CHANGING FASHION GRAHAM SHEARER
“Sometimes I would fall flat in the middle of a shoot. I’ve done three good ones, I think! Then someone will say, ‘Why don’t we try this?’. ”
I’m talking to fashion photographer Graham Shearer over breakfast at his home in Byron Bay. I became aware of Graham’s byline back in the early 1990s… perhaps it was through the documentary about shooting an Elle McPherson calendar. Not surprisingly, the self-taught Shearer has never thought of his last four decades as a job, except perhaps when he was shooting a catalogue for ten days straight.
It’s 9.30am and he’s now on the ’phone, getting a surf check from his son. Back in his heyday, Graham would do a 3.30am weather check then meet his team at 4.30 or 5.00am for hair and make-up, shoot at that location until 10.00am then, if possible, go surfing and start back at 2.00pm (or, in summer, 4.00pm) and shoot until the evening. Now with the models’ times tightly managed, this doesn’t happen as their agents want it all done in the day.
Early Days
The twin interests in photography and fashion started to emerge from a young age, while Graham was growing up in Western Australia.
“Perth and the south-west was pretty raw when I was about ten and a young surfer, a lot like Cloudstreet or Breath,” Graham recalls. “There were no photography books in our home in South Perth, but I read lots of comics and looked at lots of exotic surfing photos. Dad was a chemist and had a box Brownie. He wasn’t a bad photographer, so I think that was in my DNA.”
Graham’s Mum used to buy him a sweater each Christmas, and if he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t wear it. So he probably had
