Robert Ashton | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 11, 1950 Melbourne |
| Alma mater | Prahran College |
| Occupation | Photographer |
| Website | robertashton |
Robert Ashton (1950) is an Australian photographer and photojournalist.
Robert Ashton was born on August 11, 1950, in Melbourne. He studied Photography at Prahran College 1969-71 and graduated with a Diploma of Visual Arts and Design.
In the early 1970s, Robert Ashton shared house with Carol Jerrems and Ian Macrae in Mozart Street, St Kilda, [1] their artist associates being Ingeborg Tyssen, Paul Cox and Bill Heimerman, and Ashton's cousin Rennie Ellis with whom he shared a studio [2] in Greville Street, Prahran. From 1974 to 1981, [3] Ashton was assistant director at Ellis's Brummels Gallery in Toorak Road, South Yarra, [4] [5] where he also exhibited. [6]
Photography curator Judy Annear notes that;
"Robert Ashton's work is typical of the highly personalised documentary photographs that began to emerge in the 1970s." [7]
His subject matter includes urban indigenous, life and incidents in inner suburbia in Melbourne, [8] particularly Fitzroy. [9] [10] Writer and musician Mark Gillespie, who had become involved in a new publishing venture, Outback Press, with Fred Milgrom Colin Talbot and Morry Schwartz, commissioned Ashton for the book Into the Hollow Mountain. Its images, [11] of "kids on the prowl, the old Salvo street bands, the Koorie clans, the card joint kaphenois", [12] were first shown at Brummels in an exhibition of that title in 1974, and when re-exhibited forty years later at Colour Factory, "serve as a rare documentation of day-to-day Melbourne and glimpse into an era that, while not actually all that distant, is most definitely a thing of the past." [13]
Ashton has published several other books, of portraits and close-up, abstracted landscape, and exhibited widely in Australia. His photograph Bernard Diving [14] featured in the 1988 exhibition, and on the cover its catalogue, The Thousand Mile Stare, a survey of Australian photography published by the Victorian Centre for Photography. [15]
In pursuing the best quality output for his imagery, Ashton adopted, and currently uses, hand-built large format cameras and advanced printing techniques including photogravure and the Collodion process. [16]
He lives on Victoria's Surf Coast, and imagery of the ocean and landscape is a consistent interest.
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