David Mist - Swinging Sydney
David Mist's photos capture a time of short skirts, long hair and even longer parties.
By Sarah Norris
They say if you can remember the 60s you weren't really there.
Photographer David Mist doesn't agree - he looks upon that time with
fond, rose-coloured memories; a time of change, protest and the birth
of the ‘teenager'.
Arriving in Sydney from the UK in 1961 as a fashion photographer, he
captured the style and flavour of life in Sydney at that time. "I was
lucky because I experienced the early part of the 60s in London working
in fashion photography and then I experienced it here, which was kind
of a variation on it because the early 60s in Australia was full of
conservatism. The youth didn't really break out until 1965 in Sydney,"
says Mist, who still calls Sydney - Paddington to be specific - home.
"When I arrived, it was very conservative, it was like chalk and cheese
compared to London. It really was June Dally-Watkins country - handbags
and gloves and everything that's proper."
But by the mid 60s, everything changed. "It was one long party,"
says Mist with a hint of nostalgia in his voice. "It wasn't so much the
drugs - the only drug around was the huff-puff stuff that we all
enjoyed very much at the time. There was never heroin or the more
sophisticated drugs that you have today. "It was really the period of
the long lunch. I don't know how I took pictures. I used to come back
and wonder how I was still standing. There were lots of parties back
then."
In between the lunches and parties Mist did actually work, and hard,
capturing photos of Sydney's young fashion scene. Working for 15 or so
retail outlets - Farmers, David Jones and others - his pictures ran
weekly in Sydney's newspapers; photos of models all sporting the latest
styles and trends. Commissioned to capture Sydney for the coffee table
book Cities of the World, Mist also spent a year snapping Sydney's
landmarks and people and at the same time, a unique document of
Sydney's history.
So why did Mist stay in Sydney all this time? "I loved the
Australian people; I thought they were so easy going and casual," he
explains. "I came from a background that was toffee-nosed and rather
conservative in its thinking. In London it was ‘Lady this' and ‘Your
Honourable' that."
David Mist: Swinging Sydney opens Sat 27 Sep and runs until 8 Feb at the Museum of Sydney.