Rennie Ellis, Decadent: 1980-2000

Rennie Ellis, Fully equipped Albert Park Beach (c1981)

Rennie Ellis’s photographic coffee-table book, Decadent, is the newly released follow-up to Decade. Where Decade documents Ellis’s photography from 1970-1980, Decadent records the subsequent two decades from 1980 up to his sudden death in 2003. 

Decadent is released by the guardians of Ellis’s archive, headed by Manuela Furci, and benefits from the editing of one of Australia’s most renowned photojournalists, Stephen Dupont. As the title implies, the collection covers Ellis’s interest in the more flamboyant and hedonistic side of life.

The book is divided into sections by quotes from Ellis printed in big type. Furci explains that this was to give a sense of Ellis’s voice throughout the edition. It’s a nice touch and gives an insight into the content with statements ranging from, ‘Photography legitimises my voyeuristic tendencies’ to ‘I refer to myself as a “people perv”’.

Decadent presents a cross-section of Australian adult society from fashion parades, beach life, night life, festivals, the footy, the pub, and the erotic, sometimes seedy, world of strippers, S&M clubs and 80s men’s offices parties a la The Wolf of Wall Street. Although some spaces conjure typical male heterosexual obsessions, you don’t feel that Ellis is one of the men in the crowd, sweating over the naked woman on stage: he’s somewhere in between, like a buddy or an ally.

Ellis photographs all sorts of sexually liberated and erotically charged events, he seems to have a knack for finding displays of nudity anywhere and everywhere, including at the races, the footy, and even a Nude Day at Gaslight Music Store in 1994. The impression is that he genuinely likes people in all their glory, and all their trashiness. 

Chronological order is not followed in this book, nor is it strictly thematic. On the contrary, the text’s sequence follows a visual aesthetic. Some pages engage a graphic dynamic that delights and surprises the reader with the realization that the photographs were composed decades apart. There’s the odd photo that doesn’t seem to have its place in the overall theme of Decadent, for example, a photo of an older woman at St Kilda beach in 1987. It’s a great photo – but it’s not clear why she fits in here. 

The photos are made all the better by intelligent captioning, such as Face Down (1984), an outdoor festival scene of rubbish strewn across muddied grass, groups of people facing in the direction of a stage and a woman dancing freely about. In the middle of all this activity, the sole person who doesn’t quite make it through the festivities is passed out face down next to an esky. Many of Ellis’s photos are like an orchestra – a collection of players all adding their own layer of sound.

In a series of images entitled Kerferd Rd Beach (c1981), all the women topless. Scenes are relaxed, amused and amusing, causing me to wonder when did topless bathing become so unacceptable in the city?

A highlight of this series is the shot of a torso of a topless young woman at the beach, Fully equipped Albert Park Beach (c1981). Having been slathered with Johnson and Johnson’s baby oil, her skin glistens and reflects the sun’s harsh glare. The baby oil bottle is tied to her hip by her string bikini, she’s holding three lit cigarettes in one hand, and a full glass in the other, no doubt beer, maybe wine, certainly not apple juice! This is 1981, the same year the Slip, Slop, Slap campaign was launched.

Photographically, the image is like a signature Martin Parr moment with harsh light, bright colour and something a little crass. Yet Ellis displays a little more compassion in his humour than Parr, and he is certainly looser in the spicy underground venues he likes to photograph.

It’s fitting that William Yang writes the foreword to the book. As a friend of Ellis’s and fellow society photographer, Yang’s work is the Sydney counterpart to Ellis’s documentation of the arts, fashion and gay scene. In the world of social photographers chronicling Australia in the 70s – 90s, it would be awesome to complete the trifecta with a female photographer’s work.