Images of the Australian Male in Photography

The idea of the Australian male conjures up many images in people’s minds. The idea of the down-to-earth, rough as guts, honest, hardworking bloke is prevalent in most people’s minds today, but this is not true for everyone, nor has the stereotype been around forever. In fact, conceptions of the issue male have developed greatly from the time of our settlement until the present, and different artists have expressed these in many different ways in different eras and movements.

Soon after Australia was colonized, the British wanted to be able to see this new land through the use of photography. In this era, photography was used for purposes of documentation, often in a scientific context. However, in this era there was a prevalent mentality to the use of photography, now known as Colonialism, that rather than taking candid photographs or documenting an actual event or occurrence, artists would set up images, place people in the shots, tell them how to sit or stand in the photograph. This is partly because of the technology available in this era that required that the subject stay very still for a period of time while the photographs were taken and they would have to be in a comfortable pose and not move, or the image would blur.


However, colonial artists also strived to recreate an idealized image rather than an entirely truthful representation of the subject, to insert what their own idea of beauty was into the image rather than trying to find beauty in its natural state. One artist of this movement was John Lindt, whose image of The Noble Savage employs these ideas. This photograph taken in 1874 depicts and Australian Aboriginal man, seated, staring blankly at the camera. Although the impression is given that he is outdoors in his natural environment, he is actually in a set with a backdrop depicting the Australian landscape. The weapons he is carrying are not those traditionally used by Aboriginals and he is dressed in fur, another misrepresentation of Aboriginal dress. The artist has presented the Aboriginal man as what he feels this person should look like, almost like a stereotype of what a good native should be the Noble Savage.

Max Dupain, arguably one of Australians greatest photographic artists, has presented many images of the Australian male throughout the many years of his work. His style is of a modernist, which, in the Australian context, differs from the colonial style in that, the pioneer consciousness had evolved into a national consciousness and then it became the task of individual artists to look at the national identity and see what was relevant to each of them (Hoffert, 1993, pg 102). The time difference between the work of these two artists (Dupains work dates from to the 1920s up until recent times) means that the technology used in photography had advanced greatly. Photos can be snapped in a second, effectively capturing that moment in time, meaning that photographs no longer need to be set up, but can be taken from anywhere. This means that a true visual reality can be recreated rather than an idealized version as in the colonial style.

During the time of Dupains work, colour photography was also available; however even into the late 1980s he still used black and white photography, perhaps to capture a greater sense of form through the use of that tone; a use of chiaroscuro principals in a photographic context. In his 1988 photograph, Signalman Jack and his little lame dog, Orange Rail Station, he depicts a rotund man walking along a footpath with his tiny dog following behind as he glances back at it. I feel this work portrays a cultural change in Australian men in this era. During the late 80s and early 90s there was a great deal of campaigning done to promote fitness amongst the Australian public, known as Life be in it. The campaign was promoted by a cartoon character named Norm, a large man of similar build to Jack, designed to represent the current physical and mental state of Australian men regarding health and fitness. It was a time when many people began to understand the consequences of being unhealthy and tried to change their attitudes on life. Jack seems to be trying to exercise; his body shows a great deal of movement, apparently rapid, by the way that his body seems stretched horizontally. The dogs apparent confusion and unwillingness to follow in this strange new territory depicts the fact that this has not previously been a regular habit for the pair. The rail station behind them seems to represent the alternative transport, the more common transport, the norm.

However Jack, the Australian man depicted, is changing his attitude and exercising to improve his quality of life.

Tracey Moffat, another Australian photographic artist, frequently depicts the idea of the Australian man in her work. Her images are primarily post-modern, in that her style borrows on ideas of historical settings, features posed and placed subjects, and focuses largely on ideas and emotions. It is interesting to note that, although she tries to represent personal truth in her work, she employs the technique of staging photographs like the Colonialists rather than snapping from real life like the modernists. Unlike the colonialists who created false realities with this technique, Tracey uses this to create a heightened reality and a more accessible profound and multi-layered work. The bright colors featured in the work allude to this ultra-real environment. Although her characters are not entirely stereotypical there are elements of the expected persona in her characters.

For instance, in The wizard of Oz, 1956, an image from her 1994 series, Scarred For Life, she depicts an emotionally charged family scene. The caption adjoining the image, He was playing Dorothy in the schools production of the Wizard of Oz. His father got angry at him for getting dressed too early. (Moffat, 1994). A father sits by the stove facing away from the viewer with his pipe raised in a know-it-all pose while his son, dressed in a blue dress with a red wig stand in front of him with his head ashamedly bowed. This work and the collection it is part of describe traumatic scenes taken from the daily life of Australian children and young people during the sixties and seventies. Problems of sexual identity, feelings of inferiority are spotlighted in short narratives. (Wienhart, 1998 p.242)The image uses muted hues rather than chromatic realism and a grainy appearance to give the impression of an aged photograph, to highlight the fact that this is from another generation. These techniques have been allowed by further discoveries in the field of photography and would not have been available to some earlier artists. By detaching the image from the current reality we observe, she highlights the emotions behind the work, thus making it more accessible to the viewer. In this work, and others, Moffat uses a broad range of developing techniques to add meaning to the staged images.

While colonial technology was quite impressive in its day, technological advancements were essential for Moffats work as it is. Dupain, however, despite the technology available at the time, has taken a rather minimalist approach to the use of photography. It appears from these three works that there has been quite a turnaround in attitudes toward representing the Australian male over the last century or so. The colonial way of presenting images of what the issue male should be gave way to actual depiction of who men are by modern artists, whereas post-modern work such as Moffats explores the way that different attitudes towards masculinity have emotionally affected boys and men today.