This black and white photographic portrait of Australian artist Mirka Mora was taken by the Italian-born Melbourne-based fashion photographer Bruno Benini, (see RMIT) in 1974. It is part of the Bruno Benini photography archive (1950-2001) currently being acquired by the Powerhouse Museum with funding assistance from the Commonwealth Government’s National Cultural Heritage Account. (read more about this on ABC News.) While the Benini archive contains mostly fashion shots taken between 1950 and the mid-1980s which capture the changing mood of these decades, it also includes a suite of important portraits of actors, writers, dancers, designers and artists like this classic shot of Mirka Mora from the 1970s.
Photography by Bruno Benini
© Estate of Bruno Benini
Post by Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Curator
This is a beautiful photo of Mirka Mora when she was young – so theatrical. I love looking through photographs of artists when they were young. I have taken a series of artist portraits for the book The Artist’s Lunch http://theartistslunch.com/Mirka-Mora.html and thought it would be interesting to see a recent photograph of her to see how little she has changed.
http://sarahrhodes.com/?page_id=5
Thanks Sarah
you can catch Sarah talking about this work here:
http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/task,view_detail/agid,330/year,2009/month,05/day,24/Itemid,141/
When will the Benini collection be acquired? Will you have most of his collection – including his work for vogue in the early 1950’s?
Thanks,
Susan
Hi Susan
The first stage of acquiring the entire Bruno Benini archive should be completed within a few weeks, including establishing the initial Archive Series List.
We then begin the ongoing task of identifying sub-series within each series (Vogue-related images may be one sub-series), and then on to cataloguing individual objects and photographs.
If you are aware of specific issues of Vogue that include Bruno’s photographs please let me know, as this information will make it easier to check which of Bruno’s works for Vogue survive in the archive.
Anne-Marie
Exquisite photo of an equally exquisite artist…thank you. There’s so much interest in our early fashionistas from overseas…it’s wonderful to begin to see the Powerhouse acquiring such great collections…!! More please….
Hi Janice,
I am glad you have been enjoying the Benini photographs!
I wrote the last two Benini posts, and have found the stories behind Australian fashion photographers, designers and models to be so fascinating!
I am currently writing another post, which should be up soon.
Alysha