New Max Dupain exhibition to open in Sydney

7 August 2024

A new exhibition of work by Max Dupain, one of Australia’s best-known modernist photographers, will document the nation at a crossroads when it opens in Sydney next week.

The photographs in Max Dupain: Student Life were taken at the University of Sydney in the early 1950s, a period of rapid change marked by the politics of the Cold War.

Too-Loose. After the war a new, more relaxed mood swept campus celebrations in the 1950s, in large part due to so many more women students attending University. Image: University of Sydney Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum.

Initially, Dupain’s love of architecture drew him to the campus, where he photographed modernist buildings such as the Fisher Library.

He grew to love the campus and went on to capture student life.

The works in Student Life range from shots of formal dances to fiery protests opposing both communism and the McCarthy-era communist witch-hunt underway in the United States.

Dupain sought an aerial view in the Union’s Holme building to capture the swirling ball gowns and suits seen through a layer of lights and streamers. Image: University of Sydney Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum.

“These were boom years for the university, and Dupain’s candid studies reveal an increasingly diverse student body, following the post-war influx of refugees, women, and Indian and Asian students, some on the ‘Colombo Plan’ sponsoring Asian students to study in Australia,” said Ann Stephen, Senior Curator of the University Art Collection at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, which is hosting the exhibition.

“Dupain’s Sydney University album includes modernist aerial views of interiors, such as the Great Hall and the Union’s Holme Building, along with more informal shots from ‘Freshers’ week. There was a degree of formality, with young women dressed in skirts and heels, and the young men in suits and ties.”

Come to the Sunny Soviet. On the annual University parade, known as ‘Commem. Day’ (celebrated until 1975) students would stage performances on a march into the city, after inspection and censoring by the police. The Petrov affair inspired one of the highlights of the 1954 parade. A month earlier Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, Soviet spies who were masquerading as diplomats in Canberra, defected to Australia. The float enacts the dramatic moment when Evdokia was escorted by two burly KGB men from Moscow onto a plane at Mascot to fly back to the Soviet Union, though she would be released in Darwin. Image: University of Sydney Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum.

The infamous Petrov Affair of 1954 is among the events highlighted. A float in the University’s annual ‘Commem Day’ parade reenacts the dramatic moment when Evokia Petrov, a Soviet spy in Canberra under the guise of a diplomat who defected to Australia after Josef Stalin’s death, was escorted onto a plane by KGB men.

Early anti-nuclear protests are also depicted on a float opposing University of Sydney Professor Harry Messel’s controversial University Nuclear Research Foundation.

According to the Museum, the exhibition is the first public exhibition of Dupain’s work in recent times, and is made up of digital reproductions of vintage silver gelatin photographs from Sydney University album.

They were donated to the University by Diana Dupain under the Federal Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 1996 and are now part of the Chau Chak Wing Museum collection.

Exhibition details

What: Max Dupain: Student Life
Where: Level 4, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney, University Place, Camperdown
When: from 10 August until 29 June 2025
Opening hours: 10am-5pm Monday to Friday, 12-4pm weekends, closed public holidays.