Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

155 Regional Queensland 154 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s MAX DUPAIN Max Dupain began his career in 1930 as an apprentice at Cecil Bostock’s commercial photography studio in Sydney. By 1934 Dupain had established his own premises and embarked on a highly successful career, moving away from the pictorialist style in which he had trained to pioneer modernist photography in Australia. In 1934, Dupain launched his first commercial partnership and began what would become a 40-year engagement with CSR Limited (Colonial Sugar Refining Company) to document its mills and the activities of its cane growers. Dupain’s initial commission saw him travel to the cane fields of the Burdekin, Ingham and Innisfail, and he would return north over subsequent decades. 1 Dupain’s photographs capture the landscape in Queensland’s cane-growing regions, the workers and their families, and the machinery central to their industry. Taken in the 1950s, this photograph conveys something of the heat and humidity of north Queensland through the strong shadows cast by the buildings’ awnings and the plumes of smoke rising from the mill’s chimneys. Dupain considered industrial subjects to be ‘giant still lifes’, an approach evident in this image in which the curve of the repository in the foreground is contrasted against the geometric jumble of buildings on the left. 2 Dupain’s eye for interesting angles is also apparent in more prosaic images, such as Pearce children off to school on bikes, Burdekin District, Queensland c.1950s, printed 1987 (p.156), and in photographs where sugar cane itself is the subject, including Sugar cane, Queensland, September 1952, printed 1987 (p.157). Notes 1 Rachael Merritt, ‘Australian photographer Max Dupain’s 40-year project featuring north Queensland cane fields’, ABC News , 12 June 2023, <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023- 06-12/max-dupain-north-queensland-sugar-mills-photography-cane-workers/102467492>, viewed December 2024. 2 ‘Max Dupain’, QAGOMA , <https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/burn/max-dupain/> , viewed March 2025. Max Dupain , Sugar mill, unidentified, North Queensland c.1950s, printed 1987