9. MANRAY/DUPAIN

In my head I had filed Manray under ‘Greats’ and didn’t think all that much more about him until the Manray/Dupain exhibition at Heide in October 2025. I knew he was surrealist and experimental and I knew he was a bit of a diva and, of course, he did appear tangentially in the discourse around Lee Miller with the release of Kate Winslet’s extraordinary film. So the exhibition was an opportunity to have a look at his photographic work on what was probably the closest to his own terms as I will get.

Dupain I knew from my time at the NLA where a few of his works hung in the hallway into Pictures branch and in the archive drawers out back. I loved his Sydney nightscapes best. The water and the lights were incredibly beautiful. Perfectly executed long exposures causing lines of trailing light from a car here or a boat there. I’ve always wondered if Brett Whitely’s trailing lines arcing over Sydney Harbour behind birds and boats were inspired by Dupain’s nightscapes. Surely there was a connection?

It was a vast and highly curated exhibition. Thoughtful. Broken down into key themes where we experience Manray and Dupain’s works enhanced by being placed side by side. Commercial work. Portraits. Ladies in hats. There was only one of Dupain’s nightscapes and it reminded me how much I loved them. His work is elegant and considered. The whole frame is curated and the prints are meticulous. Beautiful.

Manray’s work was… there. I know the technical and academic value of his work and ideas but better people than me have written about that. I’ve now got the luxury of judging things based on how they make me feel. Perhaps because creatively my mind is turning towards the Australian landscape that Manray’s work didn’t really hit in the same way as seeing Dupain’s work again did. It left me thinking about lifting my own editing and printing standards.

And as often happens after such experiences I come away wondering why do exhibition shops not sell posters anymore?!