Portrait photographer Robin Sellick guides us through three decades of capturing Australia’s cultural luminaries, from Don Dunstan’s poolside vulnerability to Kylie Minogue’s North Adelaide balcony moment, whilst we savour Beresford Wines’ elegant 2024 emblem Pinot Noir with winemaker John Gledhill and reflect on the loss of West End Brewery through an original musical tribute.
Robin Sellick arrived at Don Dunstan’s Norwood home in the early 1990s having accidentally addressed his letter to “Sir Donald Dunstan” – a mistake that could have ended the conversation before it began. Instead, it launched one of the most distinctive portrait photography careers in Australian cultural history. From that swimming pool session with our most colourful premier to intimate moments with Julia Gillard before her rise to power, Sellick’s lens has documented the moments when Australia stopped apologising for itself and started celebrating.
The SA Drink Of The Week features tasting notes of Beresford’s latest pinot noir, where winemaker John Gledhill guides us through savoury raspberry and that curious sensation Steve describes as “freshly cut red lawn” – a vintage perfect for the upcoming Pinot and Pasta Afternoon at McLaren Vale.
Our Musical Pilgrimage takes a melancholic turn with an original composition mourning the loss of the West End Brewery, capturing not just the building’s demolition but the dissolution of simple pleasures that once bound South Australian communities together.
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Running Sheet: Photographing Australian Icons With Robin Sellick
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:04:05 SA Drink Of The Week
Th SA Drink Of The Week is the Beresford Estate 2024 Emblem Pinot Noir.
Winemaker John Gledhill (from Gledhill Vignerons and our regular wine palate) joins Steve for the tasting of Beresford’s latest cool climate expression from Adelaide Hills fruit. The wine presents as light, translucent crimson with legs suggesting moderate alcohol content sitting around 12 to 12.5 percent. Steve’s unusual tasting note of “freshly cut red lawn” proves surprisingly apt, capturing the wine’s distinctive red fruit character that Gledhill translates as autumn leaves and forest floor earthiness.
The palate delivers a ball of fruit on entry followed by crisp acid structure, with minimal tannin creating what Gledhill describes as “soft and round” mouthfeel. The conversation flows naturally toward food pairing, with Gledhill suggesting tomato-based pasta dishes with mild salami and black olives – perfect for Beresford’s Pinot and Pasta Afternoon scheduled for September 13th at their McLaren Vale cellar door.
Pinot in the Pavillion tickets
00:13:05 Robin Sellick and The Sellick Archive
Robin Sellick started taking dog portraits in Broken Hill at 15, not knowing he’d spend the next three decades documenting Australia’s cultural coming of age. From Don Dunstan‘s Norwood loungeroom to Cate Blanchett‘s first editorial shoot, from Sir Donald Bradman‘s quiet Adelaide home to Kylie Minogue on a North Adelaide balcony, his lens captured the moments when we stopped apologising for being Australian and started celebrating it. His portraits hang in the National Portrait Gallery, but more than that, they’ve shaped how we see ourselves. Today, he’s releasing museum-grade collector editions from his archive of over 600+ portrait sessions via is website gallery, The Sellick Archive. What intrigues me about Robin is that he didn’t just document our stars, he helped create the visual language that made Australia look like somewhere that mattered.
The conversation begins with photography’s fundamental challenge: separating snapshot from art. “The key with photography is you have to be able to look at something emotionally and objectively within five seconds of the same thing,” Sellick explains, describing the mental gymnastics required to capture more than mere documentation. His journey from 15-year-old dog portrait photographer in Broken Hill to documenting Australia’s cultural awakening reveals an artist who understood that great portraiture demands risk-taking.
Sellick’s approach stems from Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment theory, but with a crucial difference. “Every photograph you take, you are in because you made a decision to point the camera in that direction,” he notes. Where photojournalism seeks objectivity, portraiture embraces collaboration. “A portrait is always a collaboration… you involve the person in that process.”
The Don Dunstan swimming pool photograph emerged from this collaborative boldness. Arriving at the Norwood home, Sellick complimented the pool, Dunstan mentioned his morning swim, and within moments South Australia’s most flamboyant premier was diving back into his Speedos. “I’m not there to take an ordinary photograph. I’m there to take a great photograph to the best of my ability,” Sellick recalls of his unflinching approach.
The technical mastery behind his distinctive 1990s look came from cross-processing slide film in colour negative chemicals – a technique discovered accidentally during his Broken Hill photo lab days. This created the hyperreal, saturated images that helped define Australian editorial photography. “Back then, the only photographic awards in Australia were through the Australian Institute of Professional Photography… they were still very much in the late seventies mindset. So these pictures that I produced were just right out of the box.”
His famous Julia Gillard portrait required different psychology. Photographing her in 2006 at her home, Sellick positioned her against a shed – traditionally masculine domain – lit with purple light. “It was an image about this woman stepping into the domain of men,” he explains. The prescience proved remarkable: within years she would become Australia’s first female Prime Minister.
The technical challenges of film photography created their own discipline. Shooting the Bradman portrait on 400 ASA film pushed five stops to 12,800 ASA created that distinctive grain, but it was calculated risk. “You underexpose it by five stops… 32 times underexposed,” he explains. “You’ve gotta walk across the high wire to get to the good stuff.”
The Kylie Minogue session broke new ground as the first major celebrity shoot conducted outside Sydney or Melbourne. Working from his Palmer Place mansion in North Adelaide, Sellick convinced Mushroom Records to trust Adelaide’s creative infrastructure. The balcony shot that became iconic was the day’s final frame, taken after the production machine dispersed. “I sent the assistants away and it was just her and me,” creating intimacy impossible amid the dozen-person entourage.
His approach to celebrities reveals portraiture’s deeper psychology. “You actually fall in love with the person while you’re taking their photograph… you go through the process of falling in love with them before the shoot, and then you’re in love with them while you’re taking the photograph. And then it’s over.”
The Steve Irwin elephant photograph required moving the elephant rather than the hyperactive conservationist. “Every time I started to take photographs, he started to perform… it was easier to move the elephant than it was to move Steve.” This anecdote captures Sellick’s ability to navigate celebrity psychology whilst maintaining his artistic vision.
Looking toward Australia’s photographic identity, Sellick identifies our cultural immaturity. “We still tend to celebrate mimicry rather than celebrate individuality and expression that expresses the identity of Australia.” He traces creative development through four stages: mimicry, experimentation, commitment, legacy. “We get stuck in that mimicry stage and we don’t seem to encourage experimentation.”
His current archive project offers museum-grade collector editions of more than 600 portrait sessions, using German papers and high-end giclée printing for works designed to last centuries. The photographs document not just individuals but Australia’s cultural coming of age – moments when a young nation found confidence to celebrate its own stories.
Robin Sellick, Facing (Hard Cover)
01:34:45 Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimate, we play a track by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos, Shout Your Mates Another Round, his reflection on the loss of the West End Brewery.
Steve Davis & The Virtualosos deliver a melancholic tribute to the demolished West End Brewery, mourning not just architecture but the simple pleasures that bound South Australian communities. The song weaves together memories of shared amber glass bottles, family tables where beer flowed freely, and the brewery’s role supporting local sports teams.
The composition balances nostalgia with acceptance, acknowledging that whilst West End “wasn’t great, it wasn’t best, but it was ours from east to west.” The Pickaxe bottle imagery connects to South Australia’s brewing heritage, when consortiums created shared glass manufacturing to serve multiple breweries across the state.
Steve’s personal connection deepened when his father revealed the family link: his grandfather worked at the original Hindley Street brewery before operations consolidated in Thebarton. This discovery adds genealogical weight to the cultural mourning, emphasising how industrial heritage intertwines with personal memory.
Here’s this week’s preview video
There is no featured video this week.
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.
An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)
420-The Adelaide Show
Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Hello, Steve Davis here. Welcome to episode 420 of the Adelaide Show. And we have another show that features Don Dunston, which is always a, a highlight in our calendar, but not just Don Dunston. Uh, sir Donald Bradman. Kylie Minogue, the list goes on. There are lots of, uh, people whose names are loom over us larger than life, including our former, uh, pm Julia Gillard.
They all get mentioned because we’re going to focus in on them through the lens of Robin Sellick. Robin is a portrait photographer as well as other things, but his specialty seems to be capturing unique portraits of unique humans. And, uh, he takes us through his whole approach to the photographs that he takes, how he sets them up, working with the subject that he’s shooting.
Some thoughts about film and some [00:01:00] technical things, but primarily it’s the art of trying to identify and capture the essence of a human at a point in time on their journey. Fascinating conversation and, uh, I hope you really enjoy it. He has work available on his website, which is the selic archive.com au, where you can buy some magnificent, large signed, uh, portraits for collectors.
And there are also some smaller versions that you can, uh, get for, for the rest of us who aren’t in the high echelons of having that really fine approach to art and hanging it upon our walls. Talking of fine, the rarefied echelons of achievement, uh, barford, uh, wines, I have to mention them at the moment because they’ve just released their latest pinot noir, their emblem, pinot noir, Adelaide Hills, uh, fruit involved in this.[00:02:00]
And to get the tasting spot on, I’ve brought in our wine maker, uh, John Gledhill, who’s lent his palate to this task. And as we mentioned in the tasting, uh, this coming Saturday, the time of recording the 13th of September, 2025 is the Pinot and Pasta Afternoon at Barford Wines in McLaren Vale. I’ll be there.
I hope to see you. And just returning full circle with this whole concept of icons and capturing icons. It’s not just people who become icons, buildings become icons, and I have a song in the musical pilgrimage that I’ve written about the West End Brewery and its loss to Adelaide and South Australia. So we will finish off with a song that hopefully captures the essence of that icon of South Australia[00:03:00]
Theme: refugees, lady
Steve Davis & The Virtualosos: who Brings It.
Theme: Holy
Lady.
Caitlin Davis: In the spirit of Reconciliation, the Adelaide Show Podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout South Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
Theme: Lady Lady. Lady Lady. Lady Lady[00:04:00]
Steve Davis: Barford Wines has just released its 2024 emblem Pinot Noir. It’s a cool climate expression of pinot hand prick picked fruit up in the Adelaide hills, uh, elegant, fresh, versatile. That’s how it’s described, and it’s out now. Now I should just note. This may or may not be heard by you in the lead up to the 13th of September, Saturday, the 13th of September, 2025.
They’re having their pinot in the Pavilion event at Barford, where you have pinot and pasta and just enjoy everything. Um, Barris Ford’s little Italian restaurant is, is what’s making the, the food available. Sounds like an absolute feast, but we have to taste this wine for the South Australian [00:05:00] drink of the week.
And to do that with me, I have wine maker at large, the wine maker from Gladhill Wines, John Gladhill, welcome back the A Late Show. Hi Steve. Thanks for having me again. Uh, look, I always appreciate your guiding palette, especially when I’m having a variety that you know, ’cause you know, my palette. Well, Pinot is not something I normally go for.
No, it’s not. I’ve had, I’ve tasted some magnificent pinot and a lot of bad pinot, and I believe, and you winemakers know this. If you are putting all the wine varieties in order of which ones have the least margin for error, that can go bad really quickly. Is Pinot one of the more tricky grapes to work with?
John Gledhill: It is, it’s probably one of the hardest varieties to grow and grow well, and, and even more so, one of the hardest varieties to make. Well, um, you know, a lot of people rely on all the adjunct, you know, oak and, and tannin and other additives to actually, you know, make their pinot [00:06:00] what it is. Um, so, uh, but looking at this one, it looks pretty good.
Steve Davis: Alright, well let’s start out tasting, but of course we’ve just opened the bottle. We’ve poured these glasses and you know what we have to do first? Yes. We have to toast our late patron Queen Adelaide. To the Queen. To the queen. Alright. Uh. Now on the nose, first of all, by the way, um, in the glass we’ve got those little legs running down the side of the glass.
I, which normally suggests a fairly hefty alcohol content, if I’m not mistaken. What’s this sitting at? About 13 and a half? No, a little bit
John Gledhill: lower. About
Steve Davis: probably 12, 12 and a half. See, I don’t normally get those. I thought the legs, those little, um, drippy smears on the side of the glass normally. Have I
John Gledhill: been wrong all my life?
No, you haven’t. Normally the, the longer the, the teardrops last, the, the higher the alcohol. Um, if you have a look at these though, they do, they do run down the glass relatively quickly, so, okay. Uh, it’s more a viscosity thing, I think. Alright.
Steve Davis: Uh, the, the color itself we are Oh, what would you, how would you [00:07:00] describe that?
John Gledhill: Uh, it’s quite, quite a light color, but, um, you know, quite vibrant still. It’s got a lot of, uh, nice light red jumping outta the glass. Yeah.
Steve Davis: I would describe it as a light, slightly translucent crimson. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Let’s call it Crimson. Alright. I don’t often just get yeses from you. That’s fantastic. Uh, now on the, no, hang on a moment.
I’m getting a few different things. So here they are, in fact, hang on. I need, I just need one more, John. Hang on. It’s fascinating radio, isn’t it? Um, I, okay. There is ra, um, like a savory raspberry. I don’t even know if that exists. I mean, raspberries are fairly tart and that’s on the tongue, but this is on the nose.
It’s a very savory
John Gledhill: raspberry. Yeah. Bit of savory, raspberry, uh, maybe, you know, some cherry bit of sour plum, you know, that’s that sumer plum. Yeah. Could be a bit of that.
Steve Davis: Um, oddly, [00:08:00] and you might just slap me down here and say, Steve, you have no idea what you say. Currents, I get the tiniest sense of current.
On my note. I mean, I don’t wanna overflow it. Is that even possible? Yeah,
John Gledhill: it’s possible. Yeah, of course it’s possible. You know, the, the red fruit profile, certainly, uh, moving into that, that current spectrum, um, you know, the, there various compounds that are, that are made in the variety. So, uh, certainly I, I personally, you know, don’t get a lot of current.
I get, I get a little bit more, you know, probably less savory than you and, and almost a little bit of confected fruit. Oh, rather not, not so much, you know, to the point of being stewy or jammy, but just that slight, um, you know, lolled raspberry and, um, you know, the, the cherry, um, Marino cherry kind of, uh, you know, that sweetness that you get from those.
Steve Davis: Well, the other thing I get now, this is a wild card. I’ve never used this descriptor before, but it’s, any way I can describe it, freshly cut. Red lawn. [00:09:00] Red lawn. I, I don’t, so it’s not grass, not grassy. It’s some sort of red lawn substitute made from all the red fruits that you could imagine. Freshly cut. So what I mean by that, and I wish sometimes I understood my brain more is, you know how when things are freshly cut, they give off their ar, the oils and everything.
But this is like red lawn. It’s like trying to describe licorice and talking about red licorice. This is red lawn that’s been freshly cut on my palate.
John Gledhill: I get, I get the red. Definitely. Uh, and the, the lawn, you know, it, I was, wasn’t gonna say lawn, but what I was thinking was more, you know, when you get those autumn leaves, the maple leaves that drop on the ground and they sit there and then as you rake them up, that smell you get Yep.
As you, as you pick them up and put ’em in the bin. You know, that, that to me is sort of, you know, I guess some people call, may call it like a forest floor, kind of, you know, earthiness. But you know, for me, I, I get, you know, more sort of, um, you know, those, those freshly fallen [00:10:00] leaves.
Steve Davis: Maybe that’s what I’m getting.
John Gledhill: Maybe. And that’s how I’ve described it. ’cause I’m very visual maybe. Yeah. You’re getting the, the red lawn and that’s and and yeah, that’s what I’m getting to.
Steve Davis: Alright. Throw someone to your palate. Let’s have a taste of, uh, this superb wine. I’m watching those legs again down the side of the glass. Uh, you’ve gone first, so tell me what you are experiencing.
John Gledhill: Um, I get a nice bit of, uh, sweetness just on the front of the palate. You get this sort of little ball of fruit on the entry of the palate, and then a bit of a, you know, nice acid line sort of coming through. Uh, giving you a bit of length on the, on the palate as well. I don’t find it overly tannic. A lot of, a lot of, um.
Pinot tends to have a fair bit of tannin because, you know, the, the makers will often ferment them on, on the stalks of the, the grape, and then you get a lot of green, harder tannin coming from that. I, I see a very bit of, you know, a little bit of punchiness, you know, um, whole bunch fermentation character in this perhaps, but I don’t see, you know, hugely, you know, uh, o overly green tannin.
So I’ll [00:11:00] say it. Right now,
Steve Davis: I’m getting zero tannin. I’m getting at, right at the end of my, at the end when it’s all disappeared. Uh, there’s a very faint tinge of green. Mm-hmm. But there is no tannin inside from my palate.
John Gledhill: Yeah, no, the uh, and for me, I find, yeah, that, that there’s no, not a lot of tannin, a little bit of tannin to give it some structure, but the, the, the overall mouth feel is, is quite soft and, and, and finishes a little bit round and, and, you know, I, I kind of like that myself.
So,
Steve Davis: so you like that on your paddle or you are a little bit like that? Well, I’m, I’m a bit soft and round as well, but, uh, yeah. Alright. Anything final that you’d say? I mean, the, the great people that Barford said, um, I think they said Roast Duck is a nice meal to have this with. What would you do?
John Gledhill: Yeah, duck.
I’m not a huge fan of duck, but, uh, yeah, I would, I would’ve a, you know, like a, a. A tomato pasta sauce, um, you know, like a maybe with, um, you know, some, some penne or uh, linguini or something like [00:12:00] that and, you know, a little bit of, uh, rizo or, um, you know, mild salami in with it as well. I think that’d go beautifully.
You know, some black olives in the, in the tomato sauce as well. And, you know, uh, you, anything like that I think would work quite nicely. So the coin just dropped,
Steve Davis: that’s why they’re having a pinot and pasta afternoon. Maybe.
John Gledhill: Maybe. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Alright, look, um, I’ll put the link to that and if you hear this in time, you may wanna go.
We are going to be going. I hope to see you there. If you do go, please make yourself known and I’m hoping I can bring John Long as well if you’re available. That’d be great. Thank you very much. Alright, so all that’s left for me to say is the 2024 Barford emblem. Pinot Noir is the South Australian drink of the week.[00:13:00]
Alex Frayne: Alex Fra here. If you’re listening to Steve Davis’s Adelaide Show podcast and you’re out shooting film, remember to take the lens cap off, particularly if you’re shooting range finder cameras. Happy shooting.
Steve Davis: Robin Sellek. Started taking dog portraits in Broken Hill at 15 years of age or thereabouts, not knowing that he’d then spend the next three decades documenting Australia’s cultural coming of age from Don Dunston’s Norwood lounge room to Kate Blanchard’s first editorial shoot from the Bradman’s Quiet Adelaide home to Kylie Minogue on a North Adelaide balcony.
His lens has captured the moments when we stopped apologizing for being Australian and started celebrating it. His portraits hang in the National Portrait Gallery, but more than that, they’ve shaped how we see [00:14:00] ourselves. And today at the moment in time, he’s releasing museum grade collector editions of his archive of more than 600 portrait sessions.
But here’s something about Robin, you might not know. He didn’t just document our stars, he helped create the visual language that made Australia look somewhat like it matters. Robin Selick, welcome. Thank you very much. Nice to be here. And here of course is the Maid. Yes. Hotel. Now we’re gonna talk about Don Dunston later.
I would be shocked if Don Dunston, when it was the maiden mag by, hadn’t sat in here and had a drink or two. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I’d be disappointed if he hadn’t. No. Even as he, ’cause he was, um, famous for doing away with the, the fixer clock wheel where they’d have to shovel it down. So he would’ve enjoyed the fact that there was more dining and more chance to relax and have a little sip of wine like I am.
John Gledhill: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Yeah. He’d, he’d love it here, I’m sure. Yes. So, uh, we’re gonna come to him in due course, but I wanna start with something at a very basic level, photography. Mm-hmm. [00:15:00] At its absolute basic level. It’s a simple act of exposing light onto film or a sensor with a digital camera. And yet the images that it’s captured have shaped how we see ourselves.
And we’re all walking around with these cameras in our pockets. Now, what is it that separates a snapshot from art?
Robin Sellick: So much? So much and, and I’ve, I’m old enough now to have lived through the, the period where I saw photography become democratized. I, I saw when smartphones around 2008 appeared and suddenly everyone was a photographer.
And that’s great for everyone, but not always good for photography. And, um, and you really saw a period of, um, of, of terrible photography for quite a few years. It took, really took photography 10, maybe 15 years to recover from that because no longer was it about that. High thinking. The, the detail, the [00:16:00] actual seeing of things.
It was about just recording. Yeah. Whatever you, whatever. Anything. You know, anything.
Steve Davis: Actually, I know you’ve got a lot more to say on this, but I have to interject the seeing of things. Mm-hmm. I love that line. I remember, ’cause I was, I grew up with a dark room in my house. You were saying your dad? In my dad, yeah.
And so I went on a camping, photography trip with a mate and the Grampians around about the year 2000. Okay. And I remember taking a beautiful shot. I thought of Mount Ara, I think it is, and was heartbroken when I got back ’cause it was film so I couldn’t see it. So I got back and exposed it all. There were big telegraph wires going right through that photo.
Yes. That my brain had photoshopped out on the fly. Yes. This is the seeing of things. Yeah. Isn’t
Robin Sellick: it? Where I had missed that? That’s it. You, you experience things more on an emotional level. And the, the key with, uh, photography is you have to be able to look at something emotionally and objectively in, you know, within five seconds of the same thing.
So [00:17:00] you drawn to the emotion, you feel where you are, you, you start to align things. You get yourself into the right place at the right moment. And then you have to be able to stop and step out and go, okay, does this work? So you step out of that emotional place and look at it objectively and critically and then step back into the emotional place.
So there’s a lot of mental gymnastics in that process.
Steve Davis: And how much of it also involves that thing? I do a lot of, uh, uh, public speaking. And so one thing I was taught a long time ago was to murder your darlings. Yes. Uh, so you’ve got a million great ideas, but you can’t fit, you’ve gotta leave some down with that Grampians trip.
I in one crazy moment, got up close to the little lake outside the visitor center where there was a little bit of vegetation, and I took a photograph. It was all blue. The sky was blue, and that has become my favorite photo. And yet there are no mountains trees. Now part of me would be thinking I would’ve failed as someone capturing the essence of the [00:18:00] Grampians, but I needed to murder those darlings because to me, this takes me back there every moment.
That’s it. Is this something that you are talking about? Yeah,
Robin Sellick: yeah. Yeah. It, um, when you, the trick with, you know, photographing people, not necessarily the sort of work that I do. Well, a little bit, but if you’re shooting family portraits or something, let’s say the, the key is that you have to make sure that people enjoy the experience because when they look at the photograph, they remember the experience.
And that gives the picture of the emotion and the value and so on. So it sounds like you loved that moment. And, uh, you know, you’ve recorded that, and that when you look at that photograph, it takes you back there. And that’s, that’s the job of that photograph. And it’s always important as a photographer, particularly if you’re shooting for other people, if you’re shooting for the public or you’re shooting for a client or whatever, you have to ask yourself as you’re preparing the picture, what’s the job of this picture?
What is this picture’s job it’s gonna be put out in the world? What, when it goes out in the world, what’s its job? What does it have to do? And make sure that you’ve [00:19:00] put those things in the picture to do that job. And it’s not something people think about, but it’s, it’s really the, the key to creating anything, isn’t it?
It’s a creating a piece of music or a building, or a, a podcast. What’s the job of this thing? What are, what is it that we want this to do when we put it out in the world?
Steve Davis: And is that why the very basic answer to a snapshot versus art at one level is time taken? To get it right. Can you, you can’t just whip a camera out and you’ve got art.
Can you, is there always or, or not? Is there an instinctive
Robin Sellick: level? Well, it comes back to the why doesn’t it, why am I taking this picture? And there’s a, um, a guy called Re Cardio Bresson, who’s, uh, be well known to anybody who’s in into photography who was a, a Frenchman who was knocking around in Paris after the First World War.
And he hung around with, um, you know, Picasso and Satra and all of the intellectuals when. They were all in Paris in the twenties. And around that same time, uh, photography had changed because, uh, the motion picture industry had had begun. And they developed a special sort of film [00:20:00] for the, for the motion picture industry, which is what we know as 35 mil film now.
So they had the wow, the sprockets in it, and they decided to create these little cameras that could, these little still cameras that could use this film. So suddenly photography was, was no longer something you needed a microwave sized box and a cloth over your head to take pictures with. You could now walk around with this thing.
So it opened up a whole new way of taking photographs. And cardio Bresson was a pioneer in this, and he developed this thing called the Decisive Moment, which is, um, uh, basically the process of taking photographs with your subconscious, so use, uh, you, it’s spontaneous and instinctive. Um, and his idea was to, for him to stay out of the photographs and for the, and to just record what was there in front of him without any.
A conscious thought. So an example would be, uh, there’s a famous photograph of a man in Paris walking through, it’s been raining and there’s puddles everywhere, and he’s jumping over something and he’s just about to land in the puddle. And his foot is literally a, you know, a centimeter above [00:21:00] hitting that puddle.
It’s just a moment, that moment before or another where, you know, two bicycles are riding down opposite directions of a, an alleyway and he has just picked up the camera and gone click. And the as he’s done it, the picture is taken as the two approaching wheels appear to be almost touching each other, that precise moment moments that you can’t necessarily anticipate consciously.
So that was really what he was about. So that has carried its way through. That’s become something that, um. The, you know, I think whether you’re photographing landscapes or people or, you know, street photography, which is now very popular, uh, cardio Bresson is really somebody to study. If you’re into that,
Steve Davis: are you a decisive moment photographer?
Robin Sellick: Yeah. Yeah. I’m, I’m not in the same thing. I assume you would say photojournalism is what we, modern is the modern sort of term for that, or street photography that sort of, uh, objectiveism and for the work that I do, there’s always, uh, I’m always in the picture, so you can argue that when you. So every [00:22:00] photograph you take, you are in because you made a decision consciously or otherwise, to point the camera in that direction, to push the shutter at that precise moment you had the camera on these settings, you’ve made those decisions.
So you are in the picture. And for the portrait of work I do, if I put a pot plant in the background or if here’s a red light over here, that’s me making that. So that’s putting me in the photograph. So sometimes I want a lot of me in the photograph and sometimes I want none of me in the photograph. And you have to make that decision.
Steve Davis: So when you say me in the photograph, it doesn’t always mean in frame, although you are, sometimes it’s, it means there is the imprint of you in the el the way you brought the elements together. That’s right. Yeah. It’s metaphoric, but it’s, it’s real. Yeah. Well, I, which leads me into what I wanted to untangle with you.
So I talked about photography, about understanding light and how much exposure’s going to happen. Then you’ve got, you know, the play of the lenses there. But more than that is the composition, uh, what’s going to be where you’ve then got the position. Where a subject [00:23:00] is going to be an expression, they’re going to be expressing the costume, the clothing that they’ve got on.
Yeah. Can you walk me through this hierarchy of considerations when you are setting, I mean, for example, Don Dunston, you’ve shot him in his swimming pool. Uh, Julia Gillard has a wonderful sort of piece to camera that she’s doing with you. How much of that setup is split second, and how much of it is anticipated before the shoot?
And how much is materially constructed in that moment and with or without their involvement?
Robin Sellick: Uh, for, for me, I, um, if I know I’m gonna photograph somebody, obviously I think about it and, um, I think about the person and, uh, who they are and what I wanna say about them. So, uh, Julia Gillard is a good example in that, that was for an exhibition I was doing.
So they would be, uh, pictures that gonna be seen publicly. And I was photographing a whole bunch of prominent [00:24:00] Australians, but I was looking for the people who were on the way up. And this was in 2006. So, uh, we went out to her house in Altona where she was living at the time, and I’d chosen her and the other people because of, uh, just three television watching who was sticking out through television.
And there was this great scene on the news where this woman I’d never heard of before, Julia Gillard was tearing, uh, John Howard a new backside because he’d been sniffing into her and trying to, you know, find some dirt on her. And she really tore into like, wow, who is this person? You know? Uh, and she was just a, a member of parliament then.
So we went outside, asked her I could photograph her. She didn’t quite know why. Um, and I went out to her house in Altona. And, um, sorry, you just made contact with her and said, may I photograph her? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I had this exhibition coming up at Crown, did this big show. I did these two big exhibitions at Crown, which were huge in Crown Casino in Melbourne.
Yeah. Back in 2005 and 2006. And, uh, it was a, it was a big, everyone was in it, it [00:25:00] was a very big sort of exhibition. So, um, I, I knew that she was somebody, I knew that she was someone special, although she hadn’t sort of risen yet and she was getting a lot of press about, I think that someone did a photograph of her for the newspaper at her house prior to that, and there was nothing in the shelves.
And there was a story about, oh, she’s barren, she’s got, you know, all this stomach people are awful. You know, so, um. Uh, when I was there, I was, I kept saying to her, like, you know, the cream always rises to the top when you were, I was looking around the house going, look, when you’re the Prime Minister, you’re gonna have the boys from the Agio to come out and fix that window, and that fence is gonna have to be secured.
And, you know, making jokes like that. And, uh, and, but, and she kind of, she went along, she knew what I was saying, you know, um, and I photographed her in front of a shed in her backyard. So, uh, there was a hill’s hoist next to the shed on the other side, but it was too small a space. And they’re kind of, you know, Australian symbols.
Yes. Masculine and feminine. And the shed is really the, the domain of men, or traditionally the domain of men. So that’s why I shot her in front of her shed. And I lit it with purple light. [00:26:00] And, uh, so it was a, was a, an image about this woman stepping into the domain of, of men. And having an impression. So
Steve Davis: was that something you saw at the moment you were there?
You hadn’t gone there anticipating shed had you I,
Robin Sellick: I had that idea of her being a, a person who was stepping up to the next level. Yep. Uh, in a really tough environment that’s primarily dominated by men and, you know, what we now call toxic masculinity. Yes. Uh, and she was very strongly stepping into that space.
And so that was, I wanted to capture something about that.
SFX: Yeah.
Robin Sellick: And when I saw the Hills hoist in the shed and I couldn’t do the hills hoist, so I just did the shed. So that’s, uh, so I have the idea of what I wanna say about the person. It’s the why, why am I taking this picture? Um, and then you turn up and you dunno what you’re gonna find, but you take what’s there and you.
Turn it into the thing that you want. So
Steve Davis: you had to murder your darlings with the Hills hoist?
Robin Sellick: Yes.
Steve Davis: Yeah. The Hills Hoist didn’t work. I, yeah. And was, did, was she part of, was she consciously aware of the reason you were [00:27:00] choosing the shed? Did that come up in conversation? Yeah,
Robin Sellick: yeah, I explained that to her.
Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Davis: So what, tell me about this interplay. How much are your subjects willingly, equal partners in what you are creating co-conspirators versus people who perhaps are on the saddle of a horse and being carried along by the likes of
Robin Sellick: you? It’s, it’s a bit like we were talking before about cardio brass on a street, photography and photojournalism.
That’s completely different. Well, that’s, that’s the other end of photography. What I do is portraiture and a portrait is always a collaboration. Okay. So, uh, you find something that in common with the person. So with Julia, where I was, the reason I was making jokes about her becoming the Prime Minister was because I knew that she was rising.
And um, and that’s what the portrait was about. It was about her. Stepping in. So you, you involve her in that process. And, uh, but that was a, you know, there are other examples where it’s a little more ambiguous and so you just connect with somebody on a level. That’s, uh, that’s not superficial, [00:28:00] basically, because I wanna get the real person.
Uh, so you’ve gotta have real conversations and people tend to mirror you. So, um, it’s a, it’s about setting the tone in the room. It’s a little bit like what you’re doing now with your, what we’re doing now is a portrait. Really? You, you are making a portrait of me and we’re collaborating and, you know, the product will be as a result of what we’ve both put into this.
So it’s the same thing, taking a photograph, really,
Steve Davis: you have to give permission as we go, can’t you? You are willing. You, you are. I’m not controlling that. I’m, no, I’m guiding.
Robin Sellick: Well, maybe on, maybe on a, on a subconscious level because, uh, for example, for the work that I do, if I go into a room and I’m uptight and anxious, then that person will only be as relaxed and open as I am.
Right? So in order for them to feel like they have permission to be open and relaxed in themselves and vulnerable, I need to be, I need to set. Standard. And uh, and so you create the atmosphere that allows people [00:29:00] to go to the place
Steve Davis: and you go with them. Yes. Now I know 600 odd different portraits for crying out.
We’re not gonna go through all the stories on all of them, but I wanna cherry pick a few and I want to come to the Don Dunston photograph Yeah. In just a moment. ’cause you talked about, you know, making them feel confident that you are the right person to be with, et cetera. For Don Dunton, of course, you sent him a letter.
Yes. Uh, which could have been taken as a grand insult.
Robin Sellick: Well, I, I meant it as a compliment. I, I didn’t realize, uh, in my youthful naivety that there was actually another person called Sir Donald Dunston. And so I thought that must be him. And I addressed the letter to Sir Donald Dunston to ask him if I could photograph him.
And I just won the Young Achiever Award in South Australia for the arts. And on the back of that, I was contacting these people and he very, uh, kindly rang me up and, um. He said, look, I think, you know, there may be some misunderstanding here. And he sort of explained, I said, well, and I was confused. I said, well, are you the guy that was the premier?
He said, well, yes. I said, well, yeah, you are the one I wanna photograph and you should be so Donald [00:30:00] Dunton. And he sort of went, oh, but he was lovely. And when he invited me to the house to do the
Steve Davis: shoot, and, um, this shoot in particular is one of the more unusual unexpected suits because we have our grand premier in his swimming pool with a large flower in the foreground.
That doesn’t happen by accident. No. What does it, how did, how much did you conspire that and how much did the late Great Don Dunton set that up? Uh,
Robin Sellick: similarly, it’s about the tone as you, as you meet the person. And, um, and it comes down to how, uh, how bold and how courageous you wanna be when you do your work, you know?
So, um, bringing it back to this sort of work, you know, if you wanted to, if you wanted to do a, um, what’s her name? Sarah Ferguson on me. You dive, dived down into the dirt and Yes. You know, and she has the courage to do that. Those questions are coming. Alright, good. Excellent. Um, but, [00:31:00] but it’s kind of that, it’s uh, you know, I particularly in those days was really, uh, like unstoppable.
I just had this sort of blind determination and I knew that, um, to take portraits that were beyond the ordinary, you had to, you know, you had to go further and you had to push further. And so, uh, uh, that was the first shot we did was him in the pool. Oh, wow. So, um, we started with something bold, you know.
And I, and it’s how you, that’s how you approach the shoot. It all comes down like, I’m not there to take an ordinary photograph. I’m there to take a great photograph to the best of my ability. And, uh, so that’s how I approach my work. I’m not looking for the safe shot, I’m looking for the best shot.
Steve Davis: So you’ve walked into Don’s home and you’ve said, hello, Don?
Hello. Wasn’t that funny about the letter. Oh, I see you’ve got a swimming pool
Robin Sellick: togs on. We’ll do a photograph there. Well, it was a bit like that. I think. I, I complimented him on the pool and he said, oh yes, I’ve been swimming this morning. And, you know, said, well, maybe we should do one in the pool. And I He was already dressed.
Of course. [00:32:00] Yes. He said, well, we’ll go and put some Speedos on. And, and he dived. Yeah,
Steve Davis: that’s ama what was going through your mind at this moment because, and also the other part, so please remember that. But at the same time, you photographed another politician, Julia Gillard on the way up, and she would be very aware of not.
Uh, making a ro a rod for her own back with getting herself into too much trouble. She wants to be known, but kind of safe, whereas Don Dunston had made it, there was almost nothing to lose. Mm. He was possibly going to be more open to flamboyant ideas. Am I right? Am I wrong? And then
Robin Sellick: I think you’re, I think you’re right.
I mean, Don was, he was retired and, um, you know, a, a great champion of the arts, and I’d come to him and somebody just won an art award and, you know, so I didn’t wanna take a passport photo of him, you know, and I think he kind of knew that, you know, and he liked the idea of doing something different, you know, um, at, at the opposite end, the end of that is when I photographed John Howard, um, I, I pushed, I think it was Time Magazine, I think, [00:33:00] uh, that I really wanted to shoot the Prime Minister and if the opportunity came up, let me know.
And it did. And they sent me, and every portrait I’d seen of John Howard, he always looks disinterested and, and not engaged. And I think it’s because people are scared of him. You know, he’s John Howard. They don’t connect with him, you know, and as a photographer, you have to. Do that. So I was determined I was gonna take a great photo of him because I was sick of seeing all these bad pictures of him.
And I got there early, it was at his office in Sydney, and the security people showed me everywhere. It’s probably not a very good security idea. But anyway, they showed me everywhere and I decided, uh, I wanted to shoot him outside in a lane way at the side of the building, uh, next door, a standing sign. It was around the time he was 64 and is he gonna go or is he gonna stay?
And uh, the sign said, no stopping. So there was a yellow line on the road. There’s an artist called Jeffrey Smart, who, whose work I love, Australian artist. And so it was that kind of urban landscape, yellow line and the red sign. And I, I needed to get him to stand on a couple of boxes and that was gonna be the shot.
And I had him for 15 minutes from [00:34:00] nine to nine 15, and they said he can’t go overtime. He’s got a meeting with three high court judges after this, right? Okay. So I’ve set all this stuff up on the street. I’ve got an assistant, I’ve got lights, extension cords, I’m ready to go. And five minutes to nine, his PA comes down and says, I’ve shown him the Polaroid.
He’s not gonna do it. You’ll have to do it up in the conference room. So we literally dragged everything from down on the street in Sydney up into the lifts, chucked it all into the, on the floor of the conference room. And I sort of stopped and caught my breath and turned around and there was a prime minister of Australia.
And I know he’s got a go in 15 minutes. So I actually, uh, it took me back to something that my mentor taught me years ago. Um, he said, one day, Robin, you’ll be photographing the queen and you will know exactly what you’re gonna do. And the queen will walk in and you, your mind will go blank. And what you do then is you get it, you frame it three quarters, the head and shoulders, you frame it, you get it in focus, you push the button.
And so that’s what I did. I just thought, okay. [00:35:00] And I explained to him, you know, it looks like a mess, but I know you’ve gotta go in 15 minutes and I’ll have you outta here on time. Don’t worry about it. Just gimme seven or eight minutes to set this up. So my sister and I set it up and I looked around the room and thought, okay, what’s the most interesting thing in the room?
It’s the chandelier, this sort of modern Australian chandelier. So, okay, right. I’m gonna put him, put that above him. I’m gonna shoot him against that wall. We’ll put a light here, a light here, a light there, camera here. And just back, right back to the basics, the first principles. And just set up this classically composed, classically lit.
Three quarter length portrait of him and I engaged with him the whole time and, and to, to add a bit of theater to the intensity of the picture. Um, knowing that he had to leave at quarter past, I asked his press person, just tell me when we’ve got five minutes left, three minutes left, two minutes left, and one minute left.
And you know, and he, and he did. And so that added a sense of intensity and [00:36:00] drama and it and his gaze reflected that. So, so I got the shot.
Steve Davis: So you were cajoling greatness out of him.
Robin Sellick: Yeah.
Steve Davis: And was that a little bit of punishment for not doing the No. Stopping cyclist? No, no, no,
Robin Sellick: no. I mean, it’s, it’s just a technique.
It’s uh, it’s a, like I say, it’s a bit of theater. It’s a bit of, uh, trickery. Um, you’ve gotta establish trust with people very quickly. And, uh, once you’ve done that, you, they’ll, they’ll come with you, you know? Awesome. So saying to him, look, I know your situation, but everything’s okay, and you do what you say you’re gonna do, so you’ll be in seven minutes.
I’ll be ready. I was ready in seven minutes and off we went.
Steve Davis: Now in a very, uh, pedestrian way at the Grampians on my photo shoot, we did deliberately pack some slide film, okay. So that we could cross process it, treat it as, um, print film. Now you are quite known for being one of the, the people forging that path in Australia in the nineties.
So you develop slide film in print chemicals, [00:37:00] it makes. Some of the colors more vivid and and more saturated. But tell me if I’m right or not. Was this actually a technical choice that you deliberately made or was there some happenstance that happened in that part of your journey? And, and then once you’d seen it, what did it tell you back about Australia?
What did it capture that perhaps hadn’t been captured before?
Robin Sellick: Uh, when I was very young in Broken Hill, I worked in a photo processing lab and somebody brought in some slide film. We accidentally processed it in the color negative chemicals, and that’s how I first saw it. And it wasn’t until a few years later, um, that I’d worked out that this was a technique that was being used to produce these photographs that I was seeing and loving, but didn’t know how they’d done.
Ah, and uh, so one I remember in particular was, uh, by a guy called John Baptist Mandino, who shot the Eurythmics for one of their album covers using this technique. And once I connected the two, I thought, okay, I’ll start experimenting with this because I think I know how he’s done that.
SFX: [00:38:00] Oh,
Robin Sellick: and Sweet Dreams are made of this.
Yeah. Yes. I can’t think of the name of the album, but it’s a, I could find it for you if you want, but, and other people were doing it too, but I couldn’t quite, but anyway, I, I worked out, that was what was the technique. So, uh, I started to experiment with it and, uh, got some great results and worked out. You have to sort of light it, flatten, overexpose it, and a few things.
Um, but, uh, yeah, it created these really high contrast vivid images that were very unusual. And, uh, back then, the only photographic awards in Australia were through a thing called the Australian Institute of Professional Photography. And, um, they were pretty straight. They were still, it was early, late eighties, early nineties, but they were still very much in the late seventies, uh, mindset.
Yeah. And, and photography. There then was, uh, very derivative of the Americans. The Americans would come out and give us, you know, teach us how they do it. And so Australian photography hadn’t found its own. Uh, voice or [00:39:00] identity. So these pictures that I produced were just like right out of the box, and so I had a lot of success with them.
Steve Davis: Takes confidence though, to be unconventional. I imagine at a shoot where you’re doing that and you’ve got this small bit of time with someone with heft, did you have another camera with conventional film as a backup and you’re shooting both or is it Nah, we are all in. No, we’re all in. Yeah, we’re all in.
We’re all in. And something that people who have only been born in the digital age won’t understand is until it’s developed, you don’t really know what you’ve got. Hmm. What are those moments like from the shoot to the time of developing?
Robin Sellick: See, that’s the thing. You can, you do though, but it’s a you, it’s a different discipline.
And one of the things that the, uh, ubiquity of digital photography has done is remove that process because it’s hard and it’s easier to. Shoot with digital. But when you’re shooting with film, uh, it’s a completely different discipline. [00:40:00] You have to, um, you have to know, like I knew what frame was the good one.
There were 10 shots in a row, and I would know when I had the shot. I would say either five or eight have got, I, I knew when I was taking the pictures because the way I did it was to. Um, remove variables throughout the, the creative process as I’m setting the picture up. So like what, like, uh, okay, we’re gonna shoot against that wall.
I’m gonna light it this way and now I’m gonna change so I get the light right. Get the composition right. Put the person in. And so by, so it’s
Steve Davis: flatting or taking away a shadow that’s gonna be a problem or highlighting. That’s right.
Robin Sellick: That’s right. Get everything looking the way you want it to look so that you’re only dealing with two or three variables by the time you put the film in the camera.
So I use Polaroids to test like you would with digital. Yep. And so when I’m ready, when I’ve got everything the way I wanted, except for maybe two or three things, put the person in and put the film in. And that’s when we start taking photographs and I’m only thinking about those two or three variables [00:41:00] until I get them all in the right place.
And then I know I’ve got the shot.
Steve Davis: Wow. And is there a euphoria at that
Robin Sellick: point? Do, do you have a sense that you’ve landed it? It’s, it’s a heightened sense. Yeah. And I kind of miss it in a way that, uh, uh, my humanness, uh, and, and whatever, uh, like I, I love the discipline of shooting that way, and it does bring an intensity to the work.
And it does bring a, an attention to detail that is, uh, over and above, but it’s very easy to be lazy. And when you’re shooting with, with digital, the temptation is always there to stop your connection with the subject, because I’m fully focused on the subject when I’m shooting them. And the temptation is to break that and look at the back of the camera and to see what the last few shots were like, and it, and that.
It destroys that connection. You’ve gotta rebuild that again. So that level of intensity, that level of connection, that level of, of risk taking together and [00:42:00] truth, uh, disappears or dissipates or it’s harder to get, or a better way of saying it perhaps is shooting on film, uh, you know, makes you have to do that because you need to know that you’ve got the shot, particularly if you’re shooting, you know, someone important for a, a magazine or a, a client or whatever, you know,
Steve Davis: the closest analogy that makes that springs to my mind is a, a film I can’t watch.
I always try to, it comes on occasionally of a gentleman who did a tight rope to highwire walk between the two buildings of the world trade centers when they existed. I remember this. Yeah. And that’s it. No, there’s no, they had to secretly get the rope across there, the cable, and that was it. That is what you are talking about.
Robin Sellick: Yeah, it’s, uh, I heard somebody, uh, talk recently with Simon Sinek, I think American guy, um, that he’s become very successful in as a speak area about business and so on. Mm-hmm. And he said [00:43:00] that, uh, he, how did he phrase it? He said that he wrote this book and, um, he said it’s not that, uh, that the book is out there and that people are reading the book that make me useful and, and, you know, in demand and, and good at what I do.
It’s that I wrote the book. It’s the pain of going through writing it, the, the, all of the work and the angst and the, the challenges I had to overcome and all of that. It’s, it’s all of that that makes me valuable. It’s not the book, it’s the doing. So, uh, your analogy of the guy with a tightrope is similar because, um, if it’s just a publicity stunt, everyone knew about it.
It’s not that big a deal. But if you had to go through all that
Steve Davis: Yes, and I still like that. In fact, it’s even better analogy because it’s one shot and it’s why the work or it won’t work. Yeah. And that would be cricket. It’s one of the few sports where you go out and you nick a ball on your first ball.
You’re caught behind. Yeah. That’s it. It’s over few. It’s not like football. Okay. You missed, hit over. So Donald Bradman, of course, one of our greatest [00:44:00] cricketers of all time, globally speaking. You had a chance to shoot Sir Donald and Lady Bratman. Uh, this wasn’t cross process slide film. No. This is totally different.
Very, uh, high. Well, I, I, I’m gonna describe it as, as a lay person. High contrast, very grainy, black and white in a very formal setting. Almost like they’ve just finished their Christmas lunch and everyone’s taking family portrait shots of each other. Take us through this story. Will you? Because there’s something.
Beautifully weird in the way that you’ve conjured that graininess that some people go, oh, I don’t want that. I want it to all be smooth. Yeah, yeah. But there is character in that grain.
Robin Sellick: Yeah. It’s real grain. It’s the real stuff. You know, it’s a, it’s a 400 a SA film that was pushed to 12,000 as ISA. Can you describe, what does that mean to people?
That means I underexposed it by five stops, which is, uh, it’s exponential. So what’s that? 2, 4, [00:45:00] 8, 16, 32. 32 times underexposed.
Steve Davis: So less light than it was norm. The film is expecting to get That’s right. So you develop
Robin Sellick: it for longer. You have to push more through, which makes the grain bigger. Yeah. Right. And, uh, it, it’s a little bit like the, the Dunton portrait, which I shot.
Not long after the following month, I think where I went in and, uh, that was the, the Bradman portrait was the first one I did from that series after the An achiever award. Yep. And it’s the same thing. You, I’m not going in there to take an ordinary photograph. I’m going in there to take something that is dangerous and risky and bold.
And so that was the first portrait from the session where I walked in and the room was so beautiful and just everything about it was perfect, except there wasn’t enough light. And I just went, you know what, we’ll just, we’ll just do it and I’ll push it and we’ll just, we’ll do it. So it’s taking those risks that, um, you know, if you fall off the, the high wire, well, you know, yes, that’s it.
But [00:46:00] if you, you’ve gotta walk across the high wire to get to the good stuff. So you take, you take risks and you, you go for something better. And that’s how you. That’s how you get a shot. That’s, that, you know, still resonates with people 30 years later.
Steve Davis: Okay. Young Robin Selick there. So you’re in your early twenties at this point?
Yeah. You’ve got the gr the Greatest Living cricketer. He retired, but he was there. You had the 400 a SO film. Alright, so that’s, that’s, you know, that’s a standard shooting film. If you had, have had 800 or a faster film that’s made for low light, would you have chosen that instead?
Robin Sellick: Uh, well, uh, it wasn’t available, so, uh, the, the.
For the, the beautiful thing about photography is that it’s within parameters. Even when you frame something, it’s you’re creating a picture that’s within a frame. So in [00:47:00] order for, uh, you know, you have to make decisions about what to do with what you’ve got. Uh, digital is a bit broader because you can always muck about with it later, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to better work.
Mm-hmm. You know, it’s just a little bit safer. It’s a little less risky. Um, the key is to find something and go for it. Like tennis, you know, you gotta go fishing, you go for the lines, you try and hit the line with your shot, that’s you, or you just lobb it back into court, you know? So which sort of photographer do you wanna be?
Steve Davis: Yes. You know? And you’re not a lober. I’m not a lober. No. I’m a lobber, not a fighter. Well, look the other thing is just, and we are getting back to some more, um, esoteric elements and moment, but there’s one other photograph. I mean, you should be so lucky to have shot Kai Minno. And there’s something intriguing about this particular shot of you that you got on Two fronts.
One, it broke ground. There was the first time that a big [00:48:00] star, the big star machine, let one of their prized subjects get shot outside of Sydney or Melbourne. Yeah. And secondly, it was the last shot of the day, I believe, when all the support people had disappeared. Mm-hmm. Can you take us into this absolutely sweet, beautiful moment.
Robin Sellick: Well, that was the, the Kylie issue was intense and, and even the lead up to it was intense. I had been in Sydney, I, I’d lived in Sydney for three years, 94 to 96, decided I didn’t like it much, and moved back to Adelaide. And I’d done pretty well. And a lot of people knew me and I thought, well, I can just fly into Sydney.
Nobody was doing that either. That was all a bit crazy to people, but it made sense to me. And so I would. You know, fly into Sydney every once a month for a week, do some shoots, have some meetings, and then come back to Adelaide and, and live, you know, which was great. So, and I’d rented a really beautiful place in North Adelaide.
It was this big old mansion and, uh, in Palmer Place, and it belonged to this [00:49:00] crazy doctor whose, uh, rooms were downstairs. Yes. And, uh, we had the top floor, beautiful Big five bedroom mad place. We had some great parties there. And, uh, so, uh, I, I did all the shoots there when people came to Adelaide. And so anyway, I was in Sydney and I was outside having a cigarette with a girl from this record company, from Mushroom, I think it was.
And she said to me, I’ve got a problem. I’ve got, uh, Kylie Minogue doing a publicity tour, but I can’t fit a shoot for Rolling Stone into the schedule in Sydney or Melbourne. I said, well do it in Adelaide. Now this was a, a, a mind exploding time. It was, you know, that, that was completely outside the box. She said, what about hair and makeup?
And I said, well, I can get a really good hair person and I can get a really good makeup person. I probably won’t get one that’s does both, but I can get one of each. I’ve got a great team, I’ve got producers, I’ve got a great stylist. Um, you know, we can do this. So that started the process and there were conference calls.
There was a whole, you know, meetings and, and so on. And it took a bit of convincing, but we convinced them. [00:50:00] And, uh, so Kylie was in town doing a, a promotional tour, and she spent the afternoon at the house and we, we did the shoot for Rolling Stone. And it was huge at the time. It was a, it was a massive thing and it, and it, it leaked out that it was happening.
So I, uh, did a bit of interference and I told people we were doing it out at Penfolds Estate, uh, so that they’d all go out there and, uh, and I don’t think anybody knew that it was at the house, which was good. So, uh, we did a, uh. A shot on the, did a shot in the lounge room. Mm-hmm. On the lounge room floor, and a second shot outside on the front lawn with this amazing chair that was made by, um, a guy called Darren Burgess.
He used to be here at a company called Anex. He was a Claymation animator. Uh, he’s now a famous drag queen called Filmer Box. Okay. And, uh, so, uh, Darren made this beautiful chair out of foam, which we had in the front yard. And then the last shot of the day was, uh, up on the balcony. So the shot was full on.
It was, there were people everywhere. It [00:51:00] was a, a huge production. Everything was scheduled to the, you know, 15 minutes and it was massive. Um, and, you know, a, a, a big deal at the time, a really big deal.
Steve Davis: How does someone like Cardi Minogue at the beginning of her career, primarily a very early stage in her career, what was she like through this?
Was she being. Pushed from Pillar to post, like a pinball. Did she have a hundred percent agency over things? What, what was that? What was going on? The dynamics of that shoot. The,
Robin Sellick: the Minogue world is a, a tightly oiled machine. Ah, and, uh, she’s a, a very, very professional person. She has great people around her.
As you would expect, you can’t, you don’t get to that level of success, uh, without having that machine around you. That’s the thing. I, when I worked for Annie Lee, it’s in New York. That’s the. The most important thing I learned from that experience was not necessarily a photography, but what do you have to have around you to be Annie Lebowitz and you, I know that you need like a pyramid system.
You need, [00:52:00] she, she’s at the top and then you have the next level of support, the next level of support. And Kylie very much, uh, had that in place and not everybody did at that, at that point. And, you know, her success is, success is predictable. And uh, you know, she had all those things and she’s very professional.
Steve Davis: She knows what she’s doing. And my intuition is growing up in the soapy world would’ve drilled that into her ’cause a soapy is run like a military organization. Yeah.
Robin Sellick: Yeah, I think so. Look, she’s, uh, she’s an interesting artist, Kylie, in that she, uh, plays things to her strengths. She surrounds herself with the best people, the best stylists, the best songwriters, the, you know, she, she.
Is a machine. Madonna would be an example of somebody who at the time was operating in a, in a similar way as a, as a big Yeah. Machine. Um, but you’ve gotta take your hat off to Kylie and, and she’s, look at what she’s doing now. She’s back on top again. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Still. But I’m just curious, without giving away any secrets, how much [00:53:00] interplay was there between you and her particularly in the shot we get to see, did she have much control over how she held herself?
Were you giving explicit instruction? Uh, ’cause she would know that there’s an element in which we want to have vicarious pleasure of viewing this beautiful human at the same time of appreciating an artist of caliber.
Robin Sellick: There, there are different approaches when you’re photographing different sorts of people.
So, uh, when you photograph a sports person, they’re not. Perhaps necessarily used to being in front of a camera. So it’s, it’s a different approach. You photograph an actor, uh, different approach again, the, um, Kate Blanchard mm-hmm. Story is, is an example of, that was one of the early ones where we are coming to that one.
Okay. Well, I’ll, I’ll tell you the story later, but, uh, so actors tend to wanna play a role. Uh, some musicians, uh, it’s all about the music, man. So what are you taking my photo for? And someone like Kylie is a performer. She’s a performing artist. Yes. [00:54:00] So, uh, she held a, so she knew how to pose, she knew how she wanted to express herself through her body language.
She came with all of that, which for a shoot like that you need, because I had literally had 15 minutes to take each photograph. And in between shots there was 45 minutes for hair and makeup changes and wardrobe changes. Like it was fast pace all day. And I’ve got that 15 minute window where I have to get the shot.
So you have to set it up in such a way where you know you’re gonna get it. So for something like that, you have your safe shots. And for me. Uh, the safe shot is basically building a photograph where she just has to go in there and do something and it looks good. So the chair is an example. ’cause the chair kind of was very ornate and it had little faces in it.
It was like a pixie chair. And the, so the chair kind of held the, the image and the composition and the, the background and the set. So really she just had to sit there and look amazing and the picture would work. So we’re not asking much of her in that shot. And the first shot was a little bit more where she was, it was a, a, a [00:55:00] looser set, a looser background.
She had room sort of move in it, so that was a little bit more risky.
SFX: Mm-hmm.
Robin Sellick: And the last shot, there was none of that. The last shot was just me and her on the balcony of my house, uh, when no one else around. I sent the assistance away and it was just her and I to give a, to have a contrast between all of that hype and busyness, which don’t see, when you look at the photographs, you, nobody sort of thinks of those things when they look at the pictures.
But for someone like Kylie Gra and the big people, there are a dozen people. Standing around, you know, there’s a makeup artist and a hair person, a stylist, a pro, a producer, the people from the record company, her management, you know, but you don’t see those people in the photograph, but they’re all there.
So the, the picture on the balcony was just her and me, and it was really just, okay, let’s just, you know, let’s just take some photos and you stand there. I’m gonna try this. You know, and it was a much looser, uh, and a great contrast to the, the control, if you like, of
Steve Davis: the previous photographs. Is there warmth in the photographer, subject [00:56:00] dynamic, or is it really business?
Robin Sellick: No, there’s, there’s warmth. You actually fall in love with the person. Okay. While you’re taking their photograph.
SFX: Yeah.
Robin Sellick: And you go through the process of falling in love with ’em before the shoot, and then you, you’re in love with them while with them while you’re taking the photograph. And then. It’s over You live.
Steve Davis: Wow. There’s a blue song there. Waiting there is I think. Um, look, the other one, uh, in particular that I wanted to look at you, you alluded to Kate Blanchard, because this again is another story with something very different that made a very special image. And a couple of the elements I’d love you to draw out for us is one, she was right at the beginning of her career about to take the big step to Hollywood.
Yeah. Uh, you had just come back from some time in America. So this is almost like tables turn. Here’s a chance where you had a chance to pass on some wisdom to someone who later became a, a towering star. And that in making it happen, I believe there are extension cords into next door [00:57:00] neighbors. There’s crazy stuff.
There’s an old church. I need to do x-ray process on this. So how did Kate Blanchard come into your world? Uh, who weekly
Robin Sellick: commissioned me to photograph her. And I was, I just started doing work for who? And they were transitioning from a, a, a new, a magazine that was printed on, uh, a newsprint, like a newspaper?
Yeah. Mostly black and white. And they were trying to transition into a full glossy, which was like the American cousins. And so they had a few technical issues with the, the paper they were printing on because the, the ink absorbed into the paper. And so the pictures tend to So go a bit dull.
SFX: Mm.
Robin Sellick: Uh, and what we really wanted was a photo lead.
Vibrant, yeah. Photo led magazine. So that particular shoot had an effect in the development of that magazine and others, because when I came back from America, from New York, I, I was there working with all of these amazing photographers and, and working in the magazine industry in [00:58:00] America. And the Australian magazine industry was still very embryonic and really.
Uh, eager to quickly evolve. Uh, and the, the industry was really developing, so it turned up at the right time. Um, but there was nobody really doing portraiture of that style before I turned up. There were a couple of people doing a couple of bits and pe uh, Stuart Spence was doing some, some work and here in Australia.
Here in Australia, and a guy called Tim Bauer. Uh, but most portraits you saw in magazines were taken by fashion photographers, and they would do this, you know, soft sort of light, sort of nothing picture, and that, I shouldn’t say they’re nothing pictures, but they weren’t pictures that, uh, sought to, uh, express anything deep about the person that was just make them look good and, you know, uh, so this sort of narrative led portraiture that I’d been working with in the United States, it hadn’t really occurred in Australia.
So I’d started to work with who it was that was exactly the sort of work they were looking for. Um, I’d worked on photo shoots [00:59:00] in New York for People Magazine, which was their cousin magazine. Oh. So I knew what they wanted. Um, also, uh, the, the technique I used I’d learned from Annie Leitz, although I didn’t learn it at the time, but I knew that she’d created this technique where she used Studio Flash outdoors and created this particularly sort of slightly surreal, but strong look.
And she did. Is that
Steve Davis: where some part of the photo is more lit than others and it’s
Robin Sellick: really obvious? Yeah. There’s a, there’s a, a hyper sort of, uh, saturation and a, and a hyper contrast, which is created by the Studio Flesh Outdoors, which is slightly warm. And the, the background, which is lit by the sun, slightly underexposed.
And the reason she created that was when. Years ago when she started, she worked for Rolling Stone, which was also just a cheap magazine being printed on newsprint. And to make her photographs stand out and, and survive the, the poor paper, she developed this technique to make them a little bit more intense.
So by the time they doubled down in the print, they still looked [01:00:00] Wow. Normal. So that’s where the technique came from. So I knew this and, uh, I knew where, who weekly were, and the, the Blanche shoot was the first one that I had an opportunity to do that sort of technique, uh, for that magazine so they could see it.
So just on, on my journey and on the journey of, of the development of editorial photography through the nineties, that was a landmark photograph because they saw that and, uh, saw how it produced. And from there, um, it, it, the magazine continued to evolve and it helped. Build the strength of the photography in the magazine, which helped turn it into the glossy magazine that it’s become, you know?
So, um,
Steve Davis: so that’s how you, through all those connections, you had this chance Yeah. To shoot her. Why take her out the front of a half burnt down church?
Robin Sellick: Well, uh, the magazine asked me to shoot her because when they, when they asked me to shoot her, they explained to me that she was about to go to America. I didn’t know who she was at [01:01:00] all, but they explained that, that she was somebody who was, that was really gonna be somebody, and that she was, uh, anxious about going to the United States.
It was her first proper trip to America. So she was going there to meet people and to, to learn about Hollywood and to try and get herself into that world. It was that, it was that early.
SFX: Wow.
Robin Sellick: So, uh, and she was really anxious about it. And I’d just come back from New York. So I think they thought, well, you know, and they explained this to me.
And so we talked when, when I met her about, you know, all of these things and she, you know, about how she was anxious and I’d just been there and, you know, what’s it like? And I’d spend most of my time in New York, which is very different to Los Angeles where she was going, but I’d been to LA And uh, so we had that conversation while we were taking the photographs and we were shooting at her house.
She lived just up the road in Guara. And, uh, and I said to her at the end, look, there’s a, because we drove past this church on the way there. I thought, that’s amazing. You know, like it had just burnt down that week [01:02:00] and, uh, not,
Steve Davis: not lit by a certain photographer.
Robin Sellick: No, no, not guilty, your honor. But, uh, but it was too good to pass up.
And I said, well, look, can we just go down the street? We shot all the pictures we needed, we got all the safe shots, if you like. Yes, yes. And so my assistant and I went down the street. We knocked on some doors till we found somebody home who’d let us. Plug an extension cord into their house and we ran the cord across the street and set up a studio flash in front of this burnt out church.
And she came down and, um, sort of set up the frame. So a bit like I was saying with Kylie, when you have, you try and you try and remove variables. So find a strong composition, put the person in it, light it. Okay. Now I’m just dealing with these few variables. ’cause the rest of it is there. So I put her in front of the camera, took a couple of Polaroids to show her because it’s hard to see without the light, and showed them to her.
And I had a, a surreal feel to it.
SFX: Yeah.
Robin Sellick: And I said to her, have a look at that girl in this photograph and have a think about who she is, you know, what’s she thinking? Who is [01:03:00] she? And just left her with that for a couple of minutes and then went back and made a few adjustments. Put film in the camera. And we started taking photographs and she performed that role for me in front of the camera.
And, uh, I, I know that actors prefer to, to have a role to play over. I’m photographing an actor. I, I work, I work with them to decide on a character, for them to be in the picture based on what it is we wanna say and where they are and what we want, what job we want this photograph to do when it goes out there, you know?
So, um, the actors are great to work with on that level. As long as you can, you know, build something then and take them with you.
Steve Davis: It’s very Tim Burton esque. There’s a Wednesday ab Adams ness about that shot. Cutlers are different, but there’s a mood that it devotes the
Robin Sellick: theatricality of it. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s, it’s got a sort of slight darkness to it burnt down church.
And I kind of saw it as the changing of the guard. It’s like, you know, the, the, the establishment is dissolving and, [01:04:00] and new things are coming, which is what Sydney felt like in 94. You know.
Steve Davis: And, and look, our last stop in walking through some people with a different aspect this time. Uh, we’ve touched on some little bit of chatter between you and Kate, et cetera, but I can’t have this chat without thinking about Steve Irwin and Shane Warren Blokey blokes that you photographed.
What banter goes on between photographer and blokes like that who have crafted these bigger than life personas?
Robin Sellick: Yeah. Steve Erwin is a, is a, a good one in that he, it was another one of these negotiations where, um, I wanted to photograph him for an exhibition I was doing in Brisbane. And, uh, he, I wanted to photograph him out of his car keys because he’s never photographed outside of that, he’s never photographed as not the character.
Mm-hmm. And I wanted to, to get him out of his car keys into just some nice clothes and photograph the real person. Now this took, you know, four or five weeks [01:05:00] of discussions and negotiations. It sounds silly, but you know, it was, and his brand is, is very strong as you can imagine. Of course.
Steve Davis: Yes.
Robin Sellick: So he agreed to do this.
And, uh, so I went up to, I’d been in, in New York for a few weeks and I basically flew straight from there up to Brisbane, and then went up and, and did this shoot. And he, uh, he was amazing. He’s an extraordinary guy. I mean, just how would I, he’s the most sensitive person I’ve ever met. I’ve, I grew up around horses and, you know, people who, uh, are good with horses.
Uh, but this was something else. He was really something very special, Steve.
Steve Davis: So when you say sensitive, he was just aware, empathically of the people around him?
Robin Sellick: Yeah, and the animals and the, everything around him. Very, an incredibly, deeply sensitive person. There’s no accident that he, you know, became the person that he was, you know?
So, uh, I, I turned up and they showed me around. And actually I didn’t know that much about him. I didn’t know much about his zoo. I didn’t realize that he had tigers and [01:06:00] elephants. I just thought it was crocodiles. Yes. And the, they were showing me the tigers and I’m thinking, okay, how do I get him in there with the tigers?
And I’m sitting there for like 10 minutes trying to work that out. It’s a bit hard. He said, we’ve got some elephants. I said, elephants said Yeah. Yeah. They’re out in the other paddock. Do you want me to get ’em? Yes, please. So, so this fellow goes off and gets the elephants. This guy, I can’t remember his name, but he was a very, uh, well known and, and very good elephant specialist.
Yes. Um, he went and got the elephants for me and we were in this little sort of clearing and I’ve got my, uh, assistants and, and lights and things and we’re just sort of standing around waiting and we hear this sort of hum hum, hum hum hum hum around the corner from these trees come, these three elephants and they just sort of, you know, danced up to us and started smelling us.
And, you know, it was just magical. It was beautiful. And then they started eating the plants and, you know, doing this stuff. So, uh, Steve turned up. And, uh, yeah, met him and there was an odd thing that happened. It was a, a, a [01:07:00] strange story to tell, but I was shooting Polaroids for test shots, which is what I always do.
I look for backgrounds and, and work at how I’m gonna light it. And, uh, I started off by doing that in black and white. And I shot this black and white of a, an area which had these plants. But when I looked at it with the, with the studio lights, how they’d lived at it looked like a face. It was very strange.
And, uh, so I showed that when he first got there. I, I said, oh, I’ve just been doing this, this, this person’s turned up today. Do you know them? You know, and he looked at it and he said, oh, I dunno who they are. You know, he was very, uh oh, wow. You very open. Just ran with it. Yeah. Yeah. Very open. Uh, but very uncomfortable in front of the camera and ah, uh, so anyway, we got the elephant.
And I’ve got Steve standing in front of the elephant. All I really want is Steve in front of the, like, really what I wanted was for the trunk to come up and him just sort of be there with it. Yeah. So, um, I’ve, I’ve got it all set up. I’ve got the lights and every time I started to take photographs, he started to perform.
So no, no, no. Calm down, calm down. He, it was [01:08:00] just, it was just him. This how he was, you know? So it took a while to get him to just really had to really work with him to just know, calm down, to stay there, lean forward a bit, and not launch into what he always does, you know, with the performance of the, of the character if you like.
And it was so intense, so difficult that if I asked him to move, he would start to perform. And really all I wanted him to do was take two steps back. So he was closer to the elephant and he just couldn’t do it without, so in the end, I got the elephant to come forward to him. It was easy to move the elephant than it was to move Steve.
Um, and then we got the shot. We call it shot.
Steve Davis: Wow. I do get that. ’cause I have written an elephant in a circus before, so have you. Yes. So I could have given you some tips. Why does that not surprise me? Uh, so look, and Shane born different type of character again, different
Robin Sellick: character again. Um, another extraordinary person, you know, there’s a lot you can say about Shane.
Uh, people described him as being very flawed, but he was fiercely honest. And, um, [01:09:00] he, he, uh, approached the world in his way. And there might have been an expectation. You would think perhaps when you’re moving in different circles, at different levels to behave different ways. But Shane was just himself the whole time.
I think that’s what everyone loved about him. You know?
Steve Davis: Isn’t that weird? So you’ve got Steve Urban. Who there is the real Steve IWiN behind the scenes and then the performer. Yeah. But I’m getting the impression with Shane Vaughn, what you saw is what you got. It’s just
Robin Sellick: unfiltered. Yeah. That was what you saw with Shane was what you got.
He was exactly like you would expect. And, um, he, uh, the thing with somebody like that, I mean, he’s a, he’s an exceptional sportsman. He’d achieved a lot, and I really wanted to photograph him. It was a commission from the National Portrait Gallery for an exhibition, uh, for the Commonwealth Games. Wow. And, uh, he’s, it’s a bit like Layton Hewitt.
I photographed Leighton Hewitt on the balcony as well before he became, but I could see him, you know, taking off. And I’ve got this [01:10:00] lovely portrait of him where he is, got his eyes closed and his hands up to his temples because, uh, tennis is played in the mind, not on the court. Yeah.
SFX: Yeah.
Robin Sellick: Shane very much the same.
He’s, he played, uh, mind games with people. He was a thinker and a strategist, and that’s how he approached. Hit what he did. And so I took the same approach with him When I photographed him, I, I was warm, but I didn’t necessarily, I wanted him to be a little bit uncomfortable and, ’cause it’s a very simple shot, it’s just a head and shoulders.
But I played with that intensity and that expression and which is, I guess, what he does with his batsman when he balls ’em. So I, I took some of his technique and applied it to the shoot and, um, and it’s in the National Portrait Gallery. Wow. When he died, uh, people were, it was on the walls at the time in Canberra and people were queuing up to do selfies with it.
Steve Davis: He is, you know, certainly in the modern mind, one of the symbols of Australia, the [01:11:00] way that he flew the flag for us in, in cricket in particular. I want to talk about Australian ness now. Is there an Australian. Look, feel, style when it comes to photographic
Robin Sellick: art. I’ve spent my career trying to contribute meaningfully to that discussion.
And, um, I don’t see any evidence that, uh, you can’t, you can look at Australian architecture, Australian music, Australian cuisine, uh, all of those things. But Australian photography, what is that? You know? And that’s, I think there’s a, a piece missing in our puzzle. I think photography has a really important role to play in the establishment or the expression of Australian identity.
Not just the pictures you take, but the way you take them. It’s a bit like writing a piece of music in the seventies and writing a piece of music in the eighties. There’s a, a flavor, there’s a part of what’s happening around you that goes into that, [01:12:00] that you can feel. And photography is the same, but unfortunately, uh, we’re still a young country.
And we still, uh, tend to celebrate mimicry rather than celebrate individuality and expression that, um, expresses the identity of Australia and who we are and what we’re about in the language, in the visual language that we use.
Steve Davis: Do you think we would’ve progressed further along, finding that identity if we didn’t have tall poppy syndrome as a millstone around our neck?
Robin Sellick: Uh, tall poppy syndrome’s an awful thing and, uh, holds us back in so many ways, but it comes from insecurity. It comes from not knowing who we are, not knowing what we stand for, what we value. Um, and we tend to prioritize recreation rather than have those deeper conversations about, you know, who, who, what we believe, what we will tolerate, and what we won’t, [01:13:00] uh, the, the, the style in which we express ourselves in.
Fashion, architecture, photography, music, filmmaking, all of those things doesn’t necessarily have an individuality to it. We tend to celebrate, uh, work that looks like what somebody else has done somewhere else. And we still do that. We still have this sort of plagiarism thing, and it’s, it’s because we, we we’re stuck in that beginning stage.
There are four stages in the creative process, or they call ’em the four stages of life. You can apply this to anything. So mimicry, experimentation, uh, commitment, legacy. So when you, uh, as a creative person or in any endeavor, you might go, gee, I really like the way that person has lit that. Or, I really like the, uh, as a musician, I like the sound they’re getting outta that guitar.
I’m gonna see if I can do that. And you kind of, you mimic it and you, it’s, it’s a celebration of that. And when, and you do that enough and you can start to [01:14:00] actually create pictures that have that look or sound, that has that music, that has that sound. So that’s mimicry. That’s the first stage. The next stage is experimentation.
Okay, well, I can kind of do that Now. Where do I, what if I try it a little bit this way? What if I add a bit of that to it? Or what if I mix it with this? Or what if I just take that element and bend it this way? And you experiment and you find the way that you, like it sits with you. That sits with all the other things that you do.
And, and so once that happens, it becomes a commitment. You commit to that. You’ve made it, you’ve been through the experimental stage, and you’ve committed to this particular way. And then you do it for a while and, and the longer that you do it, it then becomes part of your legacy, becomes part of your, the way you do things, part of your style, part of your signature.
We get stuck in that mimicry stage and we don’t seem to encourage experimentation and encourage, uh, risk taking in that way. We, it’s [01:15:00] easier just to say, look at me. I took a photograph that looks like Richard Avadon, or I took a photograph that looks like somebody else, or I wrote a song that sounds like, or I built a building that looks like, and we don’t get past that.
We don’t have the ambition or the vision or the courage or the whatever it is. I can only put it down to us being a young country,
Steve Davis: but also I feel like we might have missed our opportunity. And I’ll tell you why. I’ve just come back from doing, at the time of recording the South Australian Variety bash.
It was only eight days. Yep. But when you are in remote South Australia, away from seriously everything. Time has a different meter. In fact, time is is a totally different concept there. Yeah. The wind, the sound of that desert wind. The fact that you can see a horizon that is infinitely away from you, which reminds you of your smallness, but in the silence you actually get to hear your thoughts and [01:16:00] your voice.
Yeah. Because there isn’t the top 40 radio blurring or the news or whatever. You’re alone with them. We are now in an age where every where blinking moment, every second, we have now been habitualize to fill it with grazing social media with playing noise. I fear. Tell me, if I, tell me, I’d like to get your thoughts on this, to move from mimicry to experimentation.
Yeah, I think you need space for thought. Yeah. In which case, unless something drastic happens soon, we’re buggered. I think we’re buggered. I think the train has left
Robin Sellick: the station. I think so. It’s not, it’s not a place that is conducive to that. And more and more so we are, we are consumers and, um, you know, we are units, aren’t we?
Yes. Um, living in, bro, growing up in Broken Hill, uh, [01:17:00] I, I come from that thing you spoke of. That’s, that’s in me. And, uh, so I get that. I get that. And I think that’s really important. And, uh, you’re right. I, you do need to create space and you do need to, um, invest energy. You find you have to make that space and you have to make the effort.
It’s just harder in an environment that you’re describing, this modern environment. It’s harder to find the space and the, the time and the, and the bandwidth to contemplate. What if I did it this way? Or how about, you know, wonder how can I get to here from where I am? You know, all those, you know, who’s got time for that, but you have to, you have to make time for that.
Steve Davis: Yeah. And the other side of that are the people who have the wherewithal, the drive, the interest in capturing moments that have been caught on film for their walls, uh, collectors. What’s [01:18:00] your finger on the pulse reading, telling you about the Australian appetite for buying work like yours, special work that’s out there.
Who, who are these people? What do you think those who
Robin Sellick: buy from you are seeking? I think they, they are the thinkers. They’re the ones who have. Uh, had the time to contemplate this or have for a long time contemplated it, you see the value in it. Um, what I do is not a, what I’m selling at the moment is not a mainstream product.
But, uh, you know, there are people out there who, uh, think about these things deeply and who understand the importance of cultural identity, um, cultural evolution, uh, the importance of us, uh, developing as a nation into something that we want, that we’re proud of, not just something that we become because we didn’t think about it now, who we are.
Um, so it’s, it’s more of a, a thinking person’s, [01:19:00] uh, audience, if you like.
Steve Davis: And does that mean, ’cause you, I was actually just looking at images of interior rooms for a website I was putting together for a client recently. And it struck me how all Bar one had all the living room chairs circled around the television.
Robin Sellick: Yeah.
Steve Davis: And that’s fine. I can’t be here and throw the first stone and say I, Mr. P, who meditates every night.
Theme: Yep.
Steve Davis: But to put one of your photographs on the wall, how long do you think, how many times could someone look at it and derive inspiration?
Robin Sellick: Well, many times. I hope, I mean, that’s the, that’s the, the strength of the work and the strength of any good work is that you see something in it.
Each time you look at it, it makes you think, you know, good art should make you think good photographs should make you think. Um, sometimes it’s a bit uncomfortable to think and some people don’t like to think. But, uh, that’s, that’s what art is for. That’s what, uh, great [01:20:00] architecture, great music, great.
Anything is for, it’s to make you think it’s to inspire you. It’s to show you something that you hadn’t thought of or a different way of looking at it, or, uh, another way of doing something that you’re familiar with. You know, it’s to open your mind, open your ideas. Uh, you know, to, to encourage you to, to see something or to help you to think differently and, you know, get from that what you can.
And some people, um, like that, that’s nourishment for them. And some people like to watch television.
Steve Davis: Is there an intuition you have of what attracts people to your work? Is it the fanboy or fangirl within us? Mm-hmm. Or could your subjects actually be inverted commas, nobodies and the, just like you met some of your people you shot without knowing much of their backstory, could you not know much of the backstory and still get a sense of wonder?
Robin Sellick: The, the thing with [01:21:00] my work is that it has been taken for a purpose. Its job was to go out there into the public and hopefully. Uh, get their attention and make ’em think, um, the, the Dunton and the Bradman, his early work. Um, and 30 years later they’re in the National Portrait Gallery, the magazine work. Um, the Blanche had all of the magazine stuff through the nineties.
The, the, the rule I had about that was that it has to, you have to be able to grab their attention for three seconds. And it’s similar in this age now with social media, but people flick through magazines. Mm-hmm. That my job, that photograph’s job, is to stop ’em, stop them from flicking and look at it. And if I can get them to look at that photograph for three seconds, it’s done its job.
And it’ll take them into the story and they’ll read the story. So that’s, that’s the benchmark for that sort of work. It needs to have enough impact to stop them and make ’em think for a second, hold their attention really. [01:22:00] For three seconds and then it’s done its job. And that is something that translates pretty neatly into our social media world now.
But that’s really the key with all of this. So it’s a piece of communication, it’s a, a piece of visual communication and it’s job is to first of all, get your attention and secondly, stop you and, and ask you to think about it.
Steve Davis: And is it always a win-win for the photographer and the subject, or does it skew one way or the other?
Sometimes. Uh, do you mean in terms of whether the pursuit is successful or, yeah, and, and the enduring legacy of the work?
Robin Sellick: Uh, they, they’re all different. They’re all different. The strong ones, uh, remain like, you know, I’m 57 now and I’ve been doing this for 30 odd years. And, uh, it’s a, it’s great to see some of the older work is resonating still with people, you know.
Uh, the good photographs don’t age, they don’t date. Um, and that’s comes back to what I was talking about before about taking the risk. You go that bit further, you go that bit [01:23:00] deeper and you get into the truth. Truth is the truth, whether it’s now or 30 years ago, it’s the truth. It doesn’t age. So that’s the stuff you need to, to get to with the work you do in order for it to stand the test of time.
And, you know, every shoot is different. I’m doing the best I can every time, and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. But the better you get at it, the, the more you analyze where you went wrong, you correct that. It’s all those little things. It’s, it’s 50 little things that make thing, make the success of the work.
You
Steve Davis: know? If you were gonna shoot Donald Trump today, how would you set up that shoot?
Robin Sellick: It’d be hard to fall in love with Donald Trump, I think. Yes.
SFX: Yes.
Robin Sellick: Um, I know somebody who’s photographed him a few times actually, uh, from a, a guy from Adelaide called Ben Baker. Um, Ben used to be my assistant many years ago, and he went on to live in America and, and.
Uh, specialized in political portraits and he’s photographed Donald Trump about three times, along with a few presidents. And, um, he says, you’ve just gotta feed the ego [01:24:00] with someone like Trump. And I can imagine that would be the case. I mean, uh, it’d be all about just, you know, make him feel good, make him look good.
You know, some people are like that, you know, I’ve had that myself with some people where they don’t care about the artistic thing. They don’t care about any of it. Just make me look good, you know? Wow. That’s, that’s kind of rare, but it does happen. You know,
Steve Davis: and that was a rather unfair question, but I’ll give you a fairer question.
If I could wave a magic wand and any of the people you’d photographed who were still living Yeah. Had to obey me, who would you summon to shoot a second time? Oh,
Robin Sellick: well see the, it’s about the time that you’re in, um, the, the power of the, the power of the portrait is in the y why’d you take this picture?
And so, you know, shooting Julia Gillard before she was the Prime Minister, photographing, uh, John Howard at the time [01:25:00] when he was about to, was he gonna stay or go And then circumstance, you know, Steve Irwin and, and Shane Warn have, have tragically passed away. I shot, uh, Steve about six months before he died.
And, um, so the, you know, the pictures take on a life of their own. And that’s really what it’s about. It’s, uh, it’s a, it’s timing. It’s being in the right place at the right time. It’s, it’s taking the right photo at the right time. So I’d have to put it in terms of who would I photograph now, and that would be somebody like, um.
For example, I’m half thinking about a, a series I wanna shoot next year, but it’s just a, an idea at the moment. But the three people I have, uh, on the list so far are Julian Assange, uh, Reagan, and, um, Bob Irwin.
Steve Davis: Oh, wow.
Robin Sellick: But, uh, I think Julian Assange is an, an amazing character. An extraordinary, uh,
Steve Davis: what a life say Australians.
Yeah.
Robin Sellick: Um, and Regan is a story. I mean, there’s a story there that [01:26:00] nobody’s talking about, and it, it comes back to identity. There was something about her performance that made us all feel a bit uncomfortable and Yeah. You know, things that, that whole thing hasn’t been unpacked yet. You know, there’s a whole thing there about identity, Australian identity that, you know, I can remember when Catherine Kim.
Came out and there were people, uh, uh, my mom’s friends for example, different people who felt insulted by it, felt like they were being ridiculed. And I think there’s an element of that in the regu performance that we haven’t yet had the conversation about. And that really interests me, you know?
Steve Davis: Yeah. The Catherine King thing, uh, looking in a mirror is not always comfortable.
Robin Sellick: No, no. And, uh, and I dunno whether we, it’s not something we encourage in this country. You know? We, we don’t encourage ourselves to think about these things, and, and it’s not, you know, it’s just not part of what we do. We, we wanna distract ourselves with stuff instead. Yeah.
Steve Davis: As we, uh, move towards the end of this shoot, uh, you, you were talking about [01:27:00] shooting in a certain style for the different ink on paper aspects of the production.
Yep. These limited edition. Prints that you’re doing. We’re talking museum, archival level paper. Yeah. For people who really get into this sort of stuff. Technically what’s going on there? What, what, what do we get when we buy pony up? Mm. To have a limited number. One of your works.
Robin Sellick: It’s, it’s the best possible technology.
You available at the time. The best possible papers. I used German paper called Hula, um, and others, but they’re really like amazing papers. Um, it’s done with an inkjet but high-end inkjet prints, uh, cliche they call it, which is French for Squirt. Okay. Um, uh, it’s the best possible tech technology. Uh, we use museum grade.
Uh. Materials, frames, glass, all of that stuff. So it’s a, it’s a high quality image. It’s an interesting point you raised because, uh, as [01:28:00] technology changes, the opportunity to create prints or images or the way you reproduce work changes. And it’s a bit like music. You know, you record an analog album and then the digital technology comes out.
So now it gets digitally remastered and Yeah. You know, so it’s shifting all the time. But what I’m, where I’m is I wanna use the best po best possible.
SFX: Yeah.
Robin Sellick: Technology, the best possible materials, because they’re important works. And they’re designed to last, you know, a hundred years, 200 years. So, um,
Steve Davis: through the Adelaide Show, we’ve been able to bookend my interest in photography with Alex Fra at one end.
Yes. With his landscape photography. Superb. You with your portraiture. I feel quite chuffed now. I can retire, but I did put him on the spot and say, Alex, give me, give us a photographic challenge. Next time we’re going in, in your case, it’ll be photographing someone, you know, uh, or it could be anyone, but let’s assume it’s someone you know.
What [01:29:00] should we have in mind to at least give us some pause for thought to maybe lift it from the realms of the snapshot to something approaching art where it doesn’t matter if the viewer has a DNA connection to the subject. Yeah, they’ll still find it interesting.
Robin Sellick: Uh, ask yourself lots of questions before you take the photograph.
And the big question to ask is, what do I wanna say about this person? What is it about this person that I, me, I, this the photographer, find fascinating and interesting? Really, not just I like your hair. Like, what is it about this person that I really find interesting and go on that journey with them and record that.
Steve Davis: Can you ground that? So if you were gonna photograph me. Yep. What would, what are some of these questions just so we get you to, you know, give us an
Robin Sellick: example. I, I would, uh, want to delve into why you do what you do. [01:30:00] What I always think to myself, what sort of person do you have to be to be Julia Gillard or, or Kylie Mingue?
Or what sort of person do you have to be? Who is that person? How, how do I get down deep into that place in the time that I’ve gotten the circumstances that I’m in? So it’s a bit like doing an interview. You know, you, you, you ask the questions, you take the journey. You, you, you find out the answers. You know, so it’s about establishing trust really quickly.
Um, don’t ask ’em to do anything that you wouldn’t do. Yeah. Uh, do what you say you’re gonna do. Mm-hmm. So trust is the first thing. Yeah. And then, okay, let’s go deeper. Let’s, what about this? Why don’t we try this? And the way you talk to them, you know, you, you speak. Softly and openly. Yeah. You don’t yell at them from across the room.
It’s all that sort of stuff. It’s like, it’s like the conversation that we’re having.
Steve Davis: Okay. Well just So ground rules, no nudity when you shoot me. Right. Certainly. Alright. Well certainly very limited or tasteful obviously. Oh, absolutely always. And, and I think actually that does, I did I, that was gonna be my funny [01:31:00] throwaway line to finish with, but there is a photograph of you in a very skimpy red g-string, uh, I think it was, or a pair of jocks or something.
Uh, we can’t leave this very high conversation without tapping some of that for the real Robin Selleck or aspects of it. How the heck did that come about? And is that available anywhere physically at the moment, or is that, uh, it’s
Robin Sellick: in, it’s in my book, uh, facing, it’s in the book. Uh, that was actually the, uh, Marie Claire, uh, opened in Australia in I think, uh, 95 96.
That’s the first. A portrait to be commissioned in Australia by Marie Claire. That’s the first one.
Steve Davis: We need to describe it. Describe it to people. It’s
Robin Sellick: a, it was a, a story about, uh, married couples who run businesses. So I, I shot, uh, half a dozen different people and these people owned, uh, the most exclusive and expensive brothel in Sydney.
And so we went down to the dungeon. To the dungeon. [01:32:00] And uh, I just, I was trying to find somewhere to take the picture and I realized that that was the most interesting picture. I mean, you know, it’s a Through the mirror. Through through the mirror, yeah. There’s a, there was a sling, uh, with, so four chains coming down from each side and then a mirror above.
Um, and the, the lady who was the madam, I can’t remember her name, but she was a famous madam. Mm-hmm. And her husband, which is very, he was a very ordinary looking man, drinking a cup of tea. So, so that’s
Steve Davis: how, okay. But hang on, that’s one thing. Who posited that idea? Did she say, well, you could strip down.
Robin Sellick: No, no.
I, I just said, I think I’ll do it here. So,
Steve Davis: and you decided to disrobe Yep. For the shot. Yeah. And so, dear, you’ve gotta
Robin Sellick: take the risks, you know, you’ve gotta go there, you know,
Steve Davis: so, dear listener, when you’re looking at this, you’re basically looking down because you’ve taken the shot up through the mirror.
Yeah. And we see Robin Spreadeagled with his manacles and Crotched in full sight. And then we’ve got the madam and her [01:33:00] husband off one side, one side, and she’s got a whip and there’s tones of darkness and red. Yeah.
Robin Sellick: Yep.
Steve Davis: Was that one of your most fun photo suits? It
Robin Sellick: was, it was, uh, yes, I think so. I think so.
It really created a stir, as you can imagine. And, um, magazine world is pretty, it was very sort of prim and, uh, and that, like I said, it was the first portrait to be commissioned in Australia by Marie Claire. So when it came back to the office and everyone saw it, you know, quite a thing, but they went with it and, uh.
Steve Davis: Wow.
Robin Sellick: Yeah. Um, it’s, it, it’s one of my better pictures, but I don’t show up very often. It’s, it’s just of me. So maybe I’ll, maybe you can put it on your website or something. I dunno.
Steve Davis: We’ll see. Yes. Well, we’ll see if we can get a copy of that. Yeah. Alright. Um, Robin Selick, just in closing, I’d like to ask this question.
Is there something, an area we haven’t ventured into that you feel would be useful to have a, a, a reflection on? What have I not, what have I skipped in the realm of photography and portraiture? Oh, I dunno. We’ve, we’ve really
Robin Sellick: gone [01:34:00] on a long journey there, haven’t we? You know? Um, I couldn’t say Steve. I dunno.
I dunno. Alright.
Steve Davis: Okay. Well in that case then we will, I can hear the film. It’s now unspool, it’s run all the way to that side. Then now it’s time to expose it or develop it rather. Yes. And see what comes of that. Perfect. Perfect. Alright, Robin Selick. Thank you. Oh. The website. What’s your website address?
Robin Sellick: Oh, the seller archive.com au.
Steve Davis: I’ll put links to all of that there. Wonderful. And tell me about the book just briefly. Is it still available? Uh, yeah. Yeah, it’s
Robin Sellick: sold out, but you can get some on eBay. Uh, it’s called Facing and it, it covers what it was the first book of, its kind by an Australian photographer and it’s a series of, uh, portraits from 10 years of work.
It was published in 2004, uh, and it’s about 150 celebrity portraits.
Steve Davis: Is there ever gonna be a reprint?
Robin Sellick: I think there’s probably another book somewhere in the future. Yeah. But we’ll, we’ll see. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Will the Marie Claire picture feature in it? It’s
Robin Sellick: in it, yeah. Oh yeah.
Steve Davis: See it’s worth. Okay. I’ll put the link to eBay as well.[01:35:00]
Robin said it. Thank you very much.
Robin Sellick: Thank you very much.
Theme: And now it’s time for the musical pilgrimage.
Steve Davis: In the musical pilgrimage, we have another song by Steve Davis and the Virtuosos. This time it’s a song I’ve written upon reflecting on the, uh, the loss of the West End Brewery. That was a unique brewery when it comes to breweries because it wasn’t just about the beer.
Something really wonderful about the spirit that happened around. That entity was the banks of the Torrens there, having those Christmas displays that families would come to and enjoy. That, that ran a few decades, I believe that became something that families just did. We had that, uh, spring water tap out the front where you always see cars lined up, people [01:36:00] filling up their tanks with some beautiful, uh, filtered, you know, spring water and of course the chimney adorned every year with the colors of the winning sa NFL footy team.
Uh, it never quite was. Black and gold as much as it should have been, in my opinion. We’ll keep that to one side. So in putting this song together, thinking about those things, there are other icons that, uh, matched to this, and one of them is with SA Brewing and Coopers, and I forget what the third company was, but they, they banded together another brewer to make those pickax bottles.
Glass was expensive to make and get back in the early days. And so what a number of consortia did in different states in Australia was create their own company to make their own glass that was then shared between different brewers. And the pickax bottle was one of them. You, if you’ve lived in South Australia for a long time, you remember they had that beautiful [01:37:00] Amber Brown glass and they had that imprint, that circle with the pickax icon there.
That triggered lots of memories of how beer used to be consumed with long necks passed down the table at lunch. The other thing, after I played this song to my father, he reminded me that his dad actually worked at the West End Brewery when it was, or one of the breweries when it was at in Henley Street before all the operations moved to Berton.
So, you know, there’s a familial link here, which I wasn’t aware of. But the other thing about this is, yes, we need housing and that’s a wonderful location for some housing to be. What we lose though, is something that is a gathering point for all of us. It’s one of those little simple pleasures. It’s not a fancy high-end beer, never was, but there was something bonding about [01:38:00] it being accessible, and I think there’s just something.
Wallowing around there at that level of reflection of the loss of West End. It did turn out that our, one of our guests from last week, uh, Darren Rex, the chair, current chair of the SA Variety Bash in South Adelaide player, uh, also worked for a company that did a lot of marketing for West End Brewery back in the day, which was the reminder of how much West End supported our different sports groups.
That gets mentioned in the song too. Anyway, I think I’ve, uh, I think I’ve earned a hard earned thirst. Well, gee, there’s a slogan from another brand. Let’s have a listen now. This is called Shout Your Mates, another Round Steve Davis and the Virtuosos.
Steve Davis & The Virtualosos: I remember how the beer would flow around the family table years ago.
Those along neck bottles that [01:39:00] I’m glass. It tense the memories of my past and then the brewery standing proud. It was a feature of our town, a place together, a place to cheer, a place where we may. Local beer, but now it’s gone taken brick by brick, like an empty glass drain, sip by sip. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t best, but it was ours.
From east to twist, shout your mates another round. Pass that big ax bottle down, or sit alone and [01:40:00] stare into that golden bur round. Deep beneath that crown, you can let your sadness drown and fade away like all the landmarks they have taken from our town. I remember all the games we played interstate and here in Adelaide.
How the West End money made our side. So we drank to them to show our pride, but now there is a lot of choice. So we no longer have one voice, that’s how things go or so they say, but I still miss the best end of the day. [01:41:00] ’cause now it’s gone taken brick by brick. Like an empty glass drain, sip by sip. It wasn’t grave.
It wasn’t best, but it was asked from Easter west. Shout your mates another round. Pass that big ax bottle down, or sit alone and stare into that golden and round. Deep beneath that rub crown. You can let your sadness drown and fade away like all the landmarks they have take taken from our town. As I sit here with my drink and give myself some time to think as more simple [01:42:00] pleasures to disappear, there’s lesson left, left.
To keep me here because now it’s gone. Take a brick by brick, like an empty glass drain, sip bicep. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t best, but it was ours. From east to west
Chacho makes another round. Pass that big ax bottle down or sit alone and stare into that golden man above round, deep beneath that rough crown. You can let your sadness drown and fade away like all the landmarks they have taken from our town. Shout your mates another round [01:43:00] past that big ax. Bottle down or sit alone and stare into.
You can let your sadness drown the landmark Have from.
Steve Davis: I hope that, uh, brought back some memories for you. That’s shout your mates another round. Steve Davis and the Virtu Osos. You know what, it’s, um, I’m just trying to find that walk that fine line between having songs that reminisce without being sickly sweet or brutally horrible.
I hope I managed to get that balance right at this time. So West End at the moment is being made interstate. I’m not sure if it’s ever gonna be made back here again, but it’s still out there and there is still sponsorship happening. It continues. As will the [01:44:00] Adelaide show. So until the next episode, it’s goodnight for me, Steve Davis and goodnight Dawn.
AJ Davis: The Adelaide Show Podcast is produced by my dad, Steve Davis. If you want to start a podcast or get some help producing creative content. Talk to him. Visit steve davis.com au. Thanks, aj. I’m Caitlin Davis and I agree with everything my sister said, but there’s one more thing to say. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a rating or a review ’cause that will make my dad really happy.
Oh, and one more thing. If you really, really liked it, please help a friend put the Adelaide Show on their phone. Thanks for listening.
Buzz Buzz.
Theme: Lady.[01:45:00]
Lady, lady. Lady. Lady. Lady. Lady who.