Mark Mohell has been Image Services Manager at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra since 2010. Of Finnish heritage, Mark grew up working in his family’s bakery. He completed his photography diploma in Canberra in 1997, and during his studies was named the Australian Institute of Professional Photography’s ACT student photographer of the year. Subsequently, he gained a degree in environmental design. For some years he was able to combine his specialisations, working throughout Australia documenting large-scale environment and heritage projects. Since joining the staff of the National Portrait Gallery he has made a major creative contribution to the exhibitions Paris to Monaro and Arcadia, the publications for both of which won major design awards. His portrait of inaugural director Andrew Sayers AM was acquired for the Gallery’s collection at Sayers’s own request. At the same time, he has extended his own art practice, usually taking photographs in the very early morning. In exhibitions including view from here, kerbside and kerb lite he explored the constructed, urban landscape in the context of ‘the ease with which we let things fall apart. We shape the environment to our desires, but gradually forget its significance. As time passes it grows and becomes alien to us. When we finally attend to the world closest to us, what we look upon is something quite foreign.’ Several of his photographs were acquired by the Canberra Museum and Gallery in 2015, and immediately featured prominently in the exhibition Urban Suburban. The affecting portraits of artists he took for the publication The Popular Pet Book over 2016 became so integral to the project that curator Sarah Engledow elected to include them in the exhibition The Popular Pet Show.
Mark ruined his knees playing hockey and has no time for interests outside photography and its paraphernalia except cooking, at which he is an expert, and maintaining his magnificent hair. He lives in an otherwise-all-female household that includes his cat, Josie.
