Shell Series No. 5, 1986

Signed and dated in pencil on image lower right.

Image size: 42 x 40 cm

Framed size: 66.1 x 63.1 cm

In his later career, Dupain turned increasingly to still life subjects, particularly flowers and shells in his private work. This image is from Dupain’s Shell Series, a body of work exploring the formal qualities of shells through dramatic lighting and careful composition. The State Library of New South Wales holds a related work, File 05: Shell series, late 1970s, call numbers ON 609/Box 16/no. 24. Dupain bookended his personal photographic explorations of form with flowers, beginning with his experimentation with surrealist photography such as solarisation and double exposure in the early to mid-1930s and ending with often single light source subjects taken in the studio and in his garden.