26 Facts About Mark Strizic

Mark Strizic was a 20th-century German-born Australian photographer, teacher of photography, and artist.

Marko Strizic was born in 1928 in Berlin, Germany, where his Croatian father, Zdenko Strizic, was studying and practising architecture.

Mark Strizic's mother was a textile designer, trained in Berlin, who contributed to Zdenko's practice.

Mark Strizic departed Naples on the converted Royal Australian Navy seaplane carrier SS Hellenic Prince, arriving in Melbourne in on Anzac Day, 25 April 1950.

Mark Strizic's good spoken English soon gained him a position as a clerk with the Victorian Railways Reclamation Department, and he resumed his studies in physics part-time at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Mark Strizic bought his first camera, a Diaxette and began to photograph his environment, developing a love of strong light which he found abundant under the clear skies of his adopted city.

Mark Strizic enjoyed shooting into the sun, and capturing low afternoon side-lighting effects for their high-contrast graphic silhouettes in black and white prints, and that became his signature style for his historically and culturally significant photographs of post-war Melbourne.

Mark Strizic dissolved his partnership with Bigham on the latter's retirement in 1960, and established his studio, neighbouring those of other photographers, in Collins Street, Melbourne in what was known as 'The Paris End'.

Mark Strizic found a market for large scale mural installations amongst corporate clients and exhibited artistic works in the same media, work he continued into the late 1990s.

Over several years during the mid-1980s Mark Strizic was resident artist documenting the cultural activities of the City of Knox from which he produced two murals for the Council foyer.

Mark Strizic participated with artist Rex Keogh and composer Geoffrey D'ombrain in recording their community participation art events later exhibited at Knox and at the Arts Ministry.

Again through Saunders, in 1958, Mark Strizic met modernist Robin Boyd of architectural firm Grounds, Romberg and Boyd, who became a major client.

Boyd controversially criticised Australian suburban culture in his book The Australian Ugliness of 1960, and Mark Strizic echoed these sentiments in writing, and in his photography began to illustrate Australians' disdain for their architectural heritage and their scant regard for the visual aesthetics of their urban environment amidst the destruction of magnificent Gold Rush era buildings and verandahs and their replacement by high-rise modernist office-blocks.

In 1960 Mark Strizic joined David Saunders to produce Melbourne: A Portrait, stating 'Its central thought is that while men make cities, the cities affect the men.

Mark Strizic occasionally applies a sense of geometry to his final cornpsitions not dissimilar to that of Mondrian.

In View from Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1959 the 31-year-old Mark Strizic beautifully expresses the convoluted geometry of the upper structure of the Bridge from a vantage point that I assume was dangerously high in the arch.

Mark Strizic made portraits of significant Australians including academics, scientists and those involved in the arts and these are held in collections including those of the Australian National Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria and the State Library of Victoria.

Mark Strizic used 35mm at a time when medium or large format was the norm for portraiture, and his use of long focal lengths, available light and aura-enhancing shallow depth of field sets the sitter into their environment.

Businessman and philanthropist Sir Ian Potter's head and shoulders are seen at the bottom of the image, against the blurred lights of Times Square, where Mark Strizic was sent to photograph him for the book.

From 1958, Mark Strizic exhibited almost annually in group, joint, and solo shows.

Mark Strizic began combining, enlarging, cropping and transforming elements from his black and white negatives through montage, then colourising and posterising the monochrome images in the manner associated with Pop Art.

Mark Strizic is represented with a selection of manipulated work.

Mark Strizic's work is represented in the Australian National Gallery and several state galleries and in corporate collections.

Mark Strizic was a collector of significant Australian art himself, and as early as 1974 lent works by John Perceval, whom he photographed 2 years later, to Marianne Baillieu for a show at her gallery Realities.

Mark Strizic taught photography at workshops at the Church Street Photographic Centre in 1978, alongside John Cato, Robert Imhoff and Ian Cosier.

Mark Strizic presented a public lecture An Experience in Photography, at the University of Melbourne Institute of Education on 20 May 1992.