137 - Stephen Dupont
© Stephen Dupont
Stephen Dupont is an Australian artist, photographer and documentary filmmaker working mostly on long-term personal projects. Born in Sydney in 1967, Stephen grew up in the western suburbs and Southern Highlands under tough social conditions and displacement, with social worker parents, who were full-time carers of state wards. Stephen is recognised around the world for his concerned photography on the human condition, war and climate. His images have received international acclaim for their artistic integrity and valuable insight into the people, culture and communities that are fast disappearing from our world.
Stephen’s work has earned him some of photography’s most prestigious prizes, including a 2005 Robert Capa Gold Medal citation and the 2015 Olivier Rebbot Award from the Overseas Press Club of America; a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize; and first places in the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, the Australian Walkleys, and Leica/CCP Documentary Award. In 2007 he was the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography for his ongoing project on Afghanistan. In 2010 he received the Gardner Fellowship at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
In 2017 Stephen’s one-man theatrical show Don't Look Away world premiered at the Museum of Old & New Art (MONA) in Tasmania as part of Mona Mofo (MONA's festival of Music and Art). Performances continued at Sydney's Eternity Playhouse Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art MCA and at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Stephen has twice been an official war artist for the Australian War Memorial for his photography, with commissions in The Solomon Islands (2013) and Afghanistan (2012). He holds a Masters degree in Philosophy and is regularly invited to give public talks in Australia and around the world about photography, film and his life. His work has been featured in more or less all of the world’s most prestigious magazines and he has held major exhibitions in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Canberra, Tokyo, and Shanghai, and at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image, China’s Ping Yao and Holland’s Noorderlicht festivals.
Stephen’s handmade photographic artist books and portfolios are in some of the world's leading collections, including, the National Gallery of Australia, The New York Public Library, Berlin and Munich National Art Libraries, Stanford University, Yale University, Boston Athenaeum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Joy of Giving Something Inc.
On episode 137, Stephen discusses, among other things:
Reassessing his archive during Covid
How and why he first began making artists books
The question of how one labels and thinks about themselves
Still having the wanderlust for travel
His new environmental project, Are We Dead Yet?
His unusual childhood and the impact of his dad’s death when he was 13
His desire to escape the suburbs and to travel
His early travels and how India was an influence on him becoming a photographer
Why live music photography was a good training ground
The influence of Don McCullin
Why he came back from his first war in Sri Lanka feeling like he’d failed
Dealing with the emotional fall out of witnessing conflict
His love of Afghanistan and the close shave he had there
HIs first book, Steam
Referenced:
Colin Jacobson
Susie Price
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