It was a single black-and-white image of a young man lying on an Australian beach that defined the career of photographer Max Dupain.
But two years before the Sunbaker was captured in 1937, the Sydney-born artist agreed to an assignment that led him far from the beaches and into the heart of north Queensland’s sugarcane country.
It’s a project that photographer and Mr Dupain’s studio manager of more than 30 years, Jill White, says has been largely forgotten.
“They’re not images that collectors would necessarily have in their collection,” she says.
“CSR Limited [Colonial Sugar Refining Company] wanted him to go up and cover the stories and different aspects of the cane growing in the mills.”
Recognised as one of the most prolific Australian photographers of the 20th century, Dupain journeyed through the cane fields of the Burdekin, Ingham, and Innisfail capturing the stories of the workers, families, and children who made their living on the land.
But the resulting works, captured over 40 years, have largely escaped the public eye.
A ‘very long and very diverse’ career
Born in Sydney in 1911, Dupain’s professional career spanned more than 60 years predominantly documenting the Australian landscape.
But it was after Dupain opened his photography studio in 1934 when CSR, which operated sugar mills across north Queensland, became his first commercial customer the following year.
Ms White says Dupain’s main photographic expedition occurred in the 1950s and he returned to the region on multiple trips until the late 1970s.
“I think he enjoyed getting away and getting up and doing something different out in the open air,” Ms White says.
“There was a lot of preparation for jobs like that when they were away for a week or so because he couldn’t necessarily just go down to the corner shop and buy rolls of black-and-white film.
“He worked with minimal equipment. He didn’t have loads of different lenses and that sort of thing. He kept things very simple.”
Wayne Tunnicliffe is the head curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW, which holds the majority of the Queensland collection. He says Dupain’s partnership with CSR was a crucial part of establishing his practice in his early career.
“Max Dupain was the most prominent commercial photographer in Australia in that period, so they [CSR] have gone for the best,” Mr Tunnicliffe says.
“There were very few opportunities to show photographs in an art context in the 1960s and little chance of generating income.
“The sugar cane is just a small component of his work for CSR … he’s photographing other factories, pastoral properties, all sorts of aspects of their very broad operation through Australia.”
Despite the commercial nature of the project, Mr Tunnicliffe says Dupain maintained an enormous amount of freedom in his photography, resulting in “incredibly powerful” images.
“What [CSR] seem to have done is not asked for just a straightforward documentary approach, but wanting something more than that,” he says.
“You can clearly get a sense of Max looking for these singular images, which convey an experience and almost an emotional tenor, and that is very much part of his practice.
“The composition and the sense of light and space really transcends pure documentary and becomes quite a poetic implication of place.”
The Australian spirit on camera
The collection was donated by CSR to the Art Gallery of NSW and Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) during the 1980s when they featured as part of an exhibition marking 200 years of refinery operations in Australia.
It is believed to be the first recorded time they were displayed in public, and since then they haven’t been seen as a collection for more than 30 years.
“They sort of don’t come out for long periods of time … with works on paper, we have to consider things like resting them when they’re on display for a certain time to just keep the quality of them,” Michael Hawker, curator of Australian art at QAGOMA, says.
“Dupain is a photographer you don’t naturally associate with Queensland.
“We sort of tend to think of Dupain with those great major images like the Sunbaker, which is capturing the ethos of Australia … but he was getting out there in the outback in industrial and working environments as well.”
Even after Dupain’s death in 1992, Mr Hawker says the timeless qualities of his work continue to resonate with modern audiences.
“I think he just captured a quintessential idea of what Australia is,” he says.
“He was very much at the forefront of art photography at the time and influenced a lot of younger photographers who are coming through after him.”
