Sunbaker | |
---|---|
Artist | Max Dupain |
Year | 1975 print from 1937 negative |
Type | Silver gelatin print |
Dimensions | 70.2 cm × 79.6 cm (27.6 in × 31.3 in) |
Sunbaker is a 1937 black-and-white photograph by Australian modernist photographer Max Dupain. It depicts the head and shoulders of a man lying on a beach in New South Wales, taken from a low angle. The iconic photograph has been described as "quintessentially Australian", a "sort of icon of the Australian way of life",[1][2] and "arguably the most widely recognised of all Australian photographs."[3]
Composition
It was a simple affair. We were camping down the south coast and one of my friends leapt out of the surf and slammed down onto the beach to have a sunbake – marvellous. We made the image and it's been around, I suppose as a sort of icon of the Australian way of life.
— Max Dupain [4]
The photograph depicts the head and shoulders of a man lying flat on his stomach on the sand. His head, tilted to the left, is resting on one arm and his other arm is lying flat on the sand before him. The photograph is taken from a very low angle and head on, so nothing else of the subject can be seen. The sun appears to be almost directly overhead and casts much of the subject into deep shadow while reflecting off the beads of water on his arms and back. The subject takes up much of the upper half of the work, with the bottom half consisting of a bright, empty area of sand.[5] The picture can be seen as "forming a single pyramidal form positioned against the horizon."[3]
Dupain took the photograph in 1937 at Culburra Beach, a small town on the New South Wales South Coast.[6] The man in the photograph is Harold Salvage (1905-1991), a British builder, who was part of a group of friends on a surfing trip.[4] The first version of the Sunbaker image (with Harold's hands clasped) appeared only once, in a limited edition booklet entitled Max Dupain: photographs which was published by Hal Missingham in 1948.[7] This was Dupain's preferred version, but unfortunately the original negative was lost. As a result, the prints that went on to become his most famous work were printed from a second negative which shows the sunbaker's hand relaxed.[8]
The most familiar version of the photograph was not printed until a retrospective of Dupain's work in 1975 at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.[4] The only known vintage print of the original version was donated to the State Library of New South Wales as one of over 108 vintage prints compiled by Dupain's friend, the architect Chris Vandyke, in the Vandyke Album.[9]