Max Dupain
Australia 1911–92

At Victoria Mill, North Queensland 1978, printed 1987
Gelatin silver photograph on paper
Gift of CSR Limited through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1987

At first glance, Max Dupain’s image of belching smokestacks seems an icon of the industrial age. At Victoria Mill, North Queensland 1978 celebrates a prosperous sugar industry, and the vapour we see rising from these chimneys is in fact innocuous steam.

The photograph was taken during Dupain’s 40-year tenure as documentary photographer for the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), which commenced in 1936. Dupain regularly turned CSR’s industrial machinery into striking geometric works of art, reflecting the beauty he saw in these forms.

Dupain’s passion for Australia’s sunlight, pursuit of formal simplicity and treatment of industrial subjects as a ‘giant still life’, as he said, saw him heralded as a pioneer of modern photography.