Stuart Spence (b. 1960) born in Geelong, Victoria, established his career in Sydney during the 1980s and 1990s, as a magazine photographer specialising in celebrity portraiture. Since then, he has also practised fine-art photography, and has worked freelance for his own commercial company, Permanent Wave, since 1989. Spence has exhibited several art- photographic series including Salute (1992), Lost In Face (1994), and As Yet Unclear (2007). He has been selected as a finalist for many prominent Australian photography prizes including the Doug Moran Prize (2013), the Head On Prize (2013), the National Photographic Portrait Prize (2014), and the Olive Cotton Award (2015). In 2010 he received an Arts Council of Australia grant in the New and Emerging Works category for adapting his As Yet Unclear photographic series into a one-man theatre show.Through the Permanent Wave arm of his career, he has produced work for a multitude of media outlets including the Sydney Morning Herald, the New Scientist (UK), and Rolling Stone. Spence has also shot book covers for Allen and Unwin and Harper Collins publishers, and received an Australian Music Association award for his work on Noiseworks’ cover artwork for the album Love vs Money (1991).
