There are no “stunning sunsets” in the work of Rennie Ellis, or “breathtaking” views. He never said, “There are no words.” If he witnessed something unusual, he wouldn’t have said, “It was like a movie.” Rennie hated flat, meaningless language and cliches, whether in his photography or his writing. And he never took a single cliched shot.

All of this helps to explain why Rennie has been described as one of Australia’s “most prolific and gifted social documenters”. He was an original. He didn’t care for the wide shot; he was about photographing the look on a face; the unposed moment of elation, excitement, apprehension. Someone showing off, someone bored.

These thoughts struck me when I recently went to the State Library of Victoria to see Melbourne Out Loud: Life through the lens of Rennie Ellis.

Rennie, who died in 2003 aged 62, was a brilliant Melbourne identity who photographed the city for decades. No event was complete without him. (Nearly a cliche there, sorry Rennie.) But while he loved Melbourne, Rennie took his camera everywhere. I was fortunate to watch him in action many years ago in Italy and northern Africa when we travelled together for a few weeks.

Read full article at https://www.theguardian.com/ar...

Neoclassical, pale-white Corinthian columns dominate the forecourt of the State Library of Victoria (SLV). I am here to attend Melbourne Out Loud, a retrospective of photography by Rennie Ellis. Instead, I am hypnotised by the grandeur of the building housing it. A statue of Supreme Court Judge and SLV co-founder Redmond Barry greets me as I ascend the steps from Swanston Street, flanked by the modern bronze figures of Joan of Arc and St George slaying the dragon. These reminders of Melbourne’s nineteenth-century haute bourgeoisie might seem at odds with the photography of Ellis, popularly known as a champion of the everyday. But the juxtaposition underscores the stakes of this exhibition: whose everyday appears in Australia’s visual history, and how might we see this history differently?

Born in the south-east suburb of Brighton in 1940, Ellis is known for his iconic images of Australian life, such as his black-and-white photos of 1970s subcultures (like the Melbourne Sharpies), his scenes of Australian beach life, and his documentation of the 1975 protests at Melbourne’s City Square following the Whitlam dismissal. Between 2010 and 2016 the SLV acquired more than half a million photographs by Ellis, including negatives that have resulted in twenty-five-thousand images becoming available online, and the production of two books: Decade: 1970 to 1980 (2013) and Decadent: 1980 to 2000 (2014) (both published by Hardie Grant Books in association with the SLV). The present exhibition—the first to draw from this collection—spans Ellis’s career from the 1970s, when he opened Brummels Gallery of Photography in Melbourne and published his photo-book Kings Cross, until his untimely death in 2003.

See full article at https://www.memoreview.net/rev...