The State Library of Victoria on-line collection features a Go-Set photo from the early 70s of Ian “Molly” Meldrum missing a mark against an unidentified Collingwood VFL player. Regrettably, the catalogue entry states, “Photographer Unknown.” Hardly. Well might the maxim “You never know your luck” apply to David Porter whose work seems to have been perennially lost, found, or ignored.
The late music entrepreneur Michael Gudinski believed that when there is angst and rebellion good music comes, and so David Porter went. With a shrewd eye for subject and story, Porter documented the energy of the 70s, and the pressing political, social, and cultural issues of the day – conscription, the war in Vietnam, women’s liberation, sex, drugs, the counterculture, and music.
Indifferent to fame – particularly if he didn’t like the music of the “famous” – Porter was interested only in the “shot.” So good was he that many of his photographs became classics on publication – Billy Thorpe at breakfast, Elton John in concert cases in point.
“With my Mini Moke and camera, I charged along to the numerous Melbourne venues that had great bands T.F. Much Ballroom, Festival Hall, the Regent, and many pubs. Australian Rock was exploding, and the public knew it … The photographer’s endeavour to capture the best moments had a particular application to the Rock music scene. The atmosphere, the informalities of the 1970s granted me every opportunity to search for the interesting picture. Backstage there were new potentials, the relaxation of performers provided another dimension … Relaxing – through VB and a good toke – with the band was a good way to sneak into their world and record it,” David Porter recounted in 2003.
There is great humility in David Porter’s work. His observational depth, and his ability to capture candid moments of honesty and sensuality equals that of Australian peers Carol Jerrems and Rennie Ellis, and the American Annie Leibovitz with whom he sometimes shared the pages of Rolling Stone. Porter’s career was a short three years. Inexplicably, in 1973 he turned his back on photography and left Melbourne. For the next thirty years he and his work went missing.
“I went bizarre, crazy, and idiotic and went and did a Diploma of Education. I moved to the country and started teaching. I don’t know what it was. I wanted to get out of Melbourne … And I never went back. I regret it incredibly,” Porter recollected in 2010.
In 2002 when Director of the Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest in western Sydney, I was told of a schoolteacher in the Blue Mountains with a collection of Australian Rock music photos, and to check him out. It was David Porter, there were hundreds of photos. He was offered an exhibition.
David Porter was an enigmatic man. Tense, opinionated, sharp, loquacious when relaxed. He was happy to talk about photography; about himself he said little other than the basic outline of his career as photographer, his regret at ending it, his hatred of teaching, and his love of Jazz.
Porter had hundreds of photographic prints and thousands of negatives. A short lead-time precluded in-depth research; thus 300 extant prints that best explored the energy of the period 1971–72 with a focus on international Rock acts, Australian bands, festivals, counterculture a.k.a. “head” venues, and audiences were selected for exhibition. Making research slightly more difficult was that Porter’s memory was very clear in some areas and vague in others. Sometimes he had no recollection whatsoever of events or people and kept no records. Idiosyncratically, Porter used different by-lines for competing publications. For some the photo attribution was “David Porter,” for others “Jacques
