Paradise Club, Christmas Eve 1965
On Remembering, Forgetting & The Magic of Photography
Like a good song, a good photograph can suck you inside and transport you to another place, another time.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved images, pictures, photographs. I like the secrets they accidentally reveal and the elaborate constructions they present as reality. I like their magic and their immobility. Their blur and beauty and brutality.
Where a song thrusts you into a swirling maelstrom of feel and time and emotion, a photograph illuminates an irrevocable moment.
The first photographer I got to know was Robert McFarlane.
Robert photographed Robyn Archer’s incredible theatre show ‘A Star Is Torn’ and most of her other theatrical performances. Two of his photographs are in my book - this incredible one of Robyn Archer in ‘Tonight Lola Blau’, that seems to me to encapsulate the very essence of performing, of slipping into or becoming a character - this is like the moment between, almost a sleight of hand:
Then Robert was the official on-set photographer for ‘The Year My Voice Broke’, the film I was in as a teenager. He was always in demand as a stills photographer on film sets, renowned for his ability to capture something more than what was obvious to the eye.
Robert also lived in Kings Cross back then, and I went to visit him a few times soon after the film wrapped. We’ve been emailing since resuming contact recently, and he sent me this photograph he took of me back then on his rooftop, that I’ve never seen. I can’t remember it but I remember the ‘corset dress’ I’m wearing belonged to my grandmother Pat. Funny how often I remember a dress or an item but nothing else from a photograph. And I’m wearing hi-top sneakers - which is odd because I don’t recall ever wearing sneakers as a teenager (except in the film), I never liked them - until I bought myself glow in the dark leopard print sneakers in New York that changed my mind . It makes me wonder what other ideas I have of myself that a photograph would contradict.
Robert also sent me this incredible selection of photographs that somehow reference our shared cultural history; Kings Cross street scenes and behind-the-scenes, Martin Sharp, Tiny Tim… the breadth and depth and historical significance of his work is really quite mind boggling. A titan of Australian photography, and a genuine treasure of a human being.
This first shot, a Kings Cross street scene, features a sailor and a girl who resembles Sallie Anne Huckstepp remarkably, and even though it was taken years before I lived there, its so familiar to me from walking around Darlinghurst Rd back in the 80s. Its a photograph that seems to capture so many possibilities, her seemingly looking to somewhere else, somewhere perhaps only viewable in her imagination, a dream destination, him sizing her up, maybe sizing the magazine she’s selling up, wondering whether to take the next step… its beautiful in its raw honesty.
I used to walk past the strip clubs as a young girl, wondering what on earth they were like inside. I wonder what this dancer would remember if she saw this incredibly tender photograph of herself backstage?
These two unposed portraits are so moving in their stillness, in their sense of all that is around them and behind them and coming next, and all the art they both hold within. I love all the loose connections I can feel at play here - having been Tiny Tim’s personal waitress at Martin Sharp’s party at Wirian - the place where Sallie Anne sheltered and experienced a creative blossoming and a brief respite from her usual existence.
And this photograph perfectly captures the actress and author Kate Fitzpatrick, who when I worked with her in the late 80s seemed to emit a glow and carry a mystical aura of all those lights and mirrors and backstage roses with her.
I can’t help seeing the world with invisible spiderwebs of connections, only visible when you squint your eyes and look into the light and shadow.
For more of Robert’s work, please get lost in his website, where you can also delve into his wonderful written work: https://www.robertmcfarlanephotos.com/about.html
Stunning images. I love that you can recall the dress (but little else) from that rooftop image. When I look at photographs of myself as a teenager, I struggle to recognize the boy in them. He seems so unlike who I am now. Even though we share the same features, we’re not, in a very real sense, the same person.