Group M was an Australian association of photographers who between 1959 and 1965 mounted exhibitions that advocated for photography to be treated as art, and were formative in a revival of the medium in the nation, the awareness of Australian photography internationally, and its acceptance into mainstream galleries in the 1970s.
Moggs Creek Clickers In 1955 Group M originated in the 'Moggs Creek Clickers' named for a locale near the creek of that name, where several members, mostly science and education professionals, had holiday houses and who joined through its association with Melbourne University. A newspaper report of the time numbered the members at 140 and new recruits were invited, but the core group remained around 8–10, initially all men though one woman who joined was Zillah Lee who handled submissions for their exhibitions. They issued a newsletter The Last Shot thrice yearly in which they promoted 'creative freedom', rather than the adherence to outmoded 1930s pictorialism then perpetuated by the Melbourne Camera Club. As member John Crook noted in a catalogue of their 1964 touring exhibition;"It would be satisfying to think that the Australian photographer of today has 126 glorious years to draw inspiration from ... over a century of great works, a wonderful photographic heritage . .. But it is not so. We study the past very little. What greatness is there, is hardly known to those practising photography in Australia today. There have been two major periods: straight documentary (the second half of last century), and its antithesis, 'Pictorialism', in the first half of this century. The real, then the romantic [ . . . ] 'Artistic' photography spread [ . . . ] A well organised club and exhibition system supported this academic approach. Pictorialism was in; there was little else for over forty years." Instead they championed ‘straight’, unmanipulated photography that transparently represented its subject, declaring; "We are certain that the majority of people appreciate philosophical thinking and social comment expressed through photography."
International influences The Moggs Creek Clickers in their newsletter alerted members to the arrival, in Australia, of Edward Steichen's MoMA exhibition The Family of Man which toured from February to July 1959, opening in Melbourne at the Preston Motors Show Room on February 23, before moving on to Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. It had a lasting influence on the group and other photographers who saw it in Australia, including John Cato, Paul Cox, and Robert McFarlane as well as Graham McCarter who, seeing the show, was motivated to take up photojournalism. In 1959 the group held their first exhibition, in rented premises in Pink Alley off Little Collins St., Melbourne, naming it, and subsequent shows, Photovision. Considering 'Clickers' not serious enough, they renamed themselves Group M. They mounted six major exhibitions between 1959 and 1965, all titled Photovision, at first open to international photographers, but from 1963 restricted to Australians. Their annual exhibitions moved to John Reed's and Georges Mora's Melbourne Museum of Modern Art in Tavistock Place off Flinders Street. Display of work there followed, in a more modest manner, the innovations of Steichen's designer, the architect Paul Rudolph, with large unframed prints on floating panels, some mural sized, in three-dimensional, walk-through arrangements, and introduced the more recent innovation of projections of colour transparencies with a soundtrack. Also like Steichen's Family, the images and exhibitions were organised into themes. Other influences cited by Crook included photographs of Hiroshima, the grimly apocalyptic 1959 movie On the Beach filmed in Melbourne, and local contemporaries; the painters of urban estrangement, John Brack and Arthur Boyd. He identified a collective photographic consciousness inspired by magazines such as Life, and photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, Bill Brandt and Robert Capa; "Important work from before the war, like the documents of the US Farm Security Administration, were also being seen here for the first time. It made us realise the potential of photography." Their photographs, rather than sitting “quietly on the walls”, were used “as a force” to lead an “assault’ on vision of the kind being experienced in public advertising and publicity, exploiting the attention-grabbing potential of blow-ups on panels without glass in a shift away from the camera club reverence for the fine print. Their 1963 show Urban Woman was the most direct response to The Family of Man, attracting a wide audience. Though all the pictures were by men, it documented sociological and psychological aspects of the contemporary urban woman's life, with sympathy for the phenomenon of the house-bound woman, isolated in the suburbs after her military activity or workforce presence during the war. The show toured for four years, to Sydney, Adelaide and Perth, and in 1968 it formed part of Australia's cultural contribution to the Mexico Olympics. However, when the photographs eventually arrived back to Australia in 1971, they were so badly damaged they had to be destroyed.
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