The Fields of Landscape Photography’– Pondering Pollard 20
Sri Lanka Part 2 – Rob Morgan ARPS
Venice in Carnevale – Gigi Williams ASIS FRPS
Cover image: Gigi Williams
9866 3538 E:
From your Secretary
Elaine Herbert ARPS
Hon Secretary, Australian Chapter
Sad News
• We report with much sadness that Shashi Gajree, Palli’s wife, passed away on 29 May. There is a separate item in tribute to her on page 35.
• And now there is more sad news with the recent passing of Dr David Hollands OAM ARPS. An obituary for David will appear in the July issue of our Newsletter.
Members’ Successes
In our February Newsletter we reported that the RPS Digital Imaging Group (DIG) Annual Print Competition has this year resulted in success for two Australian members, Barbara Brown and our convenor Rob Morgan ARPS whose images were included in the final thirty. Those final thirty selected images have now been included in a bound portfolio, ‘DI Print Portfolio 2025’, each on a separate page, with the print makers’ short commentary opposite. In addition, the volume includes the other images that were in the top fifty selected.
Barbara’s image ‘Corroboree’, and Rob’s image ‘Smart Move’, together with their short commentaries, were included
on page 6 and 7 in our February Newsletter and are now in the bound portfolio. We send them our warm congratulations.
New Member
We have another new RPS member in Australia, John Lander of Killara in Sydney. Welcome, John, and we hope you will get much pleasure and stimulation from your RPS membership and our local Chapter activities.
Welcome from the Editor
Ian Brown
Editor, Australian Chapter
Not as big an issue this month as last month, but we still have plenty of interesting articles. As editor, I’m lucky, I have the chance to read the articles twice, once when I put the Newsletter together, and again once it is published. What I do enjoy more than reading the articles is taking in the amazing work our members produce.
I usually have the pleasurable task of beating myself up over which image to use on the cover. I must say that it changes several times over the couple of days I spend putting the Newsletter together. Though, this month was a bit easier than some of the other months. Gigi’s image just stood out, which says a lot considering some of the beautiful images in this month's Newsletter. Sorry, Rob, one of your Sri Lanka images was winning until Gigi’s late entry. We have Sri Lanka Part 3 next
month, so Rob is already in the running for the front cover.
Now, my focus switches to next month. I must thank Gigi, Robin, and Ted, who have contributed to the last two months' issues. I really appreciate your contributions; however, I don’t want to rely on a dedicated few members. I want everyone to contribute so we can see what everyone is shooting at the moment. So, this is my call-out for anyone who wants to contribute to the July issue. Please send your images in. If you've an article or images you'd like to contribute, as I’ve mentioned before, I can help write and curate them if you need assistance. If not, then please send your images and articles in.
If you don’t send images in, I’ll have to include my own, and I know you’re all better photographers than I am.
Specifications for contributors
When sending images for the Newsletter, the only requirement is that they are jpeg or png. Images can be 300 ppi and up to A4. Don’t forget you can also add captions for your images. If you don’t include a caption, we’ll assume you don’t need one.
Email images to ian@bforbrown.com.au and keep those pixels and captions coming in! For non-image files (e.g. PDFs), under 5 MB is preferred and never 10 MB or more. If your images are too big to email, I have created a Dropbox folder you can upload
your images to. Email me for permission, and I’ll grant access to the folder. I will need to delete your images once I have downloaded them.
Deadline for contributions to the next issue is 23 July 2025.
Convenor’s Corner
Rob Morgan ARPS
Timing Is Everything
Having spent May in northern Italy and parts of France in generally very pleasant weather, it was a rude shock to return to cold old Melbourne at the start of June. After all, the Indian Summer weather we were having here before we left was quite balmy. And now we are hearing about the ‘heatwave’ hitting Europe and England, so it is good we missed that. Timing is everything! There’s been no sympathy from UK RPS members about a chilly winter in Melbourne, since the 2025 series of the Great British Bakeoff commenced. As Rob Harris reported in The Age newspaper recently, the London Underground is currently offering free saunas to commuters every morning. I recall visiting London one day in the summer of 1976, when I lived 50 miles north. The London temperature that day hit a record high of 30ºC! It has got progressively hotter since. But it was the humidity, not just the heat, that got to us – as well as the melting bitumen on some roads. Happy days!
Talking of timing being everything, the clock is ticking towards the end of this year when I step down from being Convenor of this chapter and, most importantly, Elaine retires as Hon Secretary, a role she has carried out most diligently for countless years. This chapter needs a new Hon Secretary as well as a new Convenor if it is to continue functioning. If you are interested in our chapter continuing, I urge you to contact Elaine and discuss how you might help in one or other of these two roles.
Your committee needs you (Martin Grant retrospective exhibition at NGV Australia, Melbourne) by Rob Morgan ARPS
Australian photographer John Pollard FRPS died in 2018, leaving behind not just a grieving family and a substantial legacy of photographic work in public and private collections but also an eclectic collection of books representing his varied interests over his life. In this ongoing column, I hope to stimulate interest and reflection on various aspects of photography based on the perusal of John’s collection of books. In the process, I also aim to periodically shine a light on John’s career and practice.
Dr Robin Williams ASIS FRPS
Fig. 1 main image: Sublime – ‘Free Element XIV’ by Dodo Jin Ming, 2001.
Fig. 2 top this page: Cover of the Book ‘Landmark: The fields of Landscape Photography’ showing an image by Darren Almond called ‘Night + Fog’, 2007.
Fig. 3 above: Portrait of William Ewing. (Unknown photographer).
Pondering Pollard 20: ‘Landmark, The Fields of Landscape Photography’
by William Ewing.
Pub. Thames & Hudson, London, 2014.
This book is something of an anomaly in the Pollard Collection. John Pollard had very definite interests –Alternative processes, Pictorialism, the lives of the great photographers, the female form – but here we find one of only three about the genre of landscape photography. John was absolutely part of the great Pictorial tradition (who were avid landscapists) but he never talked about landscape and
never photographed landscape that we know of. An interesting conundrum; perhaps he was interested in the idea of the ‘New Topographics’ movement – landscape as it really is –certainly this book and the other two in the collection fit this sub-genre. John obtained it just three years before his death so certainly didn’t see the exhibition at Somerset House, London, in 2013, on which it was based.
William A. Ewing, a photography historian and curator, has selected 240 photographs by over 100 photographers, ranging from
renowned figures such as Andreas Gursky, Richard Misrach, Susan Derges and Edward Burtynsky, to younger rising stars, including Olaf Otto Becker, Pieter Hugo and Penelope Umbrico. Each represents an individual or original viewpoint of a shared concern for our rapidly changing environment. The reader may find that some contemporary photographers or images have been grossly overlooked (or maybe should not have been included as these individuals are not known as ‘Landscape’ photographers) but overall I think Ewing
Fig. 4: ‘Pastoral – ‘Camel Estuary, Padstow, Cornwall’ from the Series ‘We English’ by Simon Roberts
successfully extends the discussion as to what a contemporary landscape photograph is and why should it matter. Ewing is a Canadian art historian specializing in photography. He served as the director of the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne from 1996 to 2010 and has been a research professor in the art history department at the University of Geneva, where he has focused on the history of photography. He has curated numerous international exhibitions and authored several books on the photographic representation of the human body. He is also the
founder of the Todi Circle, an annual think tank on photography held in Todi, Italy.
There is no richer or more enduring genre of photography than that of landscape. Its great rival, portraiture, may surpass it in numbers but has never come close in breadth and depth. Landscape photography is as varied a terrain as the landscape itself: whole countries and continents, high peaks and low, fields, fertile and fallow. Picturesque landscapes, some delightfully Kitsch, are a staple of postcards and calendars, greeting cards and Facebook or Instagram. A quick check on
Fig. 5: Artefacts – ‘Pobierowo, Poland’ by Mark Power, 2008.
Google helpfully proposes 325 million a day. As for the number of landscape photographs that flicker for a nanosecond on mobile phones before being forgotten, it is anyone's guess; though the figure billions does not seem unreasonable. Tourism advertising especially relies on imagery of alluring landscapes, steering well clear of irksome realities such as junk yards, hazardous waste sites and rivers with eddies of soap suds and fertiliser runoff. But then, dreaming of a week away from the office, who wants to be reminded of such eyesores? Clearly the idea of the distant landscape as a site of escape, or even mythical, purifying powers, still holds sway over the human imagination.
Although Landscape Photography is arguably the richest genre in photography it now finds itself at the cutting edge of contemporary image making, driven partly by an enduring fascination with the land, and partly by the urgent need to take stock of the extraordinary forces impacting on our environment. Robert Adams said in his essay ‘Truth in Landscape’ that ‘landscape photography offers us three verities: geography, autobiography and metaphor, and although they are boring, trivial and doubtful, respectively when they are taken separately, working together they strengthen each other, and they reinforce something we all try to keep intact: affection for life.’ In the search for such an objective,
Adams resolved – as well as many other photographers did – to take the camera and go out to meet ‘the unfathomable mystery and the overwhelming beauty of the world’ with the overall intention to collect proofs of hope, but he soon realised that in order to tell the truth he should register the evident proofs of hopelessness. Adams revolutionised the canon of American landscape photography, moving resolutely away from the cartographic descriptions of unexplored territories or the meticulous –and patriotic – endeavour in National Parks, turning his camera towards the banal and the everyday. With his participation in the exhibition ‘New Topographics’, Adams – and the rest of the participating photographers –proposed a contemporary vision of the landscape as a tool to highlight the degradation of nature by man.
Ewing states in his introduction: ‘I have always been drawn more to landscape than to any other photographic genre, from the garish, mass-produced postcard (where the sun always shines and the human footprint is always benign), to the unique, sometimes monumental, self-professed artwork (where industrial smog is more likely to fill the sky, and the human footprint is heavy and malign). There is much between those extremes to stimulate my interests, some of which gives me a deep and satisfying
Fig. 6: Rupture – ‘Concrete Spillway, Iceland’ from the Series ‘Under Nordic Light’ by Olaf Otto Becker, 2010.
Fig. 7: Playground – ‘Desert Spirit, Mall of the Emirates, Dubai’ by Philippe Chancel, 2011.
pleasure and some of which –when the earthly wounds are bleeding – stimulates a range of less positive emotions: bewilderment, anger, resignation and ultimately, a tinge of guilt (I too guzzle gallons of petrol). But it is the man-altered, or rather man-inhabited, kind of landscape photograph that I find most stimulating, rather than the pristine, operatic visions of say, an Ansel Adams. The human footprint is simply too massive now to ignore.’
Fact and fiction mix in this first truly international survey of a vibrant, burgeoning field, its masterful twenty-first-century practitioners, and their work. The book Landmark covers the full range of the genre, and sometimes even goes outside it: from bucolic images picturing the last vestiges of 'nature', through disturbing depictions of a sullied Earth, scarred and abused, to surreal and artificial landscapes where nature is channelled, controlled and regulated. The book is organized into ten themes: Sublime, Pastoral, Artefacts, Rupture, Playground, Scar, Control, Enigma, Hallucination and Reverie. Ewing contributes introductory texts to each of the sections, as well as the introduction, and the book also features concise statements by the photographers themselves. The result is a thoughtprovoking meditation on the meaning of landscape in today's world.
With more than 100 voices in
Landmark, the effect is bound to be a cacophany. ‘To want everything, absolutely everything, in a landscape to belong to a rigid, unified system … is this not a dream of a centralising philosopher?’ asks the French geographer Pierre GouRou in Riz et Civilization. ‘Is it not better to accept that the landscape is made, after long historic accretions, of elements which possibly have relations of causality or interdependence, and are just opposed to one another, sometimes at the price of confusion?’
I see Ewing’s book Landmark as a meandering path through the fields of photography, with ten ‘signposts’ (usually called chapters) as guides. These signposts, or way marks, may be somewhat unorthodox, but they are not arbitrary; photographs contain layers of meaning, and choosing to highlight one of them by slotting it into a particular section does not negate an alternative reading. It is rather one proposition, and not without an element of provocation on Ewing’s part. It is worth recording just a couple of Ewing’s chapter descriptions or ‘Signposts’.
‘Sublime. The word sublime appears regularly in texts by critics and photographers, although its meaning has shifted considerably since Edmund Burke's seminal inquiry in the 18th century. Burke believed a feeling of terror was central to the concept. Before nature's greatest forces, all mankind’s artifices were
Fig.6: Nude in the studio
Fig. 8: Scar – ‘Nickel Tailings #34’ by Edward Burtynsky, 1996.
Fig. 9: Control – ‘Soma 006’ by Andreas Gefeller, 2000.
insignificant. By the early 20th century, the concept had softened and broadened. Today, anything like an earthly sublimity that inspires a Burkian terror is hard to imagine. Are there any vestiges left then, of the original notion; if not terror, at least awe? One realm where it does make sense to talk of the sublime in the Burkian sense is deep space; it's hard to be blasé about the vast reaches of the universe when our telescopes reveal that 60 billion stars may harbour Earth-like planets. As for our own lonely planet, there are indeed photographers who still acknowledge the lure of the earthly sublime.’
‘Pastoral. The word pastoral is generally used to describe quiet country life, mostly as seen through rose coloured glasses worn by city folk who would be horrified to find a speck of mud on their shoes. Simplicity, charm, rustic ways – these are the essence of the pastoral. I intend by pastoral a
comfortable balance between human society and its settings in nature. In the pastoral, the human imprint is benign and the attitude respectful. It suggests contentment. In this arcadian vision, nature can be gently coaxed to share its bounty.’
This book is a curatorial discussion of the contemporary practice of landscape photography. It makes the elegant point that the current (and urgent) issues of pollution, war, global warming, to name. Still, a few could not be better suited for public and political discussion than by the practice of landscape photography.
Fig.10: Enigma – ‘Loop’ by Scott Conarroe, 2009.
Fig. 11: Hallucination –‘Howl’ by Amy Stein, 2007.
Fig. 12: Reverie – ‘I remember – 05’ by Liu Xiaofang, 2008.
Fig.1: Sigiriya Elephant and Mahout
Sri Lanka Part 2
Rob
Morgan ARPS
The morning after I got half way up Lion (Sigiriya) Rock we rendezvoused with a elephant and her mahout for some classic shots with the rock in the background. Then it was off to Dambulla Buddhist Caves, up yet another set of a gazillion steep stairs (my legs were feeling it after the previous day), then walking around in socks to
Fig.2 top left: Mahout’s Foot
Fig 3 left bottom: In Dambulla Caves
Fig 4 left centre: In Dambulla Buddhist Caves
Fig 5 top: Vedda Tribesmen
Fig 6 right bottom: Our Scary Vedda Friend
see some very large caves with a multitude of Buddhist statues and wall and ceiling paintings. They were like very large versions of the famous Mogao Caves near Dunhuang in central China (though with fewer caves) – and here, photography was permitted.
For a little contrast, the next day we visited the traditional Vedda village of Dambana where we were treated to a ceremony performed by the village men. The oldest of them was extremely photogenic, especially when he put on his ‘scary’ look. Then we headed through large areas of lowland rice fields and back into the hills for a couple of days, to the tea plantations around Haputale. For Australians this area has a
certain familiarity: it is full of eucalypts. These were introduced by the British in the late 18th century. The train trip we took through the hills one rainy afternoon was like a larger than life version of a trip on Puffing Billy through the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne. The British influence was particularly obvious at Nuwara Eliya, which looked like an English seaside town (I was reminded of the seaside town of Sidmouth in Devon where my aunt lived). To mix cultures further, I had Opera cake and coffee at the café at the Grand Hotel, which had a large English style of public gardens.
Near Haputale there are numerous tea plantations, and
Fig. 7 left: Rice fields in Central Sri Lanks
Fig. 8 above: Eucalypt Forest Near Haputale.
the next day we went by tuk tuk up windy roads to a vast plantation. Later we were taken on a tour of Birathi, the village where the women tea pickers live. As everywhere, they were very friendly and we were made very welcome as we wandered around and took photos of people.
After being in the hills, we headed off to Kataragama, where a major festival was happening, which I will describe next month.
Fig. 9 left top: Travel by Tuk Tuk to the Tea Plantation.
Fig. 10 left bottom: Tea Pickers Near Barathi.
Fig. 11 top right: Tea Pickers at Brarathi.
Fig. 12 bottom right: Train Tunnel Near Ohiya.
Venice in Carnevale
by Gigi Williams ASIS FRPS
I’m sure some of you will have visited Venice – after all, the City of just 50,000 permanent residents receives some 20 million visitors a year. We have been to Venice on many occasions; when we went to see and photograph Carnevale we went not just as observers, but as participants. For a brief period, we wanted to act out the lives of aristocratic Venetians in the eighteenth century. We really wanted to photograph all the colour and
spectacle, but then we thought, wouldn’t it be fun to actually participate in the Carnevale and dress up like all the other revellers? So together with our closest friends, we left a hot summery Melbourne bound for a cold and foggy Venice complete with suitcases full of 18th century costumes hired from a theatrical agency.
Carnevale di Venezia is an annual festival that ends with the Christian celebration of Lent, forty days before Easter,
Fig.1: Masqueraders one of whom is wearing the traditional mask of a medieval physician, the beak of which was designed to hold a bouquet of herbs for efficacious warding off the plaque.
Fig.2: Our wonderful apartment
on Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras. Carnevale literally means ‘Goodbye Meat’ and Roman Catholics traditionally give up meat and many other ‘rich’ foods for Lent. The Carnival of Venice is the oldest pre-Lenten celebration in the World having been started to celebrate a victory of the ‘Serenissima Repubblica’ over the Patriarch of Aquileia in the year 1162. Carnevale became an official celebration in the Renaissance. In the seventeenth century, the baroque carnival was a way to
promote the prestigious image of Venice to the world, and it was very famous by the eighteenth century – the era of Casanova – as it encouraged licentious and hedonistic behaviours. Aristocrats from all over Europe rubbed shoulders with working-class Venetians, all anonymous, hidden by the famous masks of Carnevale.
Following Napoleon's invasion and subsequent rule by the King of Austria the festival was banned in 1797 and the use of masks became strictly
Fig.3: Posing in the privacy of our apartment
Fig.4: Meeting the paparazzi!
forbidden. It reappeared gradually in the nineteenth century for private Feasts and Balls, where it became an occasion for fabulous artistic costume creations behind closed doors. It was not until 1979 that The Carnevale was officially revived. Today over 3 million visitors travel to Venice to watch the Carnival celebrations. The festival is world famous for its elaborate masks which allow revellers to be anonymous: pauper, prince, physician, politician, priest, or prostitute – male or female – all are hidden by the mask of Carnevale. Every night there are many elaborate Masqued Balls and during the day the Masqueraders enjoy walking out, or the Passeggiata.
We had chosen for the ‘setting’ of our theatrical adventure an amazing apartment – a Palazzo in the Campo Santo Stefano, in San Marco, on the great curve of the Grand Canal, midway between the Accademia Bridge and the Rialto. It was Byzantine in origin – but had been extensively remodelled over the centuries. There were chandeliers made of Murano Glass, Flemish tapestries on the walls, pink Verona marble floors in the kitchen and bathrooms (the same as the flooring in the Doge’s Palace). The ancient oak floors of the rest of the house creaked and groaned telling the
stories of centuries of occupants. The ground floor –which was originally a warehouse – opened out to the Grand Canal but was dark, wet and rat-infested and ‘off limits’. As was the top floor, unoccupied save for the hundreds of pigeons that called it home. The whole place was incredible. Initially, we were scared to touch anything, but we soon got into the swing of things. We rapidly discovered that the plumbing was also Byzantine and one of the bedrooms – we dubbed ‘the Papal Room’ – was eerily cold and felt very ‘occupied’ –no-one elected to sleep in that room!
Most people participating in Carnevale hire their costumes and masks from specialised
artisans across Venice; but they are very expensive – as much as 5,000 Euro a day! This was way out of our budget, so we went to a theatrical costume outlet in Melbourne and were able to hire our costumes for what was known as a ‘stage production loan’. This enabled us to have the costumes for three weeks at a reasonable cost, which was perfect. The only problem was stretching our baggage allowance to accommodate the extra suitcases! There are ten classic costume designs: Venetian Nobility, Casanova, Arlecchino (Harlequin), Courtesan, Baroque couple, Angel or Goddess, Domino, Venetian Merchant, Columbina, and Fantasy Venetian, which seemed to accommodate all kinds of costumes and themes.
Our Palazzo was the perfect place for us to dress up and take photos of our Carnevale attire; we had great fun doing this. It was one thing to dress up in the privacy of one’s own lodgings but then we decided to venture out onto the streets –this felt really weird because all of a sudden people were staring at us and photographing us! It transformed our usual ‘incognito’ selves, hidden behind the camera, into celebrities in front of the camera, which was very unnerving but also because we were in costume and masked, it was a bit liberating!
In the early mornings we would head out to capture the masqueraders in their vibrant costumes in all corners of Venice before the crowds of
onlookers started arriving. It was quite difficult to know where they would appear as they changed locations every day but seemed to have some sort of agreed schedule that we were unaware of. We just needed to tap into that schedule. One of our party was fluent in German and was able to get some ‘intel‘ from a German masquerader in exchange for photographs of her/him; this transformed our success rate. The most wonderful thing about photographing the masqueraders was that they really wanted to be photographed as much as we wanted to photograph them and so it was just a dream to capture their images as they so
willingly posed for us. It’s a tradition that the photographer and model exchange cards with the explicit understanding that the model poses willingly in exchange for photographs of themselves, sent after the event by e-mail. Carnevale occurs in late winter, of course, which is often cold and foggy in Venice; this really added so much to the ambience. The funniest thing of all was trying to manage a load of professional photographic equipment whilst dressed up as Casanova or a Courtesan!
Being in Venice at this time of year and really getting into the spirit of things was one of the most unusual photographic trips we’ve ever had – truly magical – we literally had a Ball!
Fig.5 left : The foggy morning added a wonderful ambiance
Fig.6 centre: Detail of a wonderful mask
Fig.7 right: A masquerader posing outside the Doge’s Palace
Members’ Gallery
Ted Richards ARPS
Fig. 1 above: Resting Busker, Bourke Street Mall, May 2010.
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Fig. 3 above: Checking their phones, State Library, May 2025.
Fig. 4 left: BMW and reflected graffiti, Fitzroy Area, May 2016.
Fig.
above left: Running Boy, Globe Alley, May, 2010.
Members’ Gallery
Ted Richards ARPS
Fig. 5 above: NO DUMP[L]INGS (or what?!), Manchester Lane, May 2025.
Obituaries
Elaine Herbert ARPS
Vale Shashi Gajree (1933 – 2025)
We were very saddened to learn of the death of Shashi Gajree, Palli’s wife, who passed away on 29 May 2025 at the age of 91.
Many of us remember Shashi with fondness, as for quite a few years she and Palli hosted lots of our Chapter meetings at their home, especially those of the
Chapter’s Digital Group. She was a wonderful hostess. Those meetings always began with a welcoming morning coffee - and of course lots of chat as everyone immediately relaxed in the friendly environment. And following the meeting itself we would move to the dining room and sit down to lunch which Shashi had set out for us.
She was a great support to Palli and always interested in his photography. He once wrote that the biggest surprise of his life had been when, soon after they were married, Shashi gave him a birthday present of a Hasselblad 500C complete with 150mm and 250mm lenses, magazines and prism finder. This gave him a major breakthrough for his photography of the wildlife in the Game Reserves of Kenya
Sebastião Salgardo (1944 – 2025)
Sebastião Salgardo, a worldfamous social documentary photographer from Brazil, died on 23 May aged 81 years. He trained as an economist and initially worked in that field. But while in Africa in 1991 on a project for the World Bank he started taking photographs and became totally absorbed. He soon became a professional photographer and crossed the world. His images range from studies of the
nomadic Nenets in the Siberian Arctic; to the indigenous communities of the Amazon rain forest; to the lives of manual labourers in the gold mines of Brazil and the oil wells of Kuwait. He photographed refugees and migrants, and in all his work brought out the essential humanity of his subjects.
Then in later years he sought the untouched places on Earth, the pristine areas where his
and neighbouring countries. And she was still following his recent photographic experiments of digital techniques.
Shashi had a warm outgoing personality. She also had wide interests of her own, including as a leader in the Girl Guide movement and as a teacher of home economics – at one stage even to blind students. She was a great cook, did beautiful embroidery, and created a welcoming home.
There was a large attendance at her funeral service at which the RPS was represented by four of our members.
Palli and Shashi had been married for over 62 years. Her passing is a huge loss to him and we extend our deep condolences to him and their family.
images brought out the beauty of the natural world without modern civilisation.
His legacy of more than 500,000 images and several major books is vast. His images are profoundly moving, mostly in high contrast black-andwhite; they capture human-kind and the world which all fascinated him. And by sharing them he ‘opened the eyes of the world’.
Remembering Max Melvin ARPS
and looking for a home for his camera collection
Max was a life member of RPS, and was an active member of the Victorian Chapter and subsequently Australian Chapter. He worked in a range of formats from 35mm to 5x4. Max spent many years working with the History sub-group researching the life of Walter Woodbury. He also sought to understand and if possible, replicate the Woodburytype process. After his death, Max left an interesting collection of 5x4 negatives he created as part of this work. The project was also documented by the group and published with financial support provided by RPS.
His collection of camera and dark room equipment was extensive. One of his large format wooden cameras was recently donated to the State Library of Victoria. Some of his tripods and processing equipment have also been donated to the RMIT photography school.
Max’s collection of Linhof 5x4 cameras and lenses is now being offered for sale. The collection includes a Linhof Master Technika, a Linhof studio camera and an extensive collection of lenses and accessories. All items are in excellent condition and are being offered for sale as a single unit. A list of the lenses in the collection is provided on the right. It is not a comprehensive list of the items that are offered for sale. The price for all the items is $5,500
If you would like to know more about the items for sale, or view the collection, please contact David Melvin via email at dmelvin@optusnet.com.au
No. Item Description
Box One
1
2
3
4
5
6
Linhof monorail - body and rail
Schneider – Kreuznach synchro – compur angalon 1:6.8/120 on Linhof base board
Rodenstock Imagon 1:5.8 – 250mm Copal No. 3 - in original box
Box Two
Linhof Master Technika with hand grip, rangefinder and top mounted adjustable optical viewfinder
Rodenstock Sironar 1:5.6 f = 150mm – Copal Shutter on Linhof base board
Rodenstock Grandagon 1:4.5 f = 90mm – Copal No. 1 on Linhof base board
Rodenstock Rotelar 1:5.6 f = 270mm – Compur 1 on Linhof base board
Box Three
7
Schneider - Kreuznach Technika Super Angalon 1:8/90mm –Linhof shutter on Linhof base board
8 Schneider - Kreuznach symmar Techinika 1:5.6/210mm – Linhof shutter on Linhof base board
9
Rodenstock Sironar 1:5.6 f = 210 - Copal – No 1 shutter on Linhof base board
10 Labosix meter
11 4 x roll film Linhof medium format backs (two in original boxes, one faulty)
12 16+ x large format film holders
13 4 x stainless negative processing cradles
14 1 x cable release
What’s on in July?
Festivals & exhibitions
World Press Photo Exhibition 2025 – Sydney
Dates: Until 6 July 2025
Venue: State Library of New South Wales
Details: Showcasing award-winning photojournalism from the 68th annual contest, featuring powerful global stories.
PIX: The Magazine That Changed
Everything – Sydney
Dates: Ongoing until 31 December 2025
Venue: Museum of Brisbane
Details: An exhibition celebrating PIX, Australia’s first pictorial news weekly, highlighting its impact on visual storytelling.
Testamur 7 – Canberra
Dates: Until 26 July 2025
Venue: M16 Artspace
Details: The 7th Annual Members Exhibition by Canberra Art Workshop, featuring diverse photographic works.
Student Life: Max Dupain at the University of Sydney
Dates: Ongoing
Venue: Chau Chak Wing Museum, Sydney
Details: Exploring Max Dupain’s modernist approach through candid campus photography.
Competitions to enter
Australian Photographic Prize
Live Judging: 11–19 July 2025
Winners Announced: 20 July 2025
Details: An international competition open to professionals, amateurs, and students, with live judging streamed online.
BirdLife Australia Photography Awards
Entry Deadline: 28 July 2025
Prizes: Category winners receive $1,000; Grand Prize includes a Nikon Z 8 camera valued at $7,449.
Your Best Shot – Australian Photography
Theme: Varies bi-monthly; current deadline 31 July 2025
Details: Open to Australian residents, with winning images published in Australian Photography magazine.
Epson International Pano Awards
Entry Deadline: 14 July 2025
Details: Celebrating panoramic photography, open to photographers worldwide.
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Nations Inter-Country Competition
Entry Deadline: 4 July 2025
Details: A collaborative competition among photographic societies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa.
