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Australian photographer who developed an influential style of commercial photography that emphasized the geometric forms of his architectural and industrial subjects.
Dupain, who exhibited his first landscape photographs while attending grammar school, studied at the East Sydney Technical College and the Julian Ashton Art School (both 1933–35), while he apprenticed from 1930 to 1934 with commercial photographer Cecil Bostock. During World War II he left his fashion- and portrait-photography studio to work for the army camouflage unit; he then worked for the Australian Department of Information (1945–47). Upon his return to studio work, he de-emphasized picturesque landscapes and portraiture in favour of the more abstract architectural and industrial imagery that established him as one of Australia’s most significant Modernist photographers.
Dupain's philosophy could be summed up in two words, simplicity and directness. With this in mind, Dupain remained an adherent of black and white photography. He felt that colour was restricting in its objectivity and that nothing was left for individual interpretation. He continued to photograph until a few months before his death in July, 1992