Warragul Arts Studios and Gallery, a locall contemporary art gallery, is celebrating its 5th anniversary. As part of the event, I have been asked to give a talk about my career in the arts. Preparing for the talk has given me an excuse to reflect on my unlikely professional history and how luck, curiousity, the ability to adapt and a strong work ethic propelled my career.
My upbringing was a mixture of creativity and puritanism. The creativity came from our mother who was interested in fashion, interior design, theatre, music and art. There were craft projects. One time, she brought home two, large, galvanized metal milk cans that we painted and decorated. Another time, we printed Christmas cards from a lino cut with rows of prints pegged on crisscrossing ropes in the basement. She framed our best artworks from school and proudly hung them over the mantlepiece in the living room. We enjoyed trips to see musical theatre in New Jersey and on Broadway. We saw the popular singer Robert Goulet perform in Camelot and the nimble Joel Grey in George M. There was a memorable trip to see the celebrated actress and singer Angela Landsbury perform in Auntie Mame on Broadway.
The puritanical influence came from our father, a mechanical engineer, who expressed suspicion of liberal attitudes and aligned himself with the conservative values of the Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (who ran for President in 1964) and The John Birch Society, an American right-wing political advocacy group. Our father never accompanied us on our trips to New York City since he worked there every day and didn’t enjoy it. I can’t remember him ever joining us to go to the theatre or any cultural expeditions, except one time when went to the 1964 New York City World’s Fair. He had contributed to the design of one of the early manned space capsules on display at the fair’s U.S. Space Park.
But my point being is that a career in the arts was never discussed when I was in high school. There were vague discussions around me pursuing a career in physical education since I was a good all-round athlete but this didn’t particulary appeal to me. I enjoyed sports but this was before there were athletic scholarships for women and there were no professional opportunities for women besides teaching. It was practical but it still seemed like a compromise.
My eventual career in the arts after graduating from college was the result of many different influences and opportunities. I couldn’t have predicted my career as a community photographer and photojournalist, but for me, it was a winning combination of art, science, change and chance. I enjoyed the fast pace, physical movement, the changing environments and focusing on different people. It allowed me to examin things quickly and to shape what I saw. I saw photography as a visual medium to express ideas. I was always observing others, which was easy for me after my nomadic childhood and being the constant outsider.
After more than a decade working as a photographer in London and Australia, my passion for taking photographs diminished. I still enoyed looking at photographs and curating exhibitions but I was beginning to find the demands of clients frustrating and unreasonable. I insisted on retaining my negatives and this was becoming a contested issue amongst other things. So to earn a living, I began to concentrate on special project management with a cultural focus.
So moving forward, I still take pictures with my phone but I consider them ‘images’ rather than ‘photographs’. The difference being that the best photographs have depth and deeper meaning, while images from the phone frequently serve as place holders or illustrations. On the plus side, the phone camera is easily transportable and producing images costs nothing. When I take a picture now, I can please myself and not worry about whether an image has a serious intent or not. But this ease of access to the technology and the resulting quick product means that everyone now considers themselves a photographer. It is estimated that there was a whopping 2.1 trillion photographs taken globally in 2025 on smartphones. Taking an image on your phone today is like meeting the basic requirement to punctuate a sentence – important but not the reason for the communication. Whereas, a good photograph created in a darkroom gives the individual an opportunity to explore composition, variables of light and dark and tone that can result in a nuanced and thoughtful picture expressing an idea. Images reflect the surface, while a good photograph delves beneath it.
