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Hello everyone, and welcome to another virtual program
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with the National Portrait Gallery.
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It's so lovely to see you all coming in
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through the Zoom room and on Facebook Live today.
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Thanks so much for joining us.
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Even though it looks like it's nighttime in the background,
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of course, you're all used to the smoke and mirrors
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that we do with the National Portrait Gallery now,
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no, I am sitting in front of a green screen,
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but we are working across time zones today.
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And our special guest Dave Tacon
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will be joining us shortly from Shanghai.
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So before we get underway,
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I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians
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of the lands in which I'm broadcasting to you from today,
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the Ngambri and Ngunnawal peoples.
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And I'd like to pay my respects to their elders,
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past, present, and emerging.
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I'd like to extend that same respect to any
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of the indigenous people joining us today
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and also to any of the traditional custodians of the lands
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on which you're coming to us from today.
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So we do like our programmes to be interactive
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here at the Portrait Gallery.
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So if you have any questions throughout the programme,
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please pop them into the chat function on Zoom,
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which should be along the bottom part of your device,
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or throw them into the Facebook comments.
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And we have Hector, Robert, and Matt
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working busily behind the scenes
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to take any of your questions, comments,
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and please do let us know where you're joining us from.
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I hope that there are some people coming to us from China.
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That would be nice,
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but I also see some familiar faces here today as well.
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And welcome to all of you regulars
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who are supporting our programmes both through lockdown
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and now that we're starting to emerge back into real life.
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But without further ado, I'd to introduce Penny Grist,
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our curator, who is gonna be in conversation
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with our special guest, Dave.
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Over to you, Penny and Dave.
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Thank you so much Gill.
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This is very exciting to have another one
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of our international connections and a great pleasure
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for me to revisit some of the portraits in the collection,
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as well as to hear from Dave about his journey
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with photography, but mostly his time in Shanghai
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and his recent work as well.
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So it's gonna be a packed 45 minutes.
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So I think we'll dive straight into it.
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And it's my pleasure to introduce Dave Tacon
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who's been a friend of the Portrait Gallery
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for many, many, many years.
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And I'd love to start off by asking you, Dave,
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just where did your love of photography begin
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and how did your career get going?
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Um, well, I did an exchange
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through the University of Melbourne to Berlin
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in, I think, 1998, '99.
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And it was a great city to photograph,
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I studied photography with a point and shoot camera.
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And I guess friends were encouraging me,
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it was quite a while before digital.
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I mean I assisted some people.
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I mean, I did some assisting in Hong Kong
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before I sort of landed back in Melbourne with a thud.
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And I was assisting a guy called David Simmons, who was,
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I think, the president of the Australian Commission
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on Media Photographies at one point,
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which doesn't exist anymore.
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I think he's on the board of the Australian Institute
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of Professional Photographers now.
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He does architecture and industrial photography mostly.
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And I assisted on this thing that they did,
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which they brought together three great photographers.
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I think it was Brian Monroe, Sam Haskins,
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and Gary Heery to present their work
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to other professional photographers
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and, you know, do a slideshow and a talk.
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And especially Gary Heery's work just really blew me away
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and his stories, and I thought, yeah, I've gotta do this,
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and actually gave Gary a lift to the airport.
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It was about a three hour drive.
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So that was yeah, fantastic
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for someone who just wants to pick someone's brain
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and sort of work out how it all works.
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I think assisting photographers
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is also a really useful thing,
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especially dealing with clients and especially
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probably one of the most important things I learned
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about commercial shoots is when things go wrong
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to make it look you've come to a,
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I've had a flash of inspiration,
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and you've come to a creative decision,
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that isn't really working for me.
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And it's , you know, the stuff isn't hard to do,
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this is, you know, a creative solution,
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this is how we're gonna do it.
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And, you know, in reality just, you know,
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a light broke or something.
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And so since then, where has your work
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been appearing in your career?
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Where do you, what sort of work do you do?
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What sort of jobs have you had?
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I mean, it's a wide variety of stuff.
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I mean, I used to write as well as shoot stories.
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I was kind of, I was spending a bit of my time,
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as a freelance foreign correspondence
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writing for different magazines and newspapers.
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And it was also, that was a way
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to get my photography published.
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Don't do it so much anymore.
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I mean, who have I worked for,
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like who have I worked for recently?
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Yeah.
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I mean, I've been shooting for US Vogue,
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Shanghai fashion week for the last three seasons,
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which is interesting.
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I mean, the work I like to do is sort of photo journalism,
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and I've been able to work for magazines Stern,
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the German news pictorial, they're great to work for.
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And I should have some assignments coming up
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for a Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter,
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which is also good to work for.
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And I work for all these, mostly the Australian ones.
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I used to do an assignments for the Australian Overview
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and the Australian Financial Review and Good Weekend,
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but not much of that going on these days.
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So we've got 18 portraits by you in the collection,
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which is really exciting and we're not gonna go through
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all 18 now, but I've selected some of my favourites.
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And it's always, I always, as a curator,
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enjoy the privilege of having a captive artist
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to tell us some backstories
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of some of the portraits in the collection.
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So we're gonna enjoy Dave
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just taking us through a few of these shoots.
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And it's funny, it's probably,
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I find this really fascinating because you have such a,
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they're so pared back in a way there's, you know,
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there's a real immediacy and honesty to these shots.
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And so it's even sort of more fascinating to hear
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your experience of capturing them.
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So we might start with Toni Maticevski,
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the fashion designer.
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Right, well, I didn't have very much time with Toni.
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I mean I've had a chat with him
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to interview him for a story I was doing
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on Australian fashion designers,
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showing it at New York fashion week.
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That was the West Weekend, which is a newspaper
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in west, Australian magazine doesn't exist anymore.
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like a lot of magazines I used to work for in Australia,
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but anyways, he was really exhausted.
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He'd been up all night.
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He did all the sewing himself,
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which is, a lot of designers don't know how
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to use a sewing machine or whatever,
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but he's certainly an exception there.
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And yeah, it was just really, really quick.
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I mean, this, I mean, we were just talking
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a couple of minutes, really.
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Oh wow.
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I used the lights, just in the backstage area
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and, you know, I mean, this is kind of how I do
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all my portraits in a way.
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I mean, for something like that,
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I mean, I didn't really have any preconceived ideas
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because, you know, I mean, I knew I was gonna be backstage,
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I suppose I was just looking to shoot it in a way
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that didn't really look backstage or had a hint of that.
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And it was uncluttered.
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So yeah, there was just this backdrop,
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which sort of really suits his style of clothes.
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Anyway, but I mean it's his backstage area, so, I mean,
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I guess he would have had some say in that anyway.
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And it's just catching these lights
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sort of shining through this backdrop.
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Oh, that's brilliant.
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Yeah, there was also some other ones
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sitting on some steps, but that was the best.
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My cat has just come to say hi, here he is.
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Aw, kiss your cat.
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Wanna have a look?
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He's an enormous, enormous ginger cat.
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Dumb head, very vain, doesn't really being picked up
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but he loves to be to be groomed,
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his favourite, favourite thing is to be brushed by Gogloo.
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(laughing) And we experience the international
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working from home and experience having our pets drop in.
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So let's move on to Pat McGorry.
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So, youth mental health expert, psychiatrist,
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psychologist, Australian of the year in 2010,
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how did you come to photograph him?
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I've photographed him a couple of times,
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but this time it was sort of to do
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with the University of Melbourne
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I used to do a bit of work for.
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He was quite friendly with the editor of Union News,
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which is a publication, I don't think they have it anymore,
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but I used to do study shoots
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every week or every couple of weeks.
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And they're usually just really quick portraits
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that just turn up and we'd wander around
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and sort of, you know, see what's available
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in terms of natural light and just, yeah, I mean,
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it's still the way I tend to shoot portraits.
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So wherever we met him, there was this inkwell,
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and it really went with his eyes,
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and his choice of wardrobe, blue,
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probably should have cleaned up that colour a bit,
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but, you know, I guess that's how he was.
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So yeah, nice guy, a very nice guy.
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Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it, because you,
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in both of these stories, that sense of immediacy
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is real and it really translates
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into how you react to the portrait.
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Is this a similar story, David Williamson?
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Yeah, I had quite a few commissions,
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I think 10 or 11 that I went and did
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for the National Portrait Gallery in '12?
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Maybe, yeah, well, I guess that was in the summer
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just before I left for Shanghai.
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So we had a good old chat.
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I mean, I sort of grew up with the work of David Williamson.
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My mother was an English teacher.
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So, you know, we had copies
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of his screenplays and plays lying around.
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I got him to sign I think "Brilliant Lies",
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unfortunately couldn't find the copy of "Sanctuary"
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we used to have, it was falling apart, but yeah,
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one thing that I can remember is that
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he's just about the tallest guy.
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Well, definitely the tallest playwright
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that I've ever photographed.
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I mean, I'm pretty tall anyway, I'm 6"2,
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but I'm just staring up at him.
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I mean I stood on a chair to get a sort of
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eye contact kind of portrait with him.
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So yeah, this is his newest apartment,
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which overlooks the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
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And yeah, I mean, there were quite a few,
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I think there was also a portrait of his desk
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and you can kind of see, his sort of physical presence
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when he's in this room where he writes,
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but they didn't use that one.
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One thing, when they had him take a walk in the park
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and they're just, you know,
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nattering away about all kinds of things.
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Yeah, I mean if you think literally,
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actually he's the Rockman
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who they sort of conspired to knock out,
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that big guy, that's your cameo indubitably.
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That's right.
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Say, Paralympian Michael Milton?
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Yeah, so that was in Melbourne and yeah, again,
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00:12:01.800 --> 00:12:05.794
we made him just, you know, have a chat and I mean,
259
00:12:05.794 --> 00:12:08.452
I arranged to meet him sort of late
260
00:12:08.452 --> 00:12:11.040
in the afternoon, or this was sort of early
261
00:12:11.040 --> 00:12:13.080
in the shoot to spend a few hours
262
00:12:13.080 --> 00:12:17.131
and see how the natural light was developing
263
00:12:17.131 --> 00:12:20.788
and then just see what would sort of present itself.
264
00:12:20.788 --> 00:12:22.650
So, I mean, these shoots,
265
00:12:22.650 --> 00:12:25.140
they're kind of an improvisation in a way.
266
00:12:25.140 --> 00:12:30.140
So we ended up here and I mean,
267
00:12:32.490 --> 00:12:34.440
I didn't really sort of think that oh,
268
00:12:34.440 --> 00:12:36.890
this was a metaphor for anything,
269
00:12:36.890 --> 00:12:41.270
but I guess if you wanna read into it, then yeah.
270
00:12:41.270 --> 00:12:43.140
Yeah, you could, I suppose,
271
00:12:43.140 --> 00:12:44.774
I hadn't thought about that either,
272
00:12:44.774 --> 00:12:46.310
but yeah, I am always transfixed by the lot,
273
00:12:46.310 --> 00:12:48.900
the lot and the trees, they're beautiful.
274
00:12:48.900 --> 00:12:52.008
It's really interesting hearing you talk through
275
00:12:52.008 --> 00:12:55.670
this serendipitous creation
276
00:12:55.670 --> 00:12:59.160
of the backgrounds in these works.
277
00:12:59.160 --> 00:12:59.993
How about-?
278
00:13:02.189 --> 00:13:03.970
So yeah, J M Coetzee.
279
00:13:03.970 --> 00:13:06.697
Yeah, so we were also gonna see Raymond Gaita
280
00:13:06.697 --> 00:13:09.103
and I photographed Raymond Gaita before J M Coetzee.
281
00:13:09.103 --> 00:13:11.253
I think he knows J M Coetzee pretty well.
282
00:13:11.253 --> 00:13:13.360
When I mentioned who I was going to be photographing next
283
00:13:13.360 --> 00:13:15.840
he said, ah, a man of few words,
284
00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:16.800
and he wasn't kidding.
285
00:13:16.800 --> 00:13:19.490
I mean, I've really found it difficult
286
00:13:19.490 --> 00:13:21.470
to actually engage with him unfortunately.
287
00:13:21.470 --> 00:13:25.030
I mean, I'd say something and he'd either say nothing,
288
00:13:25.030 --> 00:13:27.227
just look at me or will just say a few words.
289
00:13:27.227 --> 00:13:28.427
And that was kind of it.
290
00:13:29.436 --> 00:13:31.810
And I really kind of regret not being able
291
00:13:31.810 --> 00:13:34.850
to sort of build a rapport.
292
00:13:34.850 --> 00:13:36.973
It's kind of what I try to do.
293
00:13:38.450 --> 00:13:41.980
But yeah, I mean, I remember seeing a front page story
294
00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:43.950
in the international New York Times
295
00:13:43.950 --> 00:13:46.630
because he mentioned this, when he was a teenager,
296
00:13:46.630 --> 00:13:48.537
he was a really keen photographer.
297
00:13:48.537 --> 00:13:52.157
So all these black and white photographs from his youth
298
00:13:52.157 --> 00:13:57.157
were on display because he donated his entire archive
299
00:13:57.445 --> 00:14:00.120
to somewhere in South Africa.
300
00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:01.260
Yeah, that was really interesting,
301
00:14:01.260 --> 00:14:05.670
but I didn't really manage to learn more about that
302
00:14:05.670 --> 00:14:08.003
while I met him, which was in Adelaide,
303
00:14:10.660 --> 00:14:14.400
and this would have been the first or second photo
304
00:14:14.400 --> 00:14:16.413
that I took after I'd entered his home.
305
00:14:17.320 --> 00:14:18.910
I think I'd had a quick chat
306
00:14:18.910 --> 00:14:21.190
and asked if I could quick photograph where he writes.
307
00:14:21.190 --> 00:14:26.142
And he said, no, I'm not allowed to enter that room.
308
00:14:26.142 --> 00:14:28.830
And yeah, I sort of describe this photo,
309
00:14:28.830 --> 00:14:31.210
well, he was sort of thinking about something.
310
00:14:31.210 --> 00:14:34.530
I'm not sure, yeah, he seems to be deep in thought.
311
00:14:34.530 --> 00:14:36.036
And I was asking him about,
312
00:14:36.036 --> 00:14:38.600
I mean I remember almost everything he said,
313
00:14:38.600 --> 00:14:40.890
because there weren't many things that he did say,
314
00:14:40.890 --> 00:14:43.780
but I asked him if he was a morning writer
315
00:14:43.780 --> 00:14:46.110
or if he wrote at night, and he said,
316
00:14:46.110 --> 00:14:48.410
I wake up in the morning and my mind is clear.
317
00:14:49.610 --> 00:14:50.443
Wow.
318
00:14:51.354 --> 00:14:53.461
And I guess those were all the words
319
00:14:53.461 --> 00:14:58.461
he needed to express his morning writing regime.
320
00:15:00.797 --> 00:15:03.827
That would be a lovely quote to accompany the portrait.
321
00:15:03.827 --> 00:15:06.904
You could. (laughs)
322
00:15:06.904 --> 00:15:08.617
Yes, it would be.
323
00:15:08.617 --> 00:15:09.450
So, yeah.
324
00:15:09.450 --> 00:15:11.161
I mean, we took more pictures.
325
00:15:11.161 --> 00:15:11.994
I mean, there were also other portraits that I thought,
326
00:15:14.100 --> 00:15:17.600
you know, were nice, but this might've been
327
00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:20.910
the first shot I took the whole day.
328
00:15:20.910 --> 00:15:23.240
But yeah, I think that ended up running in Norway
329
00:15:23.240 --> 00:15:24.787
in some publications, he's actually,
330
00:15:24.787 --> 00:15:27.000
he is not often photographed,
331
00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:28.654
but he was very enthusiastic,
332
00:15:28.654 --> 00:15:31.930
when we were communicating via email
333
00:15:31.930 --> 00:15:34.230
about the offer to be photographed
334
00:15:34.230 --> 00:15:35.823
for the National Portrait Gallery,
335
00:15:35.823 --> 00:15:37.790
he thought it was, you know, a great honour,
336
00:15:37.790 --> 00:15:39.776
I suppose he was interested in the process
337
00:15:39.776 --> 00:15:44.423
and how the photographer was gonna go about it.
338
00:15:45.367 --> 00:15:48.880
Hm, and you mentioned Raymond Gaita, here he is.
339
00:15:48.880 --> 00:15:51.080
Yeah, so he's not a man of few words.
340
00:15:51.080 --> 00:15:53.040
We also got along really well.
341
00:15:53.040 --> 00:15:56.410
And this is around the area where he grew up.
342
00:15:56.410 --> 00:15:59.610
So this landscape's the setting for his memoir
343
00:15:59.610 --> 00:16:02.180
"Romulus, My Father", which had made into a film
344
00:16:02.180 --> 00:16:07.020
with Eric Bana and Franka Potente.
345
00:16:07.020 --> 00:16:10.100
And yeah, this is actually the next morning,
346
00:16:10.100 --> 00:16:14.299
because I mean, ideally the more time you can spend
347
00:16:14.299 --> 00:16:18.600
with the subject the better, and this was actually, I mean,
348
00:16:18.600 --> 00:16:21.443
the previous afternoon and evening we'd hung out
349
00:16:21.443 --> 00:16:24.890
sitting on the porch on these wrought iron chairs
350
00:16:24.890 --> 00:16:25.770
that his father had made.
351
00:16:25.770 --> 00:16:29.630
His dad was an iron monger and yeah,
352
00:16:29.630 --> 00:16:32.190
I mean, it was also 2012,
353
00:16:32.190 --> 00:16:34.610
so I would have been preparing to move to Shanghai.
354
00:16:34.610 --> 00:16:38.190
So I guess we were talking about China and I mean,
355
00:16:38.190 --> 00:16:41.090
he was talking about it in reference to academia,
356
00:16:41.090 --> 00:16:42.910
and he's not much of a cook,
357
00:16:42.910 --> 00:16:44.070
but he's able to cook spaghetti
358
00:16:44.070 --> 00:16:48.390
and his wife had who wasn't over had made a polonaise.
359
00:16:48.390 --> 00:16:50.400
So we had that dinner, I mean,
360
00:16:50.400 --> 00:16:53.200
had a couple of beers, drank a couple of glasses of wine.
361
00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:55.856
And then yeah, in the morning at first light got up
362
00:16:55.856 --> 00:16:57.410
and had a walk around the property,
363
00:16:57.410 --> 00:16:59.374
and that's when I, when I shot this one.
364
00:16:59.374 --> 00:17:02.203
The light was great, and yeah, it was a good experience.
365
00:17:02.203 --> 00:17:06.108
Hopefully, maybe the next time I'm in the neighbourhood,
366
00:17:06.108 --> 00:17:09.650
I'll yeah, get in touch and drop by again.
367
00:17:09.650 --> 00:17:13.360
But yeah, he was happy with how the pictures turned out too.
368
00:17:13.360 --> 00:17:15.377
It's lovely hearing you talk about hanging out
369
00:17:15.377 --> 00:17:18.320
with these sort of leading lights
370
00:17:18.320 --> 00:17:21.420
of the Australian creatives' enterprise.
371
00:17:21.420 --> 00:17:22.680
It's fantastic.
372
00:17:22.680 --> 00:17:24.800
And so I think we've got one
373
00:17:24.800 --> 00:17:27.870
before finishing up our little tour of the collection.
374
00:17:27.870 --> 00:17:30.720
Michelle Garnaut, is this one post your move to Shanghai?
375
00:17:31.670 --> 00:17:34.800
Is this one after you've moved?
376
00:17:34.800 --> 00:17:36.543
Oh yeah, this was 2015.
377
00:17:36.543 --> 00:17:38.913
So actually, this was one of the shots from,
378
00:17:38.913 --> 00:17:41.159
I was asked to shoot it for Boss Magazine,
379
00:17:41.159 --> 00:17:42.409
which is an AFR magazine.
380
00:17:43.298 --> 00:17:45.480
And so often when you're commissioned
381
00:17:45.480 --> 00:17:48.066
to do sort of editorial shoots, you can't pick the time.
382
00:17:48.066 --> 00:17:50.050
This is when she's available for the interview,
383
00:17:50.050 --> 00:17:51.960
because of course she's very busy
384
00:17:53.112 --> 00:17:56.370
and this was a time before they would have opened for lunch.
385
00:17:56.370 --> 00:17:58.640
So it was really bright.
386
00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:03.120
It was totally not the right time of day to photograph her.
387
00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:08.040
So I had her out on the, yeah, it was really clear day, too.
388
00:18:08.040 --> 00:18:10.350
I had her out on the terrace of her restaurant,
389
00:18:10.350 --> 00:18:13.760
M on the Bund, she'd be squinting,
390
00:18:13.760 --> 00:18:17.330
the light would be overhead and it would cast shadows.
391
00:18:17.330 --> 00:18:19.670
So I just had her just inside the shade
392
00:18:19.670 --> 00:18:22.665
so the sunlight was sort of blasting off
393
00:18:22.665 --> 00:18:25.700
the concrete of the terrace.
394
00:18:25.700 --> 00:18:27.040
And just as a hint of the city,
395
00:18:27.040 --> 00:18:30.766
you can see over in the top right-hand corner,
396
00:18:30.766 --> 00:18:34.693
there's the Shanghai TV tower, The Pearl Tower,
397
00:18:36.339 --> 00:18:39.771
and sort of looking into her restaurant, and also her pose.
398
00:18:39.771 --> 00:18:42.599
And she seems like a fairly formidable woman,
399
00:18:42.599 --> 00:18:45.990
she looks like a boss and she's great, but I mean,
400
00:18:45.990 --> 00:18:48.468
her contribution to the cultural life
401
00:18:48.468 --> 00:18:51.080
of Shanghai is fantastic.
402
00:18:51.080 --> 00:18:54.160
She established a literary festival and yeah,
403
00:18:54.160 --> 00:18:59.110
she's a legendary figure
404
00:18:59.110 --> 00:19:02.115
in the expatriate community in Shanghai.
405
00:19:02.115 --> 00:19:05.440
Yeah, so I mean, she's been here for a really long time.
406
00:19:05.440 --> 00:19:06.703
I mean, I've also interviewed her.
407
00:19:06.703 --> 00:19:08.940
I mean, I think I've photographed her three times
408
00:19:08.940 --> 00:19:12.042
and we had a chat about what drew her to Shanghai.
409
00:19:12.042 --> 00:19:16.002
And I mean, she said it was like a city set in aspic
410
00:19:16.002 --> 00:19:18.500
back when she went.
411
00:19:18.500 --> 00:19:20.933
I mean, it was nothing like now.
412
00:19:20.933 --> 00:19:24.627
I mean, I think the Bund hadn't been developed,
413
00:19:24.627 --> 00:19:26.630
I mean, all these buildings were empty.
414
00:19:26.630 --> 00:19:28.546
The Bund's the historic waterfront.
415
00:19:28.546 --> 00:19:30.450
All the skyscrapers hadn't yet popped up
416
00:19:30.450 --> 00:19:34.800
across the river in Pudong and everything was just like,
417
00:19:34.800 --> 00:19:39.180
yeah, it's like the city hadn't changed in 50 years,
418
00:19:39.180 --> 00:19:40.950
in Hong Kong, where she'd been living,
419
00:19:40.950 --> 00:19:44.740
where they'd just bulldozed everything and built new lands.
420
00:19:44.740 --> 00:19:49.740
So she was kind of, yeah, just drawn to this place.
421
00:19:50.140 --> 00:19:52.613
I saw her the other night, I saw her last week actually,
422
00:19:52.613 --> 00:19:54.963
had a good chat, I mean, she was really chuffed
423
00:19:55.890 --> 00:19:57.460
my portrait was picked up by the gallery here
424
00:19:57.460 --> 00:19:59.160
and her mother was able to go around
425
00:19:59.160 --> 00:20:02.273
and see her hanging on the wall and yeah.
426
00:20:04.240 --> 00:20:05.240
I've never thought of that,
427
00:20:05.240 --> 00:20:07.460
is our portraits of expatriates,
428
00:20:07.460 --> 00:20:09.810
their parents coming to say them in the gallery.
429
00:20:09.810 --> 00:20:13.370
Right, because she probably rarely gets back to Australia.
430
00:20:13.370 --> 00:20:14.210
Really does.
431
00:20:14.210 --> 00:20:16.210
So that's a good introduction
432
00:20:16.210 --> 00:20:19.770
to why did you decide to move to Shanghai in 2012?
433
00:20:21.540 --> 00:20:22.940
I worked there in 2010.
434
00:20:22.940 --> 00:20:25.820
I came back again in 2011 and yeah, just sort of felt
435
00:20:25.820 --> 00:20:27.000
the centre of the world really.
436
00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:29.870
I mean, the first time I'd been to New York,
437
00:20:29.870 --> 00:20:32.710
about 10 years before that, had this just incredible energy.
438
00:20:32.710 --> 00:20:36.930
And I felt that in Shanghai, I mean,
439
00:20:36.930 --> 00:20:39.430
Shanghai was much more rough around the edges.
440
00:20:39.430 --> 00:20:43.850
In 2010, they were just sort of gearing up for the expo.
441
00:20:43.850 --> 00:20:48.580
I met a lot of people who sort of had been, yeah,
442
00:20:48.580 --> 00:20:52.450
doing really well probably, but I think I was thinking,
443
00:20:52.450 --> 00:20:54.990
well, apart from their own skills,
444
00:20:54.990 --> 00:20:58.093
just by virtue of being in Shanghai just seemed like,
445
00:20:59.882 --> 00:21:03.250
you know, if you wanted to take the next step in,
446
00:21:03.250 --> 00:21:05.723
it seemed like the, yeah, the place to go.
447
00:21:05.723 --> 00:21:09.450
I mean, I went to work for a larger calibre of publications
448
00:21:09.450 --> 00:21:12.414
and do more photography, sort of break out,
449
00:21:12.414 --> 00:21:16.900
break a little bit from all the writing that I was doing
450
00:21:16.900 --> 00:21:18.460
and just focus more on photography.
451
00:21:18.460 --> 00:21:22.140
And now I'm doing video as well and not writing so much.
452
00:21:24.498 --> 00:21:26.500
So that's really, really fascinating.
453
00:21:26.500 --> 00:21:29.191
And so we're gonna now take a turn
454
00:21:29.191 --> 00:21:31.710
into some of your Shanghai work.
455
00:21:31.710 --> 00:21:34.080
So we're gonna look at a few images
456
00:21:34.080 --> 00:21:36.030
that have recently been included in a show
457
00:21:36.030 --> 00:21:39.271
at the Australian Consul General's office, is that-?
458
00:21:39.271 --> 00:21:43.633
Yeah, that's the event that I saw Michelle at last week.
459
00:21:46.568 --> 00:21:50.291
So this was at the beginning of when I hadn't,
460
00:21:50.291 --> 00:21:53.760
well, I mean, I've been commissioned
461
00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:56.510
by the German magazine GEO to do a story,
462
00:21:56.510 --> 00:21:59.550
actually, two stories for a travel issue on Shanghai.
463
00:21:59.550 --> 00:22:01.980
And one was on Shanghai's night life,
464
00:22:01.980 --> 00:22:04.670
which is something I'd already been photographing.
465
00:22:04.670 --> 00:22:09.670
It was actually, the photo editor was an Australian.
466
00:22:09.770 --> 00:22:12.110
And I think they'd just been searching for images
467
00:22:12.110 --> 00:22:14.840
and found them in the archive at Polaris,
468
00:22:14.840 --> 00:22:16.703
the agency that represents me.
469
00:22:17.750 --> 00:22:21.530
So I was meeting this Chinese German journalist
470
00:22:21.530 --> 00:22:24.220
who I was working with on this story, Xifan Yang,
471
00:22:24.220 --> 00:22:28.305
at M1NT, which was another Australian connection,
472
00:22:28.305 --> 00:22:31.650
the owner or founder of that was a guy called Alistair Paton
473
00:22:31.650 --> 00:22:32.980
who was a pretty colourful character.
474
00:22:32.980 --> 00:22:35.471
He was kind of run out of town.
475
00:22:35.471 --> 00:22:38.147
I mean I heard, you know, all these rumours,
476
00:22:38.147 --> 00:22:39.420
that he'd been detained, he was in jail.
477
00:22:39.420 --> 00:22:41.090
And then he was out of the country,
478
00:22:41.090 --> 00:22:43.800
and then, you know, he said, that he basically
479
00:22:43.800 --> 00:22:45.450
was forced to sell the nightclub,
480
00:22:46.486 --> 00:22:47.840
but it was a very exclusive kind of place.
481
00:22:47.840 --> 00:22:51.070
And they claimed that in the previous year,
482
00:22:51.070 --> 00:22:52.480
they'd sold board Dom Perignon
483
00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:54.530
than any club anywhere in the world,
484
00:22:54.530 --> 00:22:56.200
whether that's true or not I don't know.
485
00:22:56.200 --> 00:23:01.200
But anyway, I mean the champagne is also a table service.
486
00:23:01.630 --> 00:23:05.487
So it's yeah, ostentatious, conspicuous consumption.
487
00:23:05.487 --> 00:23:07.560
You see who's got tables
488
00:23:07.560 --> 00:23:09.060
and then those are the people with money,
489
00:23:09.060 --> 00:23:11.313
and anyone who has to go to the bar is, you know,
490
00:23:11.313 --> 00:23:13.210
a bit of a pleb, if you can get in the door
491
00:23:13.210 --> 00:23:17.360
in the first place, but M1NT's closed since then.
492
00:23:17.360 --> 00:23:18.950
But anyway, I'd just come from a shoot
493
00:23:18.950 --> 00:23:20.120
from Women's Wear Daily.
494
00:23:20.120 --> 00:23:22.243
I think I'd been shooting backstage.
495
00:23:22.243 --> 00:23:23.916
It's some lingerie label or something,
496
00:23:23.916 --> 00:23:26.640
there'd been a party and I had a couple glasses of champagne
497
00:23:26.640 --> 00:23:29.300
and just wandering over to M1NT
498
00:23:29.300 --> 00:23:30.940
to meet this journalist and talk about the story.
499
00:23:30.940 --> 00:23:32.830
And I stepped into the elevator,
500
00:23:32.830 --> 00:23:35.790
and then this is basically right in front of me.
501
00:23:35.790 --> 00:23:38.550
And I just happened to have a camera around my neck
502
00:23:38.550 --> 00:23:41.530
that has a wide angle lens, a 20 millimetre.
503
00:23:41.530 --> 00:23:43.130
And it was actually really bright
504
00:23:43.130 --> 00:23:44.870
from these lights on these dancers.
505
00:23:44.870 --> 00:23:47.610
So I just remember frantically changing my settings
506
00:23:47.610 --> 00:23:50.860
so I didn't overexpose the shot.
507
00:23:50.860 --> 00:23:53.120
And yeah, I think that was the first one,
508
00:23:53.120 --> 00:23:56.790
I think I took two on the way up to the 23rd floor
509
00:23:56.790 --> 00:23:57.970
or whatever it was in the building.
510
00:23:57.970 --> 00:24:00.840
And then, yeah, I sat down for a chat.
511
00:24:00.840 --> 00:24:03.010
It was one of the best shots I took in the series,
512
00:24:03.010 --> 00:24:05.883
which I kept on developing, and it ended up being
513
00:24:05.883 --> 00:24:08.550
shown a couple of times in Australia
514
00:24:08.550 --> 00:24:11.594
at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale
515
00:24:11.594 --> 00:24:14.730
and last year at Head On,
516
00:24:14.730 --> 00:24:18.328
it was actually an outdoor exhibition at Bondi Beach,
517
00:24:18.328 --> 00:24:21.033
of all places, a different kind of decadence.
518
00:24:24.467 --> 00:24:25.960
Let's keep moving through.
519
00:24:25.960 --> 00:24:30.277
By stark contrast, what's the story with this one?
520
00:24:30.277 --> 00:24:33.413
So this is the biggest linen manufacturer in the world.
521
00:24:34.931 --> 00:24:39.931
Yeah, strangely I ended up directing a corporate video
522
00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:45.214
for this company and I mounted the cameras,
523
00:24:45.214 --> 00:24:50.214
it was a DSLR camera on this crane.
524
00:24:50.572 --> 00:24:53.510
I guess you couldn't really do this shot
525
00:24:53.510 --> 00:24:56.470
with a drone, but it was just such an amazing shot
526
00:24:56.470 --> 00:24:58.839
from that perspective, because you don't see it
527
00:24:58.839 --> 00:25:02.705
from the ground, and I had a remote trigger
528
00:25:02.705 --> 00:25:04.730
for this Nikon D 800 camera.
529
00:25:04.730 --> 00:25:06.660
So while we were rolling and just getting the shot
530
00:25:06.660 --> 00:25:09.030
and I was doing it on a screen.
531
00:25:09.030 --> 00:25:13.800
I thought I have to get some stills of this.
532
00:25:13.800 --> 00:25:16.940
So actually, it's this sort of wide aspect ratio
533
00:25:16.940 --> 00:25:20.080
because that's how the video came out on that camera.
534
00:25:20.080 --> 00:25:23.340
But yeah, I just saw the shot and just, yeah.
535
00:25:23.340 --> 00:25:26.713
And then that was the end of that video we were doing.
536
00:25:27.917 --> 00:25:30.410
And we had to start rolling again.
537
00:25:30.410 --> 00:25:32.760
Yeah, I mean, you know, they run 24 hours a day
538
00:25:32.760 --> 00:25:36.980
in three shifts every day of the year, eight hour shifts.
539
00:25:36.980 --> 00:25:38.090
Wow.
540
00:25:38.090 --> 00:25:41.410
It's interesting that opportunistic moment
541
00:25:41.410 --> 00:25:44.140
of the straight photographer, you're alert to that
542
00:25:44.140 --> 00:25:46.831
all the time through your, you know,
543
00:25:46.831 --> 00:25:48.950
whatever shoot you're on, and this is
544
00:25:48.950 --> 00:25:52.251
one of your street photography works, isn't it?
545
00:25:52.251 --> 00:25:57.130
Yeah, so that's just, it was a nice, cold winter's day.
546
00:25:57.130 --> 00:26:00.630
And I just went out to shoot.
547
00:26:00.630 --> 00:26:05.060
I'd been looking at the work actually of Alex Webb
548
00:26:05.060 --> 00:26:07.427
is one of my favourite photographers.
549
00:26:07.427 --> 00:26:11.536
And one thing that he does is he has a lot of,
550
00:26:11.536 --> 00:26:12.670
his photos are really dense.
551
00:26:12.670 --> 00:26:15.070
They have so many layers and he really sort of fills
552
00:26:15.070 --> 00:26:18.880
the frame with the 35 millimetre lens that he uses.
553
00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:23.279
So I got a couple of nice shots that afternoon,
554
00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:28.279
but this is kind of light, I mean,
555
00:26:29.610 --> 00:26:30.713
he just kept on going back and forth.
556
00:26:30.713 --> 00:26:33.400
I think I even shot one with my iPhone
557
00:26:33.400 --> 00:26:35.508
that was quite nice, but yeah,
558
00:26:35.508 --> 00:26:40.010
so they've just knocked down all of these historic Shikumen
559
00:26:40.010 --> 00:26:43.400
sort of lane courthouses, courtyard homes,
560
00:26:43.400 --> 00:26:47.790
and in putting these new sort of luxury ones.
561
00:26:47.790 --> 00:26:49.230
I'd also photographed the area,
562
00:26:49.230 --> 00:26:51.500
the people who were sort of holding out
563
00:26:51.500 --> 00:26:54.820
in one bowl of money for the places that they were living.
564
00:26:54.820 --> 00:26:57.952
And then they're kind of slums of Shanghai,
565
00:26:57.952 --> 00:27:01.500
not much maintenance had been done to these homes,
566
00:27:01.500 --> 00:27:03.730
which were where wealthy people would have lived,
567
00:27:03.730 --> 00:27:05.590
you know, a lot of many families crammed
568
00:27:05.590 --> 00:27:08.669
into one sort of mansion basically.
569
00:27:08.669 --> 00:27:10.730
So I was familiar with the area.
570
00:27:10.730 --> 00:27:14.693
It was interesting to see that develop, yeah.
571
00:27:16.730 --> 00:27:18.730
Can I just jump in for a second, Penny, sorry.
572
00:27:18.730 --> 00:27:20.840
We've just, we had a question a while back
573
00:27:20.840 --> 00:27:23.180
and I thought it was a good interjection at this point,
574
00:27:23.180 --> 00:27:26.460
because you just mentioned an influence on your work, Dave,
575
00:27:26.460 --> 00:27:28.550
but Neil, one of our regulars was interested
576
00:27:28.550 --> 00:27:32.140
in finding out which creatives you would say
577
00:27:32.140 --> 00:27:33.993
have inspired your photography?
578
00:27:36.635 --> 00:27:37.940
You know, funny when I was starting out,
579
00:27:37.940 --> 00:27:40.490
I really liked the, I mean the film
580
00:27:40.490 --> 00:27:43.130
and also the photography work of Wim Wenders.
581
00:27:43.130 --> 00:27:44.790
I did my thesis on him at university,
582
00:27:44.790 --> 00:27:48.233
and I even did a internship at his company in Berlin,
583
00:27:48.233 --> 00:27:53.233
but he does sort of empty streetscapes mostly.
584
00:27:53.900 --> 00:27:58.770
But I don't do that, but I suppose also the work that he did
585
00:27:58.770 --> 00:28:01.893
with Robbie Muller, just these sort of,
586
00:28:03.340 --> 00:28:07.341
the rigorous sort of composition and light,
587
00:28:07.341 --> 00:28:11.130
the use of light also, I mean, in colour
588
00:28:11.130 --> 00:28:14.270
as well as black and white was just really, really great.
589
00:28:14.270 --> 00:28:18.120
I mean, cinema studies was something
590
00:28:18.120 --> 00:28:22.420
that really opened my eyes to composition and light really.
591
00:28:24.230 --> 00:28:28.797
I mean, I think before I got into photographers
592
00:28:29.770 --> 00:28:32.431
like Alex Webb, I was interested in Sven Nykvist,
593
00:28:32.431 --> 00:28:37.021
Ingmar Bergman's DoP, later people like Christopher Doyle,
594
00:28:37.021 --> 00:28:42.021
he did a lot Wong Kar-wai's early stuff, Kelly De Palma.
595
00:28:44.146 --> 00:28:45.233
Yeah.
596
00:28:47.180 --> 00:28:51.009
So yeah, it was later that it was photographers
597
00:28:51.009 --> 00:28:53.092
that I was influenced by.
598
00:28:55.729 --> 00:28:57.230
That's a great question, Gill.
599
00:28:57.230 --> 00:29:01.440
And Neil, thank you, and very good time to bring that up
600
00:29:01.440 --> 00:29:05.190
because we're gonna move on to the next,
601
00:29:05.190 --> 00:29:08.820
let's have a little, tell us about this particular one day.
602
00:29:10.440 --> 00:29:14.420
So this is in Heilongjiang, a place called Jixi,
603
00:29:14.420 --> 00:29:17.610
it's where a lot of the world's carbon comes from,
604
00:29:17.610 --> 00:29:18.730
so this is a warehouse
605
00:29:18.730 --> 00:29:22.623
for sorting the carbon, like graphite dust.
606
00:29:23.734 --> 00:29:27.570
So yeah, when you see these guys outdoors in the sunshine,
607
00:29:27.570 --> 00:29:30.256
I mean, they're basically head to toe silver.
608
00:29:30.256 --> 00:29:35.210
So I mean, carbon is what you need for batteries,
609
00:29:35.210 --> 00:29:38.310
and the Macbook Pro that I'm using here would have
610
00:29:38.310 --> 00:29:41.090
a piece of carbon about the size of a slice of toast,
611
00:29:41.090 --> 00:29:43.530
but then the batteries that you need to power
612
00:29:43.530 --> 00:29:45.510
electric vehicles are much bigger
613
00:29:45.510 --> 00:29:48.830
and there's artificial carbon in Apple products,
614
00:29:48.830 --> 00:29:50.030
'cause it's much cleaner,
615
00:29:50.030 --> 00:29:53.670
but this was an assignment for Wirtschaftswoche,
616
00:29:53.670 --> 00:29:58.670
a German publication, that they did this story
617
00:29:59.531 --> 00:30:04.100
internationally, (speaks German), for your car.
618
00:30:04.100 --> 00:30:06.007
And it also included the mining
619
00:30:06.007 --> 00:30:08.880
of rare earths in Africa.
620
00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:13.604
And yeah, so we basically just walked into this place
621
00:30:13.604 --> 00:30:18.540
and it was incredibly dark and I happened to have
622
00:30:18.540 --> 00:30:21.150
a face mask just in my camera bag.
623
00:30:21.150 --> 00:30:24.130
It was a hot day in the summer and that white t-shirt
624
00:30:24.130 --> 00:30:26.440
never recovered, but yeah, just spent
625
00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:31.333
a couple of minutes in there and it was
626
00:30:31.333 --> 00:30:35.133
a really powerful, sort of hellish looking image.
627
00:30:36.857 --> 00:30:38.570
It's interesting, just getting this insight
628
00:30:38.570 --> 00:30:41.860
into both sort of daily life and partying in Shanghai,
629
00:30:41.860 --> 00:30:44.525
as well as, you know, the heavy industrial side
630
00:30:44.525 --> 00:30:48.153
of Chinese production.
631
00:30:49.170 --> 00:30:52.325
Yeah, actually at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale
632
00:30:52.325 --> 00:30:54.060
my work was sort of presented,
633
00:30:54.060 --> 00:30:56.470
or we did a conversation with this guy who was,
634
00:30:56.470 --> 00:31:00.222
he used to work on oil rigs also I think up in Heilongjiang.
635
00:31:00.222 --> 00:31:04.240
And so he had all these sort of photos of workers
636
00:31:04.240 --> 00:31:06.621
sort of in the ice, and it was all this,
637
00:31:06.621 --> 00:31:10.420
these really gritty sort of, you know,
638
00:31:10.420 --> 00:31:11.417
hard life of these workers.
639
00:31:11.417 --> 00:31:13.680
And we sort of showed side by side
640
00:31:13.680 --> 00:31:16.098
with my pictures of the, you know,
641
00:31:16.098 --> 00:31:19.713
the decadent party life in Shanghai.
642
00:31:21.400 --> 00:31:23.722
But his feelings about that was just, you know,
643
00:31:23.722 --> 00:31:26.200
that these people are enjoying success
644
00:31:26.200 --> 00:31:31.200
and he thought it was, yeah, he didn't see any,
645
00:31:33.780 --> 00:31:37.570
he didn't have any objections to those images,
646
00:31:37.570 --> 00:31:39.570
all the fun that the people were having.
647
00:31:42.249 --> 00:31:44.860
How about this one, it's another slice of life.
648
00:31:45.726 --> 00:31:48.690
Yeah, so that's about two blocks from where I live.
649
00:31:48.690 --> 00:31:52.826
So this is, just all of sudden all of these
650
00:31:52.826 --> 00:31:56.390
new sort of surveillance cameras popped up
651
00:31:56.390 --> 00:31:59.140
in my neighbourhood and in the former French concession.
652
00:32:00.300 --> 00:32:01.393
I mean, I think I passed through about 12
653
00:32:01.393 --> 00:32:05.000
just to go down my lane that's similar to this one.
654
00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:08.800
So, although, I mean, we've being surveilled
655
00:32:08.800 --> 00:32:11.370
by corporations all the time.
656
00:32:11.370 --> 00:32:13.480
I mean, if you're online, if you use Instagram,
657
00:32:13.480 --> 00:32:17.090
Instagram is basically creating a psychological profile,
658
00:32:17.090 --> 00:32:19.670
just like Facebook is just, you know,
659
00:32:19.670 --> 00:32:24.505
mining your emotions to sell to more corporations
660
00:32:24.505 --> 00:32:27.200
to sell you stuff.
661
00:32:27.200 --> 00:32:32.200
But still, I mean, facial recognition technology
662
00:32:32.398 --> 00:32:37.398
and having you're face scanned is something I feel kind of,
663
00:32:37.592 --> 00:32:40.530
I can't really get used to it, but anyway,
664
00:32:40.530 --> 00:32:42.830
so this is a change I've seen in Shanghai.
665
00:32:42.830 --> 00:32:46.226
And I wanted to see if I could capture an image
666
00:32:46.226 --> 00:32:51.226
just to add it to my catalogue of Shanghai photos.
667
00:32:51.380 --> 00:32:54.790
So I went up one sunny day and I was shooting film,
668
00:32:54.790 --> 00:32:56.560
actually, this was shot on slide film,
669
00:32:56.560 --> 00:33:01.560
and I thought this would be a good sort of staging place
670
00:33:01.600 --> 00:33:03.660
as opposed to the photo, but it's not staged,
671
00:33:03.660 --> 00:33:06.518
this guy just happened to walk between the cameras.
672
00:33:06.518 --> 00:33:10.096
I think I did two such photos and this one worked better
673
00:33:10.096 --> 00:33:13.627
and just, you know, this is how I'm gonna frame it.
674
00:33:13.627 --> 00:33:15.653
And then I'll see who turns up
675
00:33:15.653 --> 00:33:18.539
and I'll just set my settings so the figure is blurred
676
00:33:18.539 --> 00:33:22.172
between these stationary objects in the background.
677
00:33:22.172 --> 00:33:24.680
So that's how that picture came about.
678
00:33:24.680 --> 00:33:26.957
It's an image that could be, you know, relevant really,
679
00:33:26.957 --> 00:33:30.060
a lot of places in the world now, too.
680
00:33:30.060 --> 00:33:31.993
Yeah, especially China now though because I mean,
681
00:33:32.994 --> 00:33:34.900
they've got the majority of the world's
682
00:33:34.900 --> 00:33:39.509
surveillance cameras, and apparently this research group
683
00:33:39.509 --> 00:33:40.980
said that by the end of this year,
684
00:33:40.980 --> 00:33:42.973
they'll have more than a billion cameras.
685
00:33:44.360 --> 00:33:47.180
And this is another beautiful image that you've noticed
686
00:33:47.180 --> 00:33:51.043
just as you're wandering around the city.
687
00:33:51.043 --> 00:33:53.550
Yeah, this is another winter's day, I went out.
688
00:33:53.550 --> 00:33:56.269
I think this was 2014 or something.
689
00:33:56.269 --> 00:33:59.550
Yeah, so they're just these maids at this,
690
00:33:59.550 --> 00:34:03.350
I think it was a high end residential development,
691
00:34:03.350 --> 00:34:06.483
and they're all just, yeah, cleaning the concrete.
692
00:34:07.690 --> 00:34:12.690
So I guess the play of colours was something
693
00:34:14.460 --> 00:34:16.010
that attracted me to the picture.
694
00:34:16.010 --> 00:34:17.370
I took a few nice ones.
695
00:34:17.370 --> 00:34:20.610
I like this better than a vertical shot,
696
00:34:20.610 --> 00:34:22.600
which is going to be in a book on Shanghai,
697
00:34:22.600 --> 00:34:25.263
on modern Shanghai, which is actually launched tomorrow.
698
00:34:27.116 --> 00:34:29.413
Yeah I mean, I don't really sort of,
699
00:34:31.070 --> 00:34:32.840
a friend who was getting into photography was telling me
700
00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:36.172
about composing with triangles and I think early,
701
00:34:36.172 --> 00:34:38.430
when I started photography, someone told me
702
00:34:38.430 --> 00:34:40.059
about the rule of thirds
703
00:34:40.059 --> 00:34:43.157
and I didn't know what she was talking about,
704
00:34:43.157 --> 00:34:45.190
but I can see that if I break this down,
705
00:34:45.190 --> 00:34:46.470
that this is all sort of, you know,
706
00:34:46.470 --> 00:34:48.870
the rule of thirds and triangles, even,
707
00:34:48.870 --> 00:34:52.530
there's three triangles in the shot at least.
708
00:34:52.530 --> 00:34:54.320
Got there by pure instinct.
709
00:34:54.320 --> 00:34:58.280
Yes, I don't think about, you know, that kind of thing.
710
00:34:58.280 --> 00:35:02.743
I mean, if you've seen a lot of, you know, good movies,
711
00:35:07.621 --> 00:35:12.621
compositional ideas or what's aesthetically appealing
712
00:35:13.960 --> 00:35:17.543
just kind of becomes sort of ingrained, I guess.
713
00:35:19.230 --> 00:35:21.280
Yeah, and people bring their own metaphors,
714
00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:26.060
and I think actually this one is quite a good one for that.
715
00:35:26.060 --> 00:35:29.630
This sort of window that you're all giving us actually
716
00:35:29.630 --> 00:35:32.310
into your time in Shanghai,
717
00:35:32.310 --> 00:35:35.360
but this was with a different camera, wasn't it?
718
00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:38.430
Yeah, this was the Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera.
719
00:35:38.430 --> 00:35:41.040
So I was trying to find the Yangtze river,
720
00:35:41.040 --> 00:35:43.410
which was for this series I've been doing
721
00:35:43.410 --> 00:35:44.880
on China's longest river.
722
00:35:44.880 --> 00:35:47.130
I was in Chongqing, which is this
723
00:35:47.130 --> 00:35:49.780
booming mountain city on the Yangtze
724
00:35:49.780 --> 00:35:52.593
and also Jingzhou where these two rivers converge.
725
00:35:53.540 --> 00:35:57.052
I mean, I think, well, including the rural population
726
00:35:57.052 --> 00:35:58.870
there's about 35 million people
727
00:35:58.870 --> 00:36:01.203
in this sort of city municipality.
728
00:36:02.451 --> 00:36:05.200
So yeah, anyway, these guys were laying plumbing
729
00:36:05.200 --> 00:36:08.035
and this is an awning of a construction site.
730
00:36:08.035 --> 00:36:10.980
So it just came across as, oh, wow, this is a great shot.
731
00:36:10.980 --> 00:36:14.840
But the workers noticed me and thought oh,
732
00:36:14.840 --> 00:36:16.710
what was this foreigner doing this with a camera
733
00:36:16.710 --> 00:36:18.450
and just don't see many of them
734
00:36:18.450 --> 00:36:21.140
around here or whatever, and I just had to wait
735
00:36:21.140 --> 00:36:24.740
until they got back to work, and then I took this shot.
736
00:36:24.740 --> 00:36:26.600
And then when one of them walked through the door,
737
00:36:26.600 --> 00:36:29.850
I took another shot, but this one's better.
738
00:36:29.850 --> 00:36:31.440
So yeah, this has been published quite a bit,
739
00:36:31.440 --> 00:36:36.440
and won the EPSON International Pano Award's
740
00:36:38.920 --> 00:36:41.870
prize for the best film capture, because it's shot on film.
741
00:36:44.020 --> 00:36:46.230
Hey, it looks great, and as a large print, actually,
742
00:36:46.230 --> 00:36:49.763
that was in the exhibition last week.
743
00:36:51.700 --> 00:36:53.420
Now we've got about five minutes left
744
00:36:53.420 --> 00:36:54.530
and we've got a bit of a treat
745
00:36:54.530 --> 00:36:56.350
for everyone to finish off with.
746
00:36:56.350 --> 00:37:00.592
So you've been shooting Shanghai fashion week,
747
00:37:00.592 --> 00:37:03.336
haven't you Dave, tell us about that.
748
00:37:03.336 --> 00:37:04.400
Yeah, for about 10 years.
749
00:37:04.400 --> 00:37:06.800
When I came to Shanghai, the first publication
750
00:37:06.800 --> 00:37:08.420
I worked for was Women's Wear Daily.
751
00:37:08.420 --> 00:37:09.740
I'm still shooting for them now.
752
00:37:09.740 --> 00:37:11.250
And over the last three seasons,
753
00:37:11.250 --> 00:37:13.600
I've started shooting for US Vogue.
754
00:37:13.600 --> 00:37:17.286
So I go out and shoot what people are wearing.
755
00:37:17.286 --> 00:37:21.100
The WWD also sometimes shoot general coverage of shows,
756
00:37:21.100 --> 00:37:22.320
I might have to shoot runway and shoot
757
00:37:22.320 --> 00:37:24.210
all the looks of its new collection,
758
00:37:24.210 --> 00:37:26.454
and also do a day of this,
759
00:37:26.454 --> 00:37:27.530
but this was eight days straight,
760
00:37:27.530 --> 00:37:30.100
mostly for Vogue, I mean, I also was shooting
761
00:37:30.100 --> 00:37:31.580
for a market research company,
762
00:37:31.580 --> 00:37:33.455
which was interested in jewellery.
763
00:37:33.455 --> 00:37:36.110
So I was doing jewellery details as well.
764
00:37:36.110 --> 00:37:37.160
So I was pretty busy.
765
00:37:38.320 --> 00:37:42.040
And these were in Xinxi, yeah.
766
00:37:42.040 --> 00:37:44.220
So I shoot outside the shows.
767
00:37:44.220 --> 00:37:46.960
I mean, it's sort of, that's actually just on my street
768
00:37:46.960 --> 00:37:51.430
and these, yeah, I just saw them walking down the street
769
00:37:51.430 --> 00:37:53.571
and I thought, oh, so I positioned myself
770
00:37:53.571 --> 00:37:55.750
to capture them crossing the street.
771
00:37:55.750 --> 00:37:58.520
And then I asked the girl on the lift
772
00:37:58.520 --> 00:37:59.680
if I could take her portrait.
773
00:37:59.680 --> 00:38:04.041
But in Vogue they tend to want people moving
774
00:38:04.041 --> 00:38:07.166
and they like colour, but head-to-toe black
775
00:38:07.166 --> 00:38:12.166
might run down there but they wanna avoid that.
776
00:38:17.350 --> 00:38:19.720
There are a few more from fashion week.
777
00:38:19.720 --> 00:38:21.588
So there's actually-
778
00:38:21.588 --> 00:38:22.930
Apparently she used to tie up girls
779
00:38:22.930 --> 00:38:27.930
to the Japanese photographer, Araki, apparently,
780
00:38:28.021 --> 00:38:28.920
that's one you see here,
781
00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:33.313
she's Australian, Chinese, Japanese, yeah, Leah.
782
00:38:37.180 --> 00:38:40.740
So there are over 200 of these on the Vogue website.
783
00:38:40.740 --> 00:38:42.780
And I think Matt's gonna share a link for everyone
784
00:38:42.780 --> 00:38:45.210
because this is only a little taste of the amazing,
785
00:38:45.210 --> 00:38:46.612
if you're into fashion,
786
00:38:46.612 --> 00:38:50.450
the amazing fashion that Dave got to shoot
787
00:38:50.450 --> 00:38:54.040
eight days straight at Shanghai fashion week.
788
00:38:54.040 --> 00:38:56.370
And there's just one last series we wanted to share,
789
00:38:56.370 --> 00:38:59.249
isn't there, that you have included
790
00:38:59.249 --> 00:39:01.663
at the Shanghai Photo Fair.
791
00:39:03.730 --> 00:39:07.340
Yeah, so there's an exhibition on, well,
792
00:39:07.340 --> 00:39:09.620
I'm not in Shanghai, sort of a bit of a spin-off
793
00:39:09.620 --> 00:39:13.033
with this book that's being launched.
794
00:39:13.890 --> 00:39:18.422
Liu Heung Shing is a famous Chinese photographer.
795
00:39:18.422 --> 00:39:19.860
He was used to be with AP.
796
00:39:19.860 --> 00:39:21.290
It was posted all over the world,
797
00:39:21.290 --> 00:39:24.433
photographs full of the Soviet Union, Tiananmen Square,
798
00:39:25.438 --> 00:39:28.416
Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan,
799
00:39:28.416 --> 00:39:31.679
a lot of wars, also sort of entertainment.
800
00:39:31.679 --> 00:39:33.910
You'll see his byline appear
801
00:39:33.910 --> 00:39:36.020
in newspapers still quite regularly.
802
00:39:36.020 --> 00:39:38.818
I mean like a file photo of Prince in concert,
803
00:39:38.818 --> 00:39:41.606
or there was the sort of Australia celebrating
804
00:39:41.606 --> 00:39:44.373
their World Cup win I think back in the nineties.
805
00:39:45.290 --> 00:39:47.900
Yeah, but anyway, he put this thing together
806
00:39:47.900 --> 00:39:51.040
and he wanted to show this sort of
807
00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:53.990
element of modern Shanghai, because they didn't really
808
00:39:53.990 --> 00:39:56.497
have these pictures of the whole sort of
809
00:39:56.497 --> 00:39:58.310
selfie thing in the archive.
810
00:39:58.310 --> 00:40:00.820
So this is how I ended up doing it after first going out
811
00:40:00.820 --> 00:40:02.580
and doing it sort of reportage style
812
00:40:02.580 --> 00:40:05.502
because you could go to certain streets and you know,
813
00:40:05.502 --> 00:40:10.410
everyone's got a phone and guys are taking photos
814
00:40:10.410 --> 00:40:12.931
of their girlfriends and girls are hanging out
815
00:40:12.931 --> 00:40:14.934
and just sort of sharing the camera around
816
00:40:14.934 --> 00:40:16.860
and posing in front of various
817
00:40:16.860 --> 00:40:19.264
sort of, you know, photo spots.
818
00:40:19.264 --> 00:40:21.570
But that wasn't really quite what he wanted.
819
00:40:21.570 --> 00:40:23.170
So he said, can you shoot it a bit more
820
00:40:24.010 --> 00:40:25.390
like you do for Vogue.
821
00:40:25.390 --> 00:40:28.420
So I thought I'd seek out people who are, yeah,
822
00:40:28.420 --> 00:40:30.949
mainly sort of almost professional selfie takers,
823
00:40:30.949 --> 00:40:34.059
some of these are of influencers and fashion bloggers.
824
00:40:34.059 --> 00:40:34.892
So, yeah.
825
00:40:34.892 --> 00:40:37.150
And the idea of I thought that I might be able to get
826
00:40:37.150 --> 00:40:42.150
their selfies and sort of somehow use them together,
827
00:40:42.480 --> 00:40:45.240
but that didn't really gel as an idea.
828
00:40:45.240 --> 00:40:47.400
This is a Daisy Dai, a fashion blogger from Hong Kong
829
00:40:47.400 --> 00:40:49.853
and she's a former contestant in Miss Hong Kong.
830
00:40:51.485 --> 00:40:54.200
The next one is Zoe, she's a model.
831
00:40:54.200 --> 00:40:57.253
She did a lot of shows this fashion week.
832
00:40:57.253 --> 00:41:01.500
I actually met her at four a.m. with her ex-boyfriend
833
00:41:01.500 --> 00:41:04.999
drinking in front of the, I guess, a convenience store.
834
00:41:04.999 --> 00:41:07.250
And I took a photo with this point and shoot camera
835
00:41:07.250 --> 00:41:10.332
and sent it to them and they really, really, liked it.
836
00:41:10.332 --> 00:41:12.610
I actually posted it on my Instagram.
837
00:41:12.610 --> 00:41:15.972
So I've photographed her a couple of times since then.
838
00:41:15.972 --> 00:41:18.255
And I thought, she's very photogenic,
839
00:41:18.255 --> 00:41:21.040
so I thought she'd be good to include in this.
840
00:41:21.040 --> 00:41:23.968
Yeah, it's a really great series.
841
00:41:23.968 --> 00:41:27.860
They're really evocative portraits
842
00:41:27.860 --> 00:41:29.930
of that particular lifestyle
843
00:41:29.930 --> 00:41:32.530
that all of those people are living in.
844
00:41:32.530 --> 00:41:35.804
Yeah, I was really captivated by them
845
00:41:35.804 --> 00:41:38.620
when you shared them with us.
846
00:41:38.620 --> 00:41:40.850
So we've only got a minute or so remaining,
847
00:41:40.850 --> 00:41:43.790
but I have to finish off Dave by asking you what's next,
848
00:41:43.790 --> 00:41:46.240
what's your next project, what's your next shoot?
849
00:41:49.516 --> 00:41:52.090
Yeah, might be going to Shaanxi province for something.
850
00:41:52.090 --> 00:41:54.335
It's an environmental story.
851
00:41:54.335 --> 00:41:58.637
I mean, that's just, I have to see if that'll be confirmed.
852
00:42:00.836 --> 00:42:03.670
I mean, this paper, I think Greta Thunberg
853
00:42:03.670 --> 00:42:06.813
is going to be the guest editor of some issues.
854
00:42:06.813 --> 00:42:08.880
She's been pushing them to put
855
00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:12.090
more environmental stories up there.
856
00:42:12.090 --> 00:42:15.550
So I did one which was page one of tree planting
857
00:42:15.550 --> 00:42:20.550
in Guangzhou and the reforestation of this area,
858
00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:22.440
I mean, in terms of producing carbon,
859
00:42:22.440 --> 00:42:26.397
had even surprised scientists as being really effective.
860
00:42:26.397 --> 00:42:29.510
So the opportunity to travel to all these different corners
861
00:42:29.510 --> 00:42:32.910
of China for work is something I love about being here.
862
00:42:32.910 --> 00:42:34.530
So hopefully that'll happen.
863
00:42:34.530 --> 00:42:37.970
Otherwise I'm shooting a sort of jazz Christmas party
864
00:42:37.970 --> 00:42:39.620
at this outrageous hotel.
865
00:42:39.620 --> 00:42:41.930
I'm sort of producing that shoot, and I think my wife
866
00:42:41.930 --> 00:42:43.620
is gonna be the lead photographer on that.
867
00:42:43.620 --> 00:42:47.515
And I'll be doing the video and even editing the video
868
00:42:47.515 --> 00:42:49.370
'cause the budget's a bit low,
869
00:42:49.370 --> 00:42:50.870
and I'll have to do it myself.
870
00:42:51.806 --> 00:42:54.010
Oh, well, that's a great answer to end.
871
00:42:54.010 --> 00:42:55.410
Thank you so much, Dave,
872
00:42:55.410 --> 00:42:58.240
that's been just a brilliant journey for all of us
873
00:42:58.240 --> 00:43:00.487
and a great insight into your work
874
00:43:00.487 --> 00:43:03.900
and your life as a photographer living in Shanghai.
875
00:43:03.900 --> 00:43:06.867
So I think Gill, I'm handing back to you.
876
00:43:06.867 --> 00:43:08.686
Thanks so much.
877
00:43:08.686 --> 00:43:11.310
Thank you all for having me.
878
00:43:11.310 --> 00:43:13.470
Thanks so much, Penny and Dave, that was really
879
00:43:13.470 --> 00:43:16.350
such a fascinating variety of work that you do.
880
00:43:16.350 --> 00:43:19.310
I mean, you know, environmental shoots to jazz parties,
881
00:43:19.310 --> 00:43:20.890
you know, Christmas parties,
882
00:43:20.890 --> 00:43:22.600
it's just such a broad range of things.
883
00:43:22.600 --> 00:43:25.040
I can see why you think that Shanghai
884
00:43:25.040 --> 00:43:26.640
is the centre of the world.
885
00:43:26.640 --> 00:43:31.126
Just sounds an incredible melting pot of people
886
00:43:31.126 --> 00:43:34.540
and places and photographic subjects.
887
00:43:34.540 --> 00:43:35.960
So thank you so much for giving up
888
00:43:35.960 --> 00:43:38.450
so much time to talk to us about that today.
889
00:43:38.450 --> 00:43:40.559
Photography is the theme of the month,
890
00:43:40.559 --> 00:43:42.670
this month for the Portrait Gallery,
891
00:43:42.670 --> 00:43:45.277
because we've reopened now after lockdown.
892
00:43:45.277 --> 00:43:48.630
Our Living Memory: National Photographic Portrait Prize
893
00:43:48.630 --> 00:43:51.060
has been extended until the 16th of January.
894
00:43:51.060 --> 00:43:54.340
So I hope that some of you in Australia may be able
895
00:43:54.340 --> 00:43:56.710
to make it here to Canberra to see that exhibition
896
00:43:56.710 --> 00:43:58.950
before it finishes, if not jump on our website,
897
00:43:58.950 --> 00:44:01.316
portrait.gov.au, and check out all of the finalists
898
00:44:01.316 --> 00:44:04.330
and vote for your favourite in this year's exhibition.
899
00:44:04.330 --> 00:44:06.660
Also the call for entries for next year's
900
00:44:06.660 --> 00:44:09.610
National Photographic Portrait Prize has opened.
901
00:44:09.610 --> 00:44:11.873
So photographers out there,
902
00:44:11.873 --> 00:44:15.523
get your cameras snapping and get your entries in for that.
903
00:44:15.523 --> 00:44:17.850
And hopefully we'll see some of your works
904
00:44:17.850 --> 00:44:21.370
on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery in 2022.
905
00:44:21.370 --> 00:44:23.230
Jump on our website also if you'd like to find out
906
00:44:23.230 --> 00:44:24.900
what programmes are coming up.
907
00:44:24.900 --> 00:44:26.819
Next week in the photography themed
908
00:44:26.819 --> 00:44:29.060
Thursday lunchtime sessions,
909
00:44:29.060 --> 00:44:31.487
we will be talking to Scottish, Australian,
910
00:44:31.487 --> 00:44:35.700
and now Parisian based artist, photographer, Nikki Toole.
911
00:44:35.700 --> 00:44:37.130
So please don't miss that one.
912
00:44:37.130 --> 00:44:40.020
It'll be a fantastic conversation with her next week.
913
00:44:40.020 --> 00:44:42.130
Until next time, stay safe.
914
00:44:42.130 --> 00:44:43.995
And thank you so much for joining us today.
915
00:44:43.995 --> 00:44:45.513
Take care, bye bye.