Gordon De Lisle

[6][7][8][9] After the war in 1947 De'Lisle opened his own photographic studios in the Exhibition Buildings specialising in society portraits, industrial, aerial and automotive photography,[10] and met, and on 20 February 1948 married after nearly a year's engagement,[11] Merton Hall-educated model Cynthia Ferguson of Malvern,[12] who worked for Georges department store.

He installed his business at 9 Collins Street in the Grosvenor Chambers where Wolfgang Sievers also had a studio only doors away from their friend Athol Shmith, to concentrate on commercial and fashion photography.

[4] From 1949 De Lisle was a stringer for the Sydney Morning Herald magazine and newspaper group in Melbourne and was living in the wealthy suburb of Brighton in Grosvenor Court, 260 St Kilda Street.

[21] He relinquished the SMH role when in 1958/9 director Stanley Kramer appointed him stills photographer on the motion picture On the Beach, to produce thousands of production prints for the film.

It finds you enjoying precisely the same esteem in the eyes of your fellow citizens as do beekeepers, [and] bank clerks..."In 1970 De Lisle, then in his late forties, followed Ian McKenzie[27] as Senior Lecturer in Charge Photography in the Diploma stream of Prahran College of Technology where he researched videotape and electronic education, hired by the vocationally-oriented graphic designer Principal Alan Warren but after suffering a severe heart attack, was replaced with Athol Shmith by the incoming Principal Dr David Armstrong, in 1971.

While at Prahran he worked on his high-contrast photomontage series on “the raped land, Australia, as it would appear to a woman who returns from the dead to discover that her country, too, is dying,” which combined his love of the Australian landscape and the female form, and was exhibited and published in 1972 in the Ilford-funded Concern.

[33] Victorian premier of 1955–72, Henry Bolte's vice squad raided his family home, confiscating his "pornography";[4] nudes for which he was then winning international awards,[34] an experience which confirmed his vehemently expressed opposition to censorship, particularly of the arts.

A regular writer of letters to the editor,[35][36][37] he notoriously criticised the new National Gallery in Melbourne: "The building squats, featureless, like an obscure grey telephone exchange, floating in already scungy moats floored with lolly papers ... like a bleak penitentiary.

[39] Its croquet lawn, exotic tropical gardens with Balinese statuary, a hot tub beneath a huge frangipani tree and ocean views, proved attractive to tourists.

[4] He retired in 1991,[41] and on his death in 2002 was survived by Cynthia, his wife of 54 years, his daughter Jennie, sons Rodney, and artist Christopher, who has continued to operate the gallery, and eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.