Item #CL203-53 Hotel Beds At Atherton [North Queensland]. Max Dupain, 1911–1992 Aust.
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Hotel Beds At Atherton [North Queensland]

1943/later printing. Silver gelatin photograph, 41.8 x 46.7cm. Pinholes and slight stains to corners and edges of image.

This image was taken during the time Dupain was serving in the RAAF camouflage unit during WWII in Atherton, Queensland. Another copy of this photograph is held in the Art Gallery of NSW.

In his review of the Art Gallery of NSW’s exhibition World Without End: Photography and the 20th Century, held in 2000, Michael Cathcart makes reference to Dupain’s Hotel Beds at Atherton “…a single frame by Dupain stays with me as the exhibition’s icon. It does not represent a surrealist dream, a scene of war, a documentary record of socio-political events or even the body of the photographer’s beloved, by turns gorgeous and grotesque – though all of these provide World Without End with its material and imaginative substance. What it shows is the uneventful corner of a modest hotel room in Atherton, in 1943. (The date is important, because beyond the window there is a war.) It shows nothing of special note: no protagonists in situations of unfolding elevation or disgrace; no sinister or seditious interventions; no hurt, either. Nothing more quotidian than sleep, or sex, has come to pass here. Or will. Two unmade beds, with mosquito nets and lacy valences, receive light. It is an altarpiece dedicated to the century most of us had or wanted to.” Ref: Gael Newton, photo-web.com; M. Cathcart, Arts Today, ABC, 1.12.2000.

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Item #CL203-53

Price (AUD): $3,300.00  other currencies

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