Picnic, La Perouse

Photographer John Williams (1933 - 2016)

Date1977

Object number00056441

NamePhotograph

MediumGelatin silver photograph

DimensionsOverall: 300 x 379 mm,

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum Collection Gift from Jean Curthoys

Terms

DescriptionBlack and white photograph by John Williams titled 'Picnic, La Perouse'. The image depicts a couple at La Perouse, Sydney. They wear winter attire and the woman stands looking in the distance towards Port Botany. HistoryWilliams’s beach images reveal his modernist interest in subject, framing and composition in capturing the informality of the beach and in pursuit of Cartier Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’. During the 1970s there was an increasing recognition of photography as an art form, and these works represent a break from the conservative photographic techniques and styles that predominated when Williams began his career. Several of the works date to the late 1970s when he shifted from photographing strangers in public spaces to friends, relatives and acquaintances in their home environments, in this instance experimenting with photomontages of family members in the 1920s-30s with the beachscape of the 1980s.SignificanceFrom his emergence in the 1960s to his passing in 2016, John Williams was one of Australia’s most influential photographers. His works rejected established photographic narrative conventions and experimented with subject, framing and composition. In many of his beach photographs from the 1960s-70s, he captures a sense of informality and being in the moment.