 | OBITUARY: DAVID MOORE ANTHONY BROWELL REMEMBERS DAVID MOORE, ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S MOST SIGNIFICANT PHOTOGRAPHERS.
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David Moore, portrait by Anthony Browell.
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David Moore, portrait by Anthony Browell.
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David Moore, portrait by Anthony Browell.
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WHEN DAVID MOORE DIED at the end of January this year, his family lost a muchloved
father, we lost a good friend, and many photographers lost an encouraging mentor.
Australia also lost not just a great Australian, but one of our best and most important
photographers. David was a father to Australian photography, in the same way that Robert
Klippel was father to sculpture, Fred Williams to painting, and Gordon Andrews to design.
David called it quits on 23 January 2003, a couple of days before his retrospective show
was to open at the National Gallery: he had become so weakened by cancer, that he couldn’t
get to Tasmania for his customary summer holiday there. He had, however, chosen one of his
favourite places – Balls Head Reserve on a Sydney Harbour headland near his home – for his
memorial service, where his family and friends gathered to say goodbye.
For more than fifty years, David produced standout work, for clients and for himself. But,
most importantly, this body of work advanced the recognition and awareness of photography in
this country. Through the Australian Centre for Photography, which he founded with Wes
Stacey and others in 1974, his many exhibitions and nine books, he promoted the appreciation
and importance of photography. He prepared the ground, laid the paths, for photographers who
would follow him. There are many who value their moments with him, and whose careers and
life paths have been enhanced by his own experience, advice and generosity.
Always one to have a project under way, David was an ordered man, a pragmatic fellow
who laid out plans, assembled the necessary elements, and went about achieving his visions.
Planning, production, preservation, promotion, he made sure he got it all right. He was
admired by his peers for his ability to consistently do great work, to promote that work
elegantly, and to stay a contemporary artist and photographer; to always be a man of his time.
Growing up with an architect father and brother, and working as assistant to Max Dupain,
David developed a respect for architecture, particularly architecture in a built-form-in-thelandscape
sense.
Following his return to Sydney in 1958, after seven years establishing an international
reputation with the photojournalist magazines in Europe and America, David set about
illustrating to Australians the value of the their own visual arts, and one of his, and Craig
McGregor’s, first projects became the classic 1969 publication, In The Making.
During the 1960s, 70s, and the early 80s, he photographed with many architects,
including John Andrews, Col Madigan, Ian MacKay and especially Philip Cox, with whom he
expressed his passion for the Australian vernacular in the 1999 book Functional Tradition.
Never one to be distracted by fashions or trends, he was uncomfortable with large format
photography, preferring to shoot more freely and exploratively with medium format or 35 mm.
One of David’s last projects, a photographic essay covering the construction of the Glebe
Island (Anzac) Bridge, brought together all his skills – as an artist, a photojournalist, a
portraitist, an architectural illustrator – in all, as a marvellous visual storyteller.
Much has been written about David’s life in photography since his death, but there was
another life, and another man altogether at home in the workshop, in the shed, and in the
bush, down in Tasmania. David and his partner Toni McDowell restored a small but proud
collection of timber buildings in their other home there. David reckoned he could make
anything, and indeed did, including a wetland area, complete with a water-pumping windmill.
He made stone walls, a canoe, a Jimmy Possum chair. He repaired or restored anything he felt
was of importance, and was never happier than when pottering around, making things work,
or finding something wonderful somewhere unexpected.
Despite all his achievements, David would think that his life had been cut short, that
there would always be pictures to take, things to make, and days to enjoy.
His legacy is in the vast body of work he left us, and maybe in one of his favourite
sayings, “Wouldn’t be dead for quids!”.
He is survived by his partner of 24 years, Toni McDowell, four children with his former
wife Jenny Blain, and six grandchildren.
ANTHONY BROWELL IS A SYDNEY-BASED PHOTOGRAPHER. HE WOULD LIKE TO THANK TONI MCDOWELL, DAVID POTTS, JOHN GOLLINGS, LISA JASPRIZZA AND PHILIP COX FOR THEIR ASSISTANCE IN PUTTING THESE THOUGHTS TOGETHER.
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