The Adelaide Portraits

The Adelaide Portraits - Breaking the mould

Rare, museum-grade portraits from the Sellick Archive – signed, limited, and authenticated for lasting value.

Every portrait in this series marked a moment – a milestone that shaped how its subject was seen, and in some cases, how Australia saw itself. They were all made in Adelaide – a city that, against expectation, became a launchpad for images that challenged convention, made it into national collections, and opened doors to shoots once thought out of reach.

Each of these portraits defied assumptions at the time. The Bradman and Dunstan portraits were unconventional and, in their day, even uncomfortable – yet both are now held in national collections. The Kylie Minogue portrait, made in North Adelaide for Rolling Stone in 1997, rewrote the rules of celebrity photography in Australia. It showed that Adelaide could stand alongside the east coast’s cultural centres – and opened the door to major international sessions in the city, including Radiohead and Placebo, that would once have been unthinkable.

What links these images is not just their subjects, but the creative leap each one represents – moments when the work redefined what was possible, influencing how people thought about Australian portraiture and where it could happen.

The Adelaide Portraits is both a record and a turning point – a body of work that captures the city’s role as an unlikely engine of cultural change, and the people who helped shape that change from within.

94

94 - A Year of Firsts

In 1993, I was living in New York, meeting and sometimes working alongside the photographers whose work had shaped my creative vision – Annie Leibovitz, Mark Seliger, Arnold Newman, Irving Penn. It was an extraordinary period of learning, seeing up close how the best in the world worked, and absorbing it all like a sponge.

When I returned to Australia in 1994, I found an editorial landscape that had yet to embrace this kind of deeper, narrative-driven portraiture. Most portraits were produced by fashion photographers, who – while technically excellent – often delivered clean, simple pictures that offered little insight into the subject’s life or character.

At the same time, the Australian magazine industry was beginning to evolve. Editors were eager to match the sophistication of their American and European counterparts – a world I had just witnessed first-hand – and I found myself in the right place at the right moment. The result was a series of assignments that broke new ground in the way Australian personalities were photographed and published.

94 brings together some of those early portraits – moments of cultural history captured as the country’s visual language of celebrity, artistry and public life began to shift. 

Why Collector Editions Matter

Limited in number. Museum-grade in quality.

Each signed edition from the Sellick Archive offers more than rarity – it offers cultural weight, archival integrity and a direct link to the icons who shaped modern Australia.

Created to last. Released with purpose. Collected with intent.