This evocative image shows Dee Why, North Narrabeen and Cronulla Surf Lifesaving Clubs in a surf carnival. Clubs were pitted against one another to test their skills and compete in a variety of life-rescuing scenarios.

Photographers Beverley Clifford and husband Ken, lived in the Northern Beaches area in Sydney during their professional careers. They collaborated on various projects and government and commercial photographic commissions. Ken also worked as a photographer at the University of Sydney in the medical imaging department with friend and artist Sydney Woodward-Smith. The Clifford’s contributed images for a number of books on Australia, including Camera in Australia, published in 1970, which also illustrated work by Max Dupain, Kerry Dundas, David Moore, and Wolfgang Sievers.

Reference: Manly Daily, 30 July 2013

Another example is held in AGNSW with date ‘1940’ and comment “Dupain said of his day at Manly beach “actions like this have to be anticipated; in this case by me standing out in the surf with camera and waiting for the start. One shot only —I had to be lucky and I was” (Dupain 1986).

This image, along with The Sunbaker (1937), Bondi (1939) and At Newport (1952) is one of Dupain’s most famous and revered images.

This rare vintage photograph of body-surfing from the 1920s is one of the earliest depictions of Australian lads taking to the waves. It is easy to forget that it wasn’t until the 1960s that Australians who didn’t live near the beach were more familiar with  public swimming pools and certainly less confident and accomplished swimmers than they are today.

“Many visitors (to the beach) contented themselves with paddling, but enough braved the surf in ignorance to keep the life-savers busy and elevate them to the status of bronzed gods”.

Jill White, Dupain’s Beaches, Chapter & Verse, 2000, p. 92.

The collection of Ray Leighton;
Private collection, Sydney

After the second world war, Leighton opened his own
photographic studio in Grosvenor Street, specialising in
fashion – especially swimsuits – advertising, and general
commercial photography. His reputation as one of the
top swimsuit photographers began early in his career and
recall the days when not only photographers but models,
too, had to improvise.

Ever a ladies man it would seem, The Sydney Morning
Herald noted in Leighton’s obituary that at his “surprise
75th birthday party he must have been in seventh
heaven: a photograph shows a smiling Ray surrounded
by his guests – no men, but 31 extraordinarily attractive,
beautifully dressed women.”

Image shows Pat Crum, Lillian Galvin, Pam Toyer, Pam
Inch and (Lillian’s sister) Dorothy Galvin on hollow
boards at Manly. This photograph was printed from an
inter-neg in 1998 for Leighton’s agent, Josef Lebovic.

The collection of Jeff Carter;
Private collection, Sydney

Only a handful of these vintage 1960s surfing
images by the artist survive.

Gladstone Gallery, San Francisco;

Sotheby’s New York, 1 November 2003, Lot No. 643;

Private collection, Sydney

This late 1960s image depicts the Tug Warunda helping a ship berth at the Sydney Cove Passenger Terminal opposite the Opera House, which was still several years from completion.

The artist’s views of ‘old Sydney’ to contemporary eyes are among his most dynamic and historically fascinating. Dupain disliked the city’s growing skyscrapers in later years, describing them as “filing cabinets for humans”. In his views of Sydney from the 1930s and 1940s a great empathy becomes apparent for the architecture of the past. Further evidence of Dupain’s love for historic building’s manifests in his beautiful publication Old Colonial Buildings of Australia, Methuen Australia, 1980.

As one of Australia’s greatest and most influential Modernists, Max Dupain re-shaped Australian photography over the course of his career from the 1930s until his death in 1992.