ROGER SKINNER BIOGRAPHY


Roger Skinner is married with a daughter Melanie, two boys, Lachlan and Eliot. He and his wife Lorraine live on a small rural holding near Muswellbrook in NSW where he operates a photographic business and studio on a part time basis. Work in this field is mainly centred on stylised portraiture, however industrial and commercial work including, corporate and local government annual reports and tourism and investment promotional material and weddings also form a vital and challenging part of that business. He is also especially rewarded by the students in his photography courses, which run each term.

Introduced and encouraged into photography by his father, who he remembers producing contact prints on the kitchen table. Roger began making photographs in 1963 at the age of thirteen. He served his 'apprenticeship' like so many others in the laundry, making contact prints with a slide projector. Taking photographs for more serious pleasure began in earnest, with the purchase of a Minolta SRT101 in 1969, but he did not begin exhibiting until ten years later in 1979. His first taste of success was as a member of Muswellbrook & Districts Camera Club in that year, and then also winning the Northern Photographic Federation 1979 Slide Of The Year Competition.

In 1979 Roger also met Frank Watters, the director of the highly successful and contemporary Watters Gallery in Sydney and worked with Watters on a four-month commission for the Australia Council photographing aspects of (and also exhibiting in) The Upper Hunter Environmental Exhibition, curated by Frank Watters. This period began his re-education in the arts in general, in Australia but more particularly in photography with exposure to the work of leading Australian contemporary photographers such as John Delacour, Micky (Michelle) Allen, Wally Barda, Grant Mudford, Wes Stacey and others. Their contemporary and more personal work changed many of his attitudes to photography. He continued to enter the 'national' exhibitions with mixed success, for a number of years but began to drift more towards art prizes as a forum with work that went beyond, but usually relied heavily on photography as a base for those works.

After encountering the usual bias against photographic works in these forums for a period, his photograph based art works began to find critical acclaim from around 1987-88 when he was awarded a Highly Commended in the Muswellbrook Open Art Prize First Prize then First Prize and two Highly Commendeds in the Singleton Art Prize and First Prize in the Scone Art Prize, all within a period of twelve months. His win at Scone was particularly remarkable, as this prize has a long history of awards going to work in traditional subject matter and technique, in that Australian landscapes in oils and watercolour dominate. Roger's photocollage 'Voice Of...' was composed of photographs of colour distorted, television images and in his comments at the opening night the judge stated that the work was of the type currently being exhibited in contemporary galleries in New York. Needless to say that award was somewhat controversial among the society types who patronise this exhibition. That win brought his work to the attention of Max Watters a local collector and painter and it was purchased for the Max Watters Collection. Further work of Roger's has been purchased subsequently, by Watters, for his collection, which includes such names as Garry Shead, John Montefiore, James Clifford, Richard Larter and Grace Cossington-Smith.
The Max Watters Collection is recognised as one of the most comprehensive collections of contemporary Australian art, outside a capital city. From then, Roger's work has continued to be included in private and gallery collections including Muswellbrook Regional Gallery, Stanthorpe Regional Gallery, Maitland City Gallery, Manning Art Gallery, Tweed River Regional Art Gallery and the Queensland Art Gallery.

He now concentrates on exhibiting in galleries and selected competitive exhibitions. He has won First Prize twice in the Macgregor Prize For Photography (the only photographer in the history of the award to do so) and also Second prize in the McGregor Prize. He has also won First Prize In the Muswellbrook Photographic Award, and is the inaugural winner of the Josephine Ulrick Photography Prize for Portraiture. These awards are recognised nationally as Australia’s most prestigious photographic prizes. He has exhibited in a number of group exhibitions at the Art Gallery Of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art Brisbane and the Centre For Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. He has also staged three one-man shows, 'Diving Into Silence' and 'The Dynamics of Process’ and ‘Self Centred’. These exhibitions have served to highlight the breadth of his interpretation of photography and the technical prowess he brings to his work. He has been awarded two F.I.A.P. Gold Medals in international competition and has been awarded number Silver and Bronze awards from the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers (of which he is a member) for Landscape and Contemporary Portraiture. His work has also been requested for publication in reference textbooks and included in the syllabus as a subject for study for year 12 HSC art students at regional private schools. He has also works as a tutor in photography at local high schools with a number of student’s work gaining acceptances in and exhibited in Art Express the ultimate accolade for a year 12 arts student. He has also been a tutor for The University Of Southern Queensland.

His commitment to the view that art and photography should be collected on equal terms by cultural institutions, led to the establishment of the Muswellbrook Photographic Award in 1987. It is now Australia's one of Australia’s richest national acquisitive photography prize, where the winning work becomes part of a gallery collection, that is, the Muswellbrook Shire Collection, in the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre.

On the technical side Roger's camera equipment includes Nikon FM2, F70, F90 and an F100 with 28-70 and 70-210mm and 28-210mm Nikkor lenses, a Hasselblad 503CX camera with an 80mm and 45mm Zeiss Planar lenes, a Lubitel, a Yashica TD30 (both Twin Lens Medium Format) and an old cake tin, pinhole camera. Film stock is almost exclusively Kodak TMAX 400 and Fuji Reala 100 ISO. Printing papers vary but are centred around, Ilford Multigrade Portfolio, Ilford MG1k Fibre Based, Kodak Polyfibre Fine Art and Elite. Enlargers used are are an Omega 650 and an Ilford 500C using Nikkor and Rodenstock and Companon lenses.
On the digital side Roger has accepted the challenge of the newest future of photography and employs A Nikon D700 camera and a Canon 5D with a 28-300mm lens an Epson 4990 Scanner for negative & print scanning linked to a Dell 9100 machine with 300Gb of hard drive and 4Gb of RAM, Images are handled in Photoshop CS5 and output onto an Epson 2400 Printer onto Epson and Ilford archival stock papers.


In terms of community commitment, Roger has served terms as the convenor of the Muswellbrook Open Art Prize, President Secretary and Treasurer of the Muswellbrook & Districts Camera Club (1977 to 1995) and is currently serving again as Secretary, in 1999 he was made the first Honorary Life Member of the club. He has filled the role of President of Denman Arts & Crafts Group, President and Secretary of the Muswellbrook Gallery Society (1983 to 1995). He was chairman of Photographic Records as a member of the Muswellbrook Bicentennial Community Committee during which he oversaw the compilation of the Muswellbrook Bicentennial Photographic Document, which was a Federal Government Funded Project. He has been an Executive Director of the Australian Photographic Society since 1988 after joining the society in 1980. He was founding Chairperson of their Contemporary Group and occupied the role of Director of the A.P.S. Print Division Competitions for ten years. He was also a keen contributor in their Digital Imaging Group. Roger is one of two Arts & Literature inductees into the inaugural induction into the Muswellbrook Hall Of Fame; the other inductee was Donald Horne.

He has taught photography as a consultant, to year 12 HSC art students at Muswellbrook High School St Josephs College Aberdeen and Scone Grammar School and several students have had work accepted into the NSW Dept Of Education Touring Exhibition Art Express. He also does volunteer teaching at the local PCYC. He also runs photography workshops from his studio and he is a WEA accredited trainer.
He has been Guest Editor of PHOTOgraphy Magazine and has had articles and reviews published in a number of Australian and international magazines including Australian Photography, Pro Photo Australasia, and Better Photography. He has lectured on his work and contemporary photography at various venues including Photography 93 at Darling Harbour Sydney, The NSW FCC Judging Course and APScon 95 in Dubbo and APScon 96 in Hobart. He has been a regular guest lecturer at camera clubs and judged numerous competitions including the Sydney International Exhibition Of Photography and the McGregor Prize for Photography.

He also has a private collection of photographs, which includes work by Roger Scott, Graham Burstow, Max Dupain, Carol Drew, Robert Owen, Olive Cotton John Delacour, Fiona Hall, Doug and Ruby Spowart, Cathie Brooker, Ruth Thompson, Richard Woldendorp and Robert McFarlane.
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