Max Dupain, photographer, spent a lifetime capturing images on film with the passion of mind, body and soul. His dramatic observations of his surroundings and his friends are honest and forthright. His exhibition images have become well known and the chronology of his life and work can be found at People. Max Dupain.

Less well known is the fact that Dupain ran a successful commercial photography studio all his working life. In operation from the time of Dupain’s Bond Street studio in the early 1930s and since 1961 know as Max Dupain & Associates. Dupain was very aware of the practical need to ‘pay the rent’ and put his energies into assignments for advertising, magazine, corporate and architectural clients each and every day of the working week. Dupain is often studied in Australian schools and he is revered increasingly in the community of artists and photographers. Dupain frequently denied being an artist but stated that photography was a legitimate field of creative endeavour on its own.

The dedication revealed in his commercial work puts into perspective the challenges and creativity he aspired to in all his photography. He encouraged those around him of the importance to take photographs for personal satisfaction and growth. It was during his weekend time that he was able create his famous beach scenes. Sunbaker, 1937 was taken while at a NSW south coast beach with friends. This and many other images now reside in the collective consciousness of Australians. Olive Cotton met Dupain when their families took holidays together at Newport Beach in 1924. Cotton remembers of the early days, ‘Max… was always interested in photography too, so we used to go for walks with our cameras round about Newport during holidays and take photographs… he either developed them in his darkroom at (his) home or I’d develop them in mine, or sometimes… I visited his place on weekends and we’d work together in the darkroom and so… my interest in photography grew. It was stimulating to have someone else doing the same thing.’ It was after an apprenticeship with Sydney photographer Cecil Bostock that Dupain began his own studio in Bond Street in the city of Sydney, Australia in 1934. He was aged 23.