There were no selfies or duck faces when Rennie Ellis was roaming Melbourne with his camera. Instead, he captured the city’s unfiltered ordinary faces. Intent on photographing both the big events and everyday life, his camera captured St Kilda Beach and the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Tina Turner and Molly Meldrum, the Melbourne Cup and suburban football games.
The Rennie Ellis exhibition at the State Library of Victoria. Credit: Christian Capurro/SLV An exhibition at the State Library – Melbourne Out Loud: Life through the lens of Rennie Ellis – draws on its collection of more than 500,000 of his photographs to showcase the work of “one of our greatest chroniclers”. Curator Angela Bailey said the period captured by Ellis through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s was a different time for photography.
“For a photographer, taking photographs of people in public was a lot easier,” she said. “People weren’t as suspicious, they were more open to a camera than they are today. Ellis’ photograph Molly Meldrum & Dog from 1978.
“So we see he was able to access a lot of these areas and events that are probably a little bit more restrictive today in terms of backstage at fashion shows and backstage at concerts and that sort of thing.” Bailey said the Melbourne captured by Ellis was one of juxtapositions: older women barracking at the football, party goers at a club, young people protesting about the Vietnam War, a footballer standing on the turf of the MCG, a cigarette dan.