Decade / Decadent

Decade/Decadent is a sleekly packaged set of two books showcasing Rennie Ellis' (1940-2003) contribution to photography and social history. With introductions by film maker Paul Cox and photographer William Yang, and essays by curator Susan Van Wyk and photographer/writer Robert McFarlane, Decade/Decadent highlights Ellis as one of Australia's most important chroniclers of the late twentieth century. The photographs, both colour and black and white, are drawn from the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive and the State Library of Victoria Rennie Ellis collection. Many of the photographs are accompanied by extended captions written by Rennie himself. Decade explores the cultures and sub-cultures of the seventies: the political upheavals, alternative lifestyles and counter culture, the women's movement, gay liberation, the new religions and cults, pop festivals, Vietnam and other protests, massage parlours, the disco scene, the blossoming of Australia's film industry, the new sexual freedom, street festivals and drugs. Decadent explores the rise of the hedonism that we now associate with the 1980s. Ellis' boundary-pushing, racy and sometimes voyeuristic works capture a society that seems to be revelling in its abandonment of the politically charged 1970s documented in Decade.