The Photographers' Gallery and Workshop
Its representation, in the 1970s and 1980s, of contemporary and mid-century, mostly American and some European original fine prints from major artists was influential on Australian audiences and practitioners, while a selection of the latter's work sympathetic to the gallery ethos was shown alternately and then dominated the program.
[3] Paul Cox, Ingeborg Tyssen, John F. Williams[4] and Rod McNicol[5] founded[6] The Photographers' Gallery and Workshop in 1973[7] at 344 Punt Road, South Yarra[8] in an 1888 two-storey fruiterer's shop and dwelling (originally a bootmaker's) in the 'Sharp's Buildings' terrace,[9][10] rented since 1965 as a photographer's studio and accommodation by Paul Cox,[11] who from 1969–c.1980 taught cinematography at Prahran College.
Beside some government funding and sales, both financially supported their roles through teaching, Heimerman being next employed at Brighton Technical College, where he and other staff members established a photography program, and then at the Council of Adult Education.
[20] Lobb and Heimerman showed some local work, but pursued high profile international, mainly American and some European, photographers for exhibitions.
After the refurbishment Melbourne Times critic Wendy Harmer described the space as "an oasis of pristine white walls and warm, polished wood.
[27]Curator Joyce Agee in 1988 noted that, with feminist photography on the ascendant, the gallery's ambitions irritated some Australian women photographers; In the 1970s, Micky Allan, the late Carol Jerrems, Ruth Maddison, Sue Ford and Ponch Hawkes, reacting against the technocratic and patriarchal American West Coast 'fine print' tradition then being promoted by The Photographers' Gallery in Melbourne, began to use photography as an intimate expression of their individual concerns.
[32] In mid-1978, the gallery extended a call in the pages of the magazine Light Vision to Australian photographers to submit work for a survey that was to be a traveling exhibition.
[33] Editor Jean-Marc Le Pechoux acknowledged the cooperative nature of the venture in his editorial, and in her introduction Memory Holloway emphasised the breadth of the selection; "...a plurality of techniques, ideologies and styles; social documentary; pictorial, surreal landscapes; nudes; portraits; straight photography."
[34] Tony Perry, who reviewed shows there 1978-80, was complimentary of contributions by William Heimermann and the 'Photographers Gallery' to Australian Photography in his article 'Australia: looking for a photographic identity',[35] as was Peter Turner's interview with Paul Cox in Light Vision.
He has just mounted an exhibition from the Dutch surrealist photographer Paul De Nooijer but it remains in darkness five days a week because he says, he cannot afford the electricity bills.
[48][49] Its director James Mollison turned the sponsorship of the tobacco company Philip Morris International to the acquisition of Australian photography.
