One of the artworks from the Badger & Fox Collection we will be exhibiting in our June exhibition is Max Dupain’s Roadside Stall Princes Highway. The show opens on Thursday the 15th of June, join us for drinks from 6-8pm.

Max Dupain is one of Australia’s most revered photographers. He developed an influential style of commercial photography that emphasised the geometric forms of his architectural and industrial subjects. Born in Sydney in 1911, he lived there all his life, photographing the city from the late 1930s.

For many Australians, Dupain’s photographs define beach culture, and it was the beach that was the inspiration for his most famous and enduring images. A dedicated patriot, he believed in clearly and simply showing Australia’s way of life. His 1937 photograph ‘The Sunbaker’, shot at Bondi Beach, became an icon that enjoyed worldwide recognition.

His early work was fairly conventional pictorial imagery, but by the mid-1930s he had broken away and taken up a Modernist, realist style, experimenting with light and formal composition.

From the 1950s Dupain specialised in architectural photography, which is the finest of his professional work. He developed a close working relationship with prominent architects including Harry Seidler, Philip Cox and Glenn Murcutt.

Dupain’s philosophy could be summed up in two words, simplicity and directness. Dupain remained an adherent of black and white photography, he believed that colour was restricting in its objectivity and that nothing was left for individual interpretation.

In 1939, Dupain married photographer and childhood friend Olive Cotton, but they divorced soon after. A decade later, Dupain married Diana Illingworth and subsequently they had a daughter Danina and a son Rex, who also became a photographer. Dupain was given an OBE in the New Year’s honours list, 1981. His photographs are held in most of the major galleries around Australia and as well by private collectors world-wide. Dupain continued working until his death in 1992 aged 81.