No Standing Only Dancing (Book Review)
“Life’s a beach”, said the late Rennie Ellis in a Leunig cartoon. Particularly for Australian’s, even if you don’t know the name you’ve probably seen his work somewhere, sometime. He’s almost a pervasive part of our culture. No Standing Only Walking: Photographs by Rennie Ellis (also available as a $500 limited edition of 100) consists of selections from the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive, the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.
One of my all-time favourites in the book is the shot of VFL (Victorian Football League) Australian Rules player Robert McGhie at the 1974 Grand Final held at the traditional Melbourne Cricket Ground. He’s tying his boots with a cigarette in his mouth. This was before elite sportsmen became a high pressure profession and they had to hold down 40 hour week jobs to be able to play on the weekends. That was football.
Rennie Ellis took photographs of hookers and stars and politicians and grafitti and tattoos and youth culture and drug culture and life in general. And, in that transition through three decades he amassed an amazing selection of work that has become almost a history of Australian culture. Did we have that hair? Did we wear those awful stubbies? And, man, remember the days when concerts were really concerts and not total security lockdowns.
No Standing Only Dancing is an inspiration, one of those books when you feel down that makes you grab the SLR and hurry out the door. It’s photography in the raw sense about real people in the context of their generation. If that doesn’t sound too grand. Highly recommended if you can get hold of a copy (mine came as a present from Linden who saw the exhibition in Melbourne before Christmas).
The photograph below, The Lads, Melbourne 1974 by Rennie Ellis. By the way, in 1974 I was ten, too.
