Student Life: Max Dupain at the University of Sydney

The Australian modernist photographer Max Dupain (1911-1992) documented student life at the University in the early 1950s in a brilliant and frequently hilarious series of candid shots. They show the range of student cultures and interests in the immediate postwar years.

The exhibition introduces Dupain’s modernist approach to photography which combines formal architectural backdrops with candid documentary studies of student life.

One series displays the student floats on which they performed and demonstrated major issues of the day. The Petrov affair inspired one of the floats in 1954, another includes anti-bomb demonstrations.