Sir George Russell Drysdale, AC (7 February 1912 – 29 June 1981) was an Australian artist. He won the prestigious Wynne Prize for Sofala in 1947,^[1] and represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1954. He was influenced by abstract and surrealist art, and “created a new vision of the Australian scene as revolutionary and influential as that of Tom Roberts“.^[2]

That is the opening statement on Russell Drysdale in Wikipedia.  Great first line, don’t you think.  He is mainly known as a painter, but my first real experience of his work was a photography exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1987 when I was working there.  It is his photography that I want to talk about in this post.  If you look him up you will get lots and lots of paintings, but it is pretty hard to find his photographs.  I did find a Flickr account that had quite a few, so thank you tttopcat7.

To see Russell Drysdale’s photograph and mine, also to read about him, then please continue reading here.