Displays
Current displays
Pieces of Wedgwood
- Venue:
- Macquarie Cases
Wedgwood’s association with Australia started in the 1770s when the firm produced cameo portraits depicting scientists and collectors connected with Cook’s Pacific voyages. In 1789 Josiah Wedgwood issued a medallion made from Sydney Cove clays sent from the new colony to his friend Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society.
This display comes from the Mitchell Library’s realia collection. The collection includes some 70 Wedgwood medallions, portrait medallions and vases dating from the 18th to the 21st centuries.
Max Dupain 100
- Venue:
- 1st Floor, Macquarie St building
Maxwell Spencer Dupain (1911–1992), Australia’s best-known photographer, was born on 22 April, 100 years ago. At 13 he was given a Brownie Box camera and by the age of 23 he had set up his own commercial studio in Sydney, where he undertook fashion photography, portraiture and illustrative photography.
Influenced by the New Photography movement in Germany, Max Dupain broke with the soft-focus, painterly tradition of the time and produced abstract industrial landscapes. His personal photographs from the mid 1930s — such as the iconic Sunbaker (1937) — were a revolution.
In the 1950s his commercial and advertising photography flourished and from the 1960s, Dupain began to specialise in architectural photography. With his straightforward approach and dramatic use of light, he soon developed an impressive clientele.
Driven by passion and self-discipline, Dupain continued to work until his death, producing over 100,000 negatives of commercial work and 30,000 personal images.
To commemorate the centenary of Dupain’s birth, this collection showcases a selection of photographs from Dupain exhibitions held at the Library: Sydney Nostalgia (1991), The Studio of Max Dupain (1997), Max Dupain’s Sydney (1999), Max Dupain’s Australians (2004) and Max Dupain — Modernist (2007).
