Rod McNICOL: 2nd October 76

Rod McNicol (1946–2025)

Rod McNicol studied photography at Prahran College in 1974, where he was part of a now-highly significant generation of young photographers who were taught by Athol Shmith, Paul Cox and John Cato. He was actively involved in the photography scene that emerged in Melbourne at this time, and established the Photographers Gallery in South Yarra with John Williams and Ingeborg Tyssen.

McNicol’s photographic practice concentrated on portraiture. His approach to the genre was structured and consistent, with his subjects almost always photographed staring back at the camera against neutral backgrounds. McNicol asked his subjects to pause and stare into the camera, with the intention of capturing portraits that function as witnesses to the inescapable passing of time. In the last few years, as his eyesight deteriorated, Rod McNicol turned to still life photography. These quiet compositions of flowers became meditations on transience.

 

Four flower works:

Drawn from Rod McNicol’s personal archive, these photographs are among the last remaining prints produced by the artist. Made in his early career, they trace the beginnings of a lifelong return to the flower.

Across these works, McNicol begins a sustained engagement with the floral still life, returning to it with quiet endurance over decades. What appears here in nascent form, becomes, in his later years, a central and concentrated body of work.