Throughout his extensive career, Rennie Ellis made a number of images of people dancing, partying and having a good time. Ellis took this photograph at his home in Raleigh Street, Windsor, the site of many parties, both planned and spontaneous. The image shows a group of five people dancing in his living room, including his first wife Carol Silk (back left) and Bill Heimerman (front left) who was a photographer and long-standing director of the Photographers’ Gallery in South Yarra. Taken around the time of the Melbourne Cup in 1976, fashions of the era take centre stage; as does the intermingling of the various textures and patterns found throughout the image in everything from the outfits to the carpet and upholstery. Most of all, however, this image portrays a good time shared amongst friends. Seemingly unaware of the camera’s presence, the people in this photograph are immersed in the moment, continuing their dancing uninhibited by the photographer.
As is typical of Ellis’s broader practice, this photograph portrays the essence of the times in which it was produced. While it was taken within Ellis’s own home and thus has an intimate and personal element to it, the image manages to go beyond the personal, achieving historical significance as a record of life and style in the 1970s.
(2021)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.
