel was paid for. As the power of the merchant classes increased, there became more outlets for artists to do work that did not reflect the needs/desires of a client. Perhaps this is why we can’t get over the French impressionists as they were the greatest move in personal expression? As a gallery we accept many forms of photography, our goal and interest is photography that makes a viewer stop and consider. If there is a client or not is not the major concern. It is interesting to know what the purpose for the creation of the work is. Once a photographer wins the tournament, they are given grace to interpret the client brief as they wish rarely with criticism. This is the point that Gollings has been at for decades.
Press Photographers
Press photography as a genre has long and very involved history. I is responsible for masses of prints being made both by news photographers and people seeking the support of the press, news and publicity. News photographs, made by in-house, agency or freelancers/stringers. Millions of these exist and most have very little interest to our age, bygone events that came and went on to become fish and chip wrapping. Some of these are images that transcend time. They mark major moments in history. When an image like this is taken, then thousands of prints are made to distribute around the world’s press. With the photos fame the photographer is often known as well. The next category is prints by well known and respected photographers with their stamps on verso. It is worth noting that press photographers did not get credit for their work. The three prints displayed here from the 1930s all have agency stamps. Interestingly the first press photographer to have their name on a print for publication was in 1888 in Australia, he painted his name on the side of the derailed train. By the 1940s Life Magazine was giving photographer credits. Knowing who made the photo can make it more valuable. An interesting photo for example, the three there, also have an audience. The second grouping is public relations photos or film, music and products. The music photographs are a genre that has picked up interest. Most of the important photographers of the 20th Century made these including Avedon, Leibovitz and Anton Corbijn. Many thousands of these were made, which means they will never attract high values but it is a way of owning a silver gelatin image by a famous photographer. There is a thing in collecting of famous person by famous photographer.
Pedro Meyer
Up to the 1990s the histories of photography were centered on what happened in Europe and the USA. During the decade we saw two movements, one was to add the current economic powerhouse, first Japan then China. Then came individual volumes that reassessed photography from other regions or countries, moving the discussion away from the WENA (Western European/North American) perspective. In this moment the bookshop going photographic die hards found a breadth of work that had been ignored. Photographers like Max Dupain, Pieter Hugo and Pedro Meyer were brought to a larger audience. Some became collectible in WENA others only have value in their own cultures. Pedro Meyer, is a photographer, curator, editor and pioneer of digital photography. He is widely recognized for his contribution to contemporary photography, both for his visual work and for his role as a promoter of visual literacy and defender of the use of new technologies in artistic creation. Founder of ZoneZero, the first online photography gallery (1995), Meyer has been a key figure in the transition from analog to digital photography, opening paths for debate around digital manipulation and the role of truth in the photographic image. His work has been exhibited in more than 200 exhibitions around the world and is part of important international collections. The translation from the Spanish Wikipedia In Australia he is not known except to a small group. These prints from 1980/1 are made for exhibition and legacy. In an auction in Australia they would be hard pressed to make more than the minimum that the auction house will accept, but in Mexico they will see the dollar value reflect his cultural importance. Worth of a print changes with the culture it is set in. As a gallery, we accept an artist’s home culture as important to reflect in our handling of artist’s work.
Tina Modotti
Modotti was born in Italy and lived in several places as her parents were migrant workers at the age of 16, she emigrated to the United States to join her father in San Francisco She moved to LA became a citizen and entered into a bohemian circle of friends, which included Edward Weston. Her family had several photographers. Through her relationship with Weston that Modotti developed as an important fine art photographer and documentarian. By 1921, Modotti was Weston’s lover. She got her former lover’s and Weston’s work at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City. In 1923, Modotti returned to Mexico City with Weston. She agreed to run Weston’s studio free of charge in return for his mentoring her in photography. Here she found a community of cultural and political “avant-gardists”, which included Frida Kahlo, Lupe Marín, Diego Rivera, and Jean Charlot.[16] In general, Weston was moved by the landscape and folk art of Mexico to create abstract works, while Modotti was more captivated by the people of Mexico and blended this human interest with a modernist aesthetic, all the while shunning the term ‘artist’, insisting she merely wanted to “capture social realities”. All that is to say she is an important figure in the history of Mexican photography and through her associated with Frida Kahlo an icon for feminists. In the early to mid 20thC Mexico was significant and the culture there influential. The photograph here, is by no means great, but it is included in a portfolio of work that received a museum show. It is printed in the early 1990s.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
For those of us who wander through our own or another town or city with our camera noting the comings and goings of the population or our selection of them, there is one photographer we owe a great debt too, he is Henri Cartier-Bresson. His is the idea of the ‘decisive moment’. His early photography was greatly influenced by the surrealists. He later moved to the documentary style. Another of the founders of the Magnum Photo Agency. Picking five photographers to represent the history and rational of this medium, his would be one of the names. These prints are ‘agency prints’, meaning they were made from the original negative to sit in Magnum’s filing cabinets until a prospective client asked for the subject depicted. Then this print would be produced to license. They were not made to exhibition quality, however they were made to show clients. These are between 30 and 75 years old and if they do not have signs of aging then they are archival prints. Most are stamped and have notations including the photographers name in an unknown hand. Like press prints these are working prints. They have not been sealed up in frames. They started coming on the market at a small auction platform and the prices have steadily increased as more buyers have found them. Strangely multiple copies of some of the more important prints have come to market, for example a second Roland Barthes.
George Rodger
George Rodger a self taught photographer who decided he needed to document WW2. He made images so strong of the blitz that he was asked by Life Magazine to be a correspondent for the duration. After the war he was a founding member of Magnum. He was assigned to Africa. Where is photographs on the Nuba peoples are considered to be some of the most important images of indigenous peoples made in Africa. This photograph was made prior to the foundation of the agency. He along with Capa were documenting the taking back of Sicily in 1943. This image and the frames around it were used for obituaries, after Capa’s death by landmine in Vietnam in 1954 during the less famous war with the French.
Robert Capa
Robert Capa gained his reputation making photography in wars along with being on of the founders of Magnum agency. This show is only missing Cornell Capa and William Vandivert, the other foundering photographers, who alongside Rita Vandivert and Maria Eisner, who headed the Paris and NYC offices, set up Magnum. Capa came to prominace photographing the spanish civil war. The image Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936 being published by Life Magazine. His 11 photos landing on D-Day cemented his reputation. There are controversies about both these sets of photos. During his career he risked his life numerous times, most dramatically as the only civilian photographer landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, and the liberation of Paris. His friends and colleagues included Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck and director John Huston. Wikipedia These prints are agency prints, that is most likely printed off the original negative, then kept in the filing cabinets of the agency to show prospective clients.
Jessie Dinan
Small Town Rodeo, the series of images displayed, belong to an ongoing photographic project titled ‘Small Town Rodeo’. A body of work that captures the spirit of rural Australian life and rodeo culture. In 2017 after relocating back from the states, I needed an escape from city life and challenged myself to go photograph something completely foreign to me and out of my comfort zone. One of those places was the Deni ute muster, a yearly event held in rural New South Wales. A celebration of Aussie culture, utes, booze and country music, it was here that I found myself at my very first rodeo! This 3 day trip sparked my continued fascination documenting and traveling to small town rodeos around Australia. I find the action behind. Jessie does not have an exhibiting history, so we look at other aspects to determine the value of her work. Firstly we look to where they were educated and its history of producing significant artists. Then we consider her identity and how that fits the current zeitgeist. Next we consider how she speaks about her work, ie artist statement. The final aspect to consider is, her commitment to continue making work and work that relates to whole of her themes and style. Only a few artists ie Tracy Moffatt are able to change styles dramatically and not be questioned. At XYZ we work across contemporary art, commercial photography, hobbyists and other applications of the media, as our focus is on interesting photographs that interest/amuse/haunt the audience, we are less interested in the ‘rules’ of contemporary art. Artist’s often cross over from our biases to contemporary art, especially when at the top of their field in a commercial photography. Jessie’s work is stunning observations of Australian rural culture, that could only be observed by a matter-of-fact women. I say this because a male could not get the reactions from the subjects she does. In her case she does have form making documentary images and projects. These photographs are stunning and should be recignised as such. When buying a print like this you should do so because you love the print and see its quality. Like all new artists, she might go on to fortune and fame or she might be ignored. With quality, often, it is rediscovered at a later date.
Gerry Angelo
Gerry has a long history making commercial photographs but like many, was pushed out of the industry in the technological changes around the turn of the century. He now make images he enjoys looking at. He has little interest in investing the time and energy needed to rise in the contemporary art world. Nor is it likely that he meets the criteria to be part of the current zeitgeist. At this moment being a white heterosexual middle aged cis male, is considered over represented. To quote a major female gatekeeper in Victorian photography the biggest group of ignored solid photographic work, is made by older white males. This gets into a debate around representation. Should the ratio be 50:50 or representational of the percentage of each gender that is involved in the media? The argument of merit, tends to be employed to hide bias. These works are at once decorative and mesmerising. Photography has a strong history of abstraction. Gerry’s work takes it to logical extreme. We particularly love the disruption of the figures in two of the works. This work is very different to the rest of the exhibition and rightfully so, as it is here to counter point the documentation that is present in the rest of the gallery. This has also help the gallery realise our own bias in collecting. Over the past 4 years of listing all the exhibitions of the media via a newsletter, we have come to realise that abstraction and still life are barely represented in this state that is obsessed with street, documentation and portraiture.