AustLit

'Max Dupain, one of Australia’s most accomplished photographers, was filled with self-doubt. He told us so – repeatedly – in public commentary, especially during the 1980s, in the last years of his life. It is striking how candid he was, how personal, verging on the confessional, and how little attention we paid to what he said, either during his lifetime or since (he died in 1992, aged eighty-one).' (Introduction)

'Among the first decisions a biographer must face is where to start the narrative of their subject’s life and how to deal with chronology. Anne-Louise Willoughby chose to begin her biography of Australian artist Nora Heysen with a discussion of Transport driver, one of Heysen’s most celebrated paintings produced during Heysen’s stint as a war artist. Willoughby’s decision was sensible. It enabled her to stress from the outset that art was at the centre of Heysen’s life, and to signal some of her fundamental concerns. The aircraftwoman Heysen depicted is ‘a professional … strong, authoritative’, all of which applies to the artist herself. Willoughby’s biography celebrates Heysen’s considerable achievements, but it was also conceived as part of a larger project of restitution that redresses ‘the historical biases that have shadowed women’s contributions, in particular to Australian art’. The book adds to a slowly growing corpus of biographies of women artists; Jo Oliver’s Jessie Traill: A Biography, published in February 2020, is the most recent. In addition, it relates to institutional initiatives such as the National Gallery of Australia’s Know My Name exhibition (2020–21), which showcased the work of Australian women artists.' (Introduction)

'A landmark biography of a singular and important Australian photographer, Olive Cotton, by an award-winning writer - beautifully written and deeply moving.

'Olive Cotton was one of Australia's pioneering modernist photographers, a woman whose talent was recognised as equal to her first husband's, Max Dupain, and a significant artist in her own right. Together, Olive and Max could have been Australia's answer to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, or Ray and Charles Eames. The photographic work they produced during the 1930s and '40s was extraordinary and distinctively their own.

'But in the early 1940s Cotton quit their marriage and Sydney studio to live with second husband Ross McInerney and raise their two children in a tent on a farm near Cowra - later moving to a hut that had no running water, electricity or telephone. Despite these barriers, and not having access to a darkroom, Olive continued her photography but away from the public eye. Then a landmark exhibition in Sydney in 1985 shot her back to fame, followed by a major retrospective at the AGNSW in 2000. Australian photography would never be same.

'This is a moving and powerful story about talent, creativity and women, and about what it means for an artist to manage the competing demands of art, work, marriage, children and family.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.