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LEGACY. Your collection. Our story.
MGA: the Australian home of photography
Landscape/Architecture
Central Gallery
Exploration and documentation of the landscape and the built environment has occupied the practice of so many photographers. So much of the human condition can be revealed by how we have chosen to inhabit our world.
David STEPHENSON
Light cities is one of Stephenson’s more recent series. Drawing on many of the methodologies and preoccupations of his previous work, Light cities involved using long exposures to photograph major cities around the world at night. The series continued themes and ideas common to Stephenson’s practice. For instance, his interests in the landscape, architecture, time and the symbolic nature of light are evident in this project. The long exposures accentuate the vivid colours in the city lights and also serve to eliminate the busyness of cities, as movement is turned into streams of colour and light.
The cities in this series are generally seen from a consistent viewpoint, usually from high vantage points. This, along with the vivid colours and lack of evidence of people and movement in the photographs, serves to create a consistency across each of the images, which suggests something of the relative uniformity of cities in the globalised world. It also eliminates the foreground and allows the viewer to focus on the vast, awe-inspiring masses of light and energy that contemporary cities have become.
Melbourne, looking east from Rialto Tower 2009
from the series Light cities 2008–11
pigment ink-jet print
89.9 x 71.1 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program 2016
MGA 2016.110.1
courtesy of the artist
John GOLLINGS
John Gollings (1944– ) made his first photographs and received darkroom tuition at age 11. He later studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and completed a Masters in Architecture at RMIT. He worked as a freelance advertising photographer, specialising in fashion and, as his contemporaries in architecture developed their practices, he increasingly focused on architectural photography. Gollings is now a well-known architectural photographer. He has also lectured on architecture and photography and has recently spent more time on longer term projects with academic or cultural significance for books, exhibitions and fine prints, including the documentation of dead cities in countries such as India, Cambodia and Libya.
He was the subject of a survey exhibition John Gollings: the history of the built world, at MGA 2017-18.
Suburban aerial, Cheltenham, S 037 54 10.45 E 145 05 20.52 elev 462M 2013
pigment ink-jet print
55.5 x 83.2 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by John Gollings 2016
MGA 2016.118
courtesy of the artist
Kenneth PLEBAN
PHQ – Russell Street, D24 1997
chromogenic print
86.3 x 130.0 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Daniel Palmer 2016
MGA 2017.04
Arthur WICKS
Solstice note #9 – Berlin 2002
pigment ink-jet print
88.0 x 86.0 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated by the artist 2006
MGA 2006.23
courtesy of the artist
Andrew BROWNE
Light effect #10 2004
chromogenic print
72.0 x 72.0 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated by the artist through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program 2005
MGA 2006.11.10
courtesy of the artist
Peter DOMBROVSKIS
This photograph shows a myrtle tree at Mount Anne in Tasmania’s south-west. This image is typical of Peter Dombrovskis’s practice in that it shows a remote part of the Tasmanian landscape. His images were often produced with the intention of drawing viewers’ attention to the beauty of Tasmania’s wilderness. Like other photographs by Dombrovskis this image has an unreal quality about it, as if it were a part of a surreal fantasy land. This inspires a sense of wonder and awe in the viewer and is one of the reasons Dombrovskis’s photographs have played a part in preserving various Tasmanian natural places.
Myrtle tree in rainforest at Mount Anne, south-west Tasmania 1984
pigment ink-jet print
94.2 x 74.1 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated by the Estate of Peter Dombrovski 2015
MGA 2015.039
courtesy of the Estate of Peter Dombrovskis
Alfred GREGORY
Crevasse in Western Cwm 1953
from the series Everest first ascent 1953
gelatin silver print
47.0 x 46.5 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated by the artist through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program 2006
MGA 2006.16
Stephen WICKHAM
Image for Georg Weisz 2004
chromogenic print
103.0 x 101.0 cm
Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection
donated by the artist 2004
MGA 2004.30
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