By Cara Waters
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 dangling from his lips.
Melbourne Out Loud: Life through the lens of Rennie Ellis draws on the State Library’s collection of more than 500,000 of his photographs.
“He was a larrikin. I think he just had that innate ability to connect and he loved engaging with people,” she said.
“You won’t find many landscapes or still lifes in his photography. It’s all about the people and he immersed himself in culture and community.”
Ellis was best known to many as a social snapper, but the exhibition takes in the full gamut of his work and presents a unique portrait of Melbourne.
“He was addicted to the actual art of taking the photos; that was the interest to him, that engagement and that click of the camera,” Bailey said.
A profile of Ellis in this masthead, following his death at 62 in 2003, describes him as “Melbourne’s eternally young omnipresent chronicler”.
“Among a certain scene, it was said you’d only made it when Rennie Ellis came to your party with his camera,” it states.
Angela Bailey, curator of the Rennie Ellis exhibition, and DJ MzRizk at the exhibition at the State Library of Victoria.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
To capture this spirit, the State Library has commissioned a soundtrack to the exhibition with music chosen by DJ MzRizk playing at volume while blown up images from the library’s collection display on a loop.
On Friday night, the library will host a dance party inspired by Ellis as part of Rising Festival. Library Up Late x Rennie Ellis is being billed as “a party in the spirit of a photographer who didn’t just document the night, he got right in there”.
State Library chief executive Paul Duldig said the library had more than 8 million photographs in its collection and the exhibition allowed it to show that it was not just about books.
“[The exhibition] shows a time before we all had photographs taken so routinely, we are so used to seeing our own images, particularly during COVID and just staring at yourself in meetings on Zoom,” he said.
“The subjects are so unaffected, they’re not posing, they haven’t got their selfie face on.
“It’s a really unaffected Melbourne. It’s beautiful.”
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