Still resonating forty eight years later…

Bronze sculpture by Ray Ewers in the Australian War Memorial Hall of Memory. Photo by Rob Walls 1963

I’m constantly surprised by what you can turn up with a little digging on the internet. A few days ago, I found this photo in the National Archive of Australia. I made this picture in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial forty-eight years ago, when I was working as a photographer’s assistant at the Australian News and Information Bureau in Canberra.

From memory, I shot this using available light with a Speed Graphic using a 65mm Ektar wide-angle lens on Tri-X 5×4 sheet film. The most vivid memory of the shoot was that if you rapped on the bronze camouflage net the figure is standing on, you would get a deep vibration that would resonate up the bronze and echo into the mosaic dome above the figure. The sculpture is no longer kept in the Hall of Memory but has been moved outside into a sculpture garden.