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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | RADAREXHIBITION MELBOURNE MID CENTURY
| Dianna Snape speaks to Mark Strizic about life, photography and his recent exhibition. |
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Photographs from Mark Strizic’s Melbourne Mid
Century exhibition.
On the Public Library Steps,
1956.
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Queens Arcade – 5, 1957.
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Near the Intersection of Victoria and Exhibition
Streets, 1956.
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Block Arcade – 1, 1964.
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Mark Strizic’s Melbourne Mid Century
exhibition is a collection of his silver
gelatin prints and large-scale digitized
fabric banners. It presents an evocative
assortment of images of Melbourne and its
inhabitants taken between 1954 and 1969,
captured with sensitivity to his subjects
and their environment.
At 78, Mark is a talented photographic
artist whose diverse career has spanned
almost fifty years, challenging him to
embrace some of photography’s most
significant technological advances.
From the black-and-white era to the
introduction of colour film and today’s
digital revolution, Mark has incorporated
these new tools into his work and has
continued to expand his craft.
His fascination with collecting Melbourne
images began decades ago and was
motivated by a book of images his father, a
professor of architecture in Croatia, took of
Zagreb. “Never being a photographer, he
took brilliant photographs. My father was
an architect and a professor of architecture.
He was an immensely talented man who
spoke several languages quite fluently. He
was extremely well read; he played music
and knew more about music than me.”
Mark was born in Berlin in 1928. His
family fled Germany in 1934 as soon as
Hitler became Chancellor. They settled in
Zagreb, Croatia, where Mark studied
geology for two years before studying
physics. “I wanted to solve these problems
that Einstein couldn’t solve – which was an
idiotic idea, like all young people’s ideas.
I couldn’t add up, let alone solve, any
complicated problems, but if there was a
philosophical idea behind it, then I was
interested. In logic and in philosophy, and
in thinking about right and wrong, in seeing
whether the law is bad or good. So logic and
thinking, philosophy was my forte.”
Mark immigrated to Melbourne in 1950
and it was here that his curiosity about
photography began. “When my father saw
my first photographs he said forget about
physics, you are a photographer. Eventually
I was so busy with photography I had no
time to study.”
The social variance between Melbourne
and Europe is reflected in some of the
scenes and moments captured in the
exhibition. “The man sitting on the library
steps – it is so incongruous in terms of
European feeling. Europeans have a great
sense of respect for institutions, whether it
be a government or a public library or an
opera house. The first thing they did after
bombing was repair the opera house. They
didn’t worry about the houses or streets; it
was the opera house. I wouldn’t dare do this
in Europe, sit on the steps – maybe now, but
not in those days. Australia is so rich, yet
the public spaces are so poor. Where is the
opera house? There isn’t any opera house.
Zagreb’s opera house is an enormous
structure, it is in the middle of a huge space
and there is little space in Europe.”
Mark attributes this difference to the fact
that the intellectual aspects of human
endeavour were highly appreciated in
Europe, rather than the physical. “All the
books I read as a schoolboy in Croatia were
from writers whose theme was to raise
yourself out of your level of society, for a
peasant to become an intellectual. That was
the main aspect of struggle in Europe. Here
they couldn’t care less whether you are a
plumber or a professor of physics.”
When I view these eloquent moments
captured with such precise timing, I am
curious as to the photographer’s experience,
particularly today when our visual palette is
overloaded with manipulated and staged
imagery. Mark looks up and responds to two
images in front of us. “I wasn’t looking at
this lady waiting for her to scratch her nose;
the only thing I was worried about was
verticality, parallel lines – because I
wouldn’t accept that. And there is a hobo
walking up Exhibition Street – this is one of
those moments when I said to myself, that’s
got to be done because that is nowhere but
here, an old man carrying his entire
possessions on his shoulders and he is
going to the soup kitchen.”
Mark’s first job as a photographer was
through Len French (“Lenny Boy we used
to call him”), the artist who designed the
ceiling of the great hall in the National
Gallery of Victoria. “He was exhibitions
officer at the National Gallery and he got me
a job producing photographs that reflect the
themes of the famous painters exhibiting
at the National Gallery.”
Renowned in architectural circles for his
collaboration with Robin Boyd on the book
Living in Australia, Mark is equally
recognized for his portraits, commercial and
advertising assignments and large-scale
conceptual murals. His images are part of
the collections of the National Gallery of
Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria
and the Monash Gallery of Art.
Mark’s career has blurred the great
delineation between the commercial
photographer and the art photographer.
“Architectural photography, that’s an
interesting thing. People are labelling me
as an architectural photographer. Time and
time again, I have said that curators are
trying to categorize you – oh, he’s a
Melbourne photographer, or he’s an
architectural photographer or he only
photographs advertising or so on and so
forth, forgetting that I’ve done the lot.
In other words, I can’t see the limit.
There’s not enough intellectual scope in
any one discipline of photography to keep
your interest. You can photograph a car as
well as you can photograph a lady and
that’s not the end of it. The end of it
is when you can control it by your own
photochemical machination, control the
colour and the form like you do now on
the computer. I find that computers are a
great, great drawback to the quality of
photography because most of the people
who handle computer imaging don’t
know about composition and don’t know
about the empathy of the audience, the
viewer. They haven’t got the feeling – how
will the viewer view this image? They go
so quickly through the images that it
becomes meaningless.
“A famous designer once said to me,
how do you photograph this ugliness,
this rubbish? Pointing to some cutlery or
crockery, whatever I had to do for an
advertisement. I said, it is not my job to
make aesthetic judgments, my job is to do
the best I can with the camera to show an
aspect of the object in such a way that
it will attract interest, irrespective of
its aesthetic.
“I was once advised that I was suffering
from anxiety. I’ve spent my life anxious
about whether there will be sun on the
building at 6.00 o’clock in the morning,
because later on you can’t photograph it.
Do I go 300 kilometres or do I stay home?
Do I do this job or do I do that job? Do I buy
this equipment or do I pay this bill? So it is
no wonder that I am anxious.” No matter
how Mark Strizic’s legacy is categorized, I
smile at this comment – these are the daily
anxieties of an architectural photographer.
DIANNA SNAPE IS AN ARCHITECTURAL
PHOTOGRAPHER BASED IN MELBOURNE.
THE MELBOURNE MID CENTURY IMAGES WERE
SELECTED BY DIANNA GOLD OF GALLERY 101,
101 COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE. THE
EXHIBITION RAN FROM 14 MARCH UNTIL 1 APRIL.
A SMALLER COLLECTION OF THE WORKS WILL BE
DISPLAYED IN THE FOYER OF 101 COLLINS STREET
IN THE COMING MONTHS.
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