It is interesting to recall the number of times, in book titles alone, that Max Dupain’s name has been linked to ‘Australia’. Joining Dupain’s own Max Dupain’s Australia (1986) and Max Dupain’s Australian Landscapes (1988), this new book is the third in a series by his former printer and assistant Jill White. Dupain’s Australians joins the similarly all-inclusive titles of Dupain’s Sydney (1999) and Dupain’s Beaches (2000). The pairing of Dupain with aspects of Australia says much about how we position this photographer as quintessentially ‘local’. Despite his evident contributions to modernism and, I would argue, classical modernism, it is Dupain’s apparent ability to capture a ‘national essence’ that still dominates accounts of his work.
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