In 1992, Helen Moyes made a documentary 'The Back Yard Shed' which set out to look at the lives of a cross-section of Australian households through the phenomenon of the back-yard shed.
Social documenter Maxx Image is obsessed with the colour purple. Black leather is the costume of rebellion and the thrill and valour expounded by such an ideal could be seen as enticing accessories to the passion and zeal of leather sexuality.
During World War Two, the Australian government's Department of Information represented the male body in at least two distinct ways. The photographer Edward Cranstone photographed a heroically active, phallicised body and the cameraman Damien Parer filmed a heroically suffering abject body.
Masculinity continues its argument with itself, quizzical at its self-propelled self-assertion. But in asserting aggression the pain is not just experienced in the victim. For even in the crudest acts of coitus, for a moment, the raper becomes the raped, he is tied by his penis and his balls into an abomination.
Vigilantly looking out to sea, the two manifestations of the life saver, the saviour and the sportsman, are combined in this 'gay greeting card' in such a way as to draw on the history of surf club masculinity and create an erotic pose.
The images are selections from a body of work called flamingharlots@trashed, created by Sydney based photographer Natalie Lowrie. The images, digitally retouched photos of Natalie's circle of friends and acquaintances were exhibited at the Polymorph Gallery at Newtown.