Jon Lewis (1950–2020) photographer, first exhibited in the early 1970s, when he was a member of Sydney’s happening art space, Yellow House in Potts Point. In 1977, having begun working in film, Lewis became one of the founders of Greenpeace Australia. Seven years later he began taking the first of his many photographs of people on Bondi Beach, which have since been exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. In 1986 he took photographs in Bali and Lombok, and in the following years in the Australian outback; he worked in Paris between 1989 and 1992. That year, his photographs of 200 famous and little-known Australian faces became Portrait of a Nation, shown at the Mitchell Library, Sydney. In the 1980s, critic Robert McFarlane described Lewis as 'the burr under the saddle of Australian photography' because of his insistence on a pure, rather than a conceptual, approach to the medium. Such a sincere attitude is demonstrated in the photographs from his self-funded trip to East Timor in 2000-2001, recording the everyday life of its people after independence. During a period of living in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales Lewis took trips to photograph Bougainville and Kiribati between teaching commitments in Goulburn and Sydney. The artist later moved to Bryon Bay where he remained until his passing in late 2020.
This shot of Jon Lewis photographing Lewis Morley was taken in Morley’s back yard in Leichhardt, Sydney in 1990.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2002
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Lewis Morley Archive LLC
Lewis Morley (49 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Magda Keaney speaks with Lewis Morley about his photographic career and the major retrospective of his work on display at the NPG.
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