Luke Hickey: Yuma. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the National Library of Australia. My name is Luke Hickey. I'm the Assistant Director General of Community Engagement here at the National Library, and I'm really pleased to be welcoming you all here tonight for our much anticipated Life Behind the Lens discussion panel. Before I continue, I would like to ask everyone in the audience to please check your mobile phones are off or on silent, probably including you, Mike. We are capturing tonight's broadcast for the ABC Big Ideas as well as streaming live. So, please make sure that those are off to avoid capturing your notoriety forever.

We come to you tonight from the National Library of Australia here on beautiful Ngunnawal and Ngambri country, and a place that I was born on, grew up in, and very privileged to live here, would like to acknowledge Australia's First Nations peoples and the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land on which we're meeting here today and give my respects to their Elders both past and present. Also like to extend that to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here with us tonight or watching online, but also extend that respect to the many cultures and stories that we have privileged to be custodians of here in the National Library's collection.

Tonight's event brings together three of Australia's best photojournalists: Mike Bowers, Lorrie Graham, and Rick Stevens. Tonight, we're going to hear from them on the field of photojournalism, its past, its present, and its future, experiences from their distinguished careers. It says long here, Mike, but I won't reveal any age, no discrimination here, but also why photography remains a key part of making history.

I'm sure our panel and their work is familiar to many of you, but I'll give you a brief introduction regardless. So our host tonight, Mike Bowers, is a photographer and host of 'Talking Pictures' on The Insiders, which airs on the ABC. He spent 37 years in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery working for publications including 'The Australian' and 'The Sydney Morning Herald' and has covered a wide range of international conflicts, including Cambodia and the Middle East. He's also a published author and most recently a curator, having guest curated our Fit to Print: Defining Moments from the Fairfax Photo Archive Exhibition, which I really encourage you to see, and which we must thank Mike for his efforts, not only in curating, but also in promoting and sharing that widely for everyone to see.

Lorrie Graham began her career at a photographic lab and at the same time, was shooting concerts for Australia's nascent 'Rolling Stone' magazine. Lorrie became the first female photographic cadet at 'The Sydney Morning Herald' in 1975, a cadetship which was only offered to women because it was International Women's Year. She became a trailblazer in a notoriously male-dominated profession, working for several major publications in both Australia and the UK until embarking on a successful freelance career in 1991. Her image of Paul Keating brandishing a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses for the cover of 'Rolling Stone' is one of her most iconic works, and her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Library, and the Museum of Sydney and State Library of New South Wales.

Rick Stevens's journalistic career began as a 16-year-old copy boy for the 'Women's Day' magazine in 1961. Rick started as a press photographer with 'The Sydney Morning Herald' in 1963 and took the iconic photograph of a devoted Labour supporter bending to kiss Gough Whitlam's hand at the Blacktown Civic Centre during the 1972 election campaign. That won the Nikon Best News Photo of the Year in 1973. And since then, Rick has won numerous awards and covered major local and international stories, including Cyclone Tracy, the Bali bombings, royal and papal visits, the Barcelona and Sydney Olympic Games, and the wedding of Mary Donaldson to Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark. Rick is currently a freelance photographer with a special interest in capturing wildlife on film.

As a very amateur photographer and all-around photography nerd, I'm really excited tonight to hear about the stories, the experiences, the opinions and reflections. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Mike, Lorrie, and Rick to the stage.

Mike Bowers: Thank you very much and welcome to the National Library and Life Behind the Lens. More than any other sport, except perhaps maybe surfing, action in cricket happens a really long way from the lens. And necessity being what it is, the early days of photography of cricket involved massive blow-ups using just standard lenses. And the results from that were pretty ordinary, especially for news once it got into a newspaper because it was a massive blow-up, definition and contrast was terrible, and it really wasn't much of a result. So before the commencement of the 1920/21 Ashes Tour, a photographer who worked for 'The Sydney Morning Herald' called Herbert Henry Fishwick was not satisfied with what we were getting from cricket and he wrote to an optical company in London called Ross. And he ordered a lens to some specifications and it was about a metre long, this lens. And he attached it to his Graflex camera.

Lorrie Graham: My God.

Mike Bowers: And the results from this caused an absolute storm amongst the newspapermen and the cameramen of the time. So much so that the English touring cricket team took these photographs back. The definition and clarity was unheard of. And when they got back to London, the London newspapers sent their senior photographers out to see how it was all done. And really, I can't find an earlier reference to long lens photography. It was kind of born here at the SCG at 'The Sydney Morning Herald', and there's Fishwick wrangling the camera. He had special binoculars on his glasses as you can see, and that's so he left both hands free to be able to wrangle the pretty complicated camera.

That sort of DNA, where the photographer was unwilling to accept the status quo, kind of got baked into 'The Sydney Morning Herald'. And if we fast forward six or seven decades, the people like Lorrie and Ricky were the ones that took the ball forward with that. Both of these photographers have been an inspiration in my career. I just want to quickly read, I had the pleasure of doing the citation for Lorrie when she was inducted into the Melbourne Press Club's Media Hall of Fame. And trailblazing is kind of an imperfect label for her.

The citation attached to it read, "Lorrie Graham blew away the ceiling of the male-dominated world of Australian press photography in the early 70s. Dozens of other women followed in the next 40 years. After knocking on the door for a few years, she was employed by 'The Sydney Morning Herald' in '75." As mentioned, it was International Women's Year. "She battled suspicion, sexism, hostility, but she preferred to let her photographs speak for her and very loudly they spoke. In the late 70s, she was attracted to 'The Observer' in London because the paper's dedication to strong imagery allowed pictorial essays to stand on their own merits without a story attached. And this became her hallmark. Lorrie's won numerous awards and her archive is currently being acquired or has been acquired by the Library of New South Wales." 

Rick's career was briefly outlined, but what they didn't mention was that the poor bugger has really had the misfortune to have to work with two generations of Bowers. My father, he was one of the preferred photographers that Rick liked to work with, and they did a story in the 90s where they unearthed a thing called blue-green algae on the Murray-Darling, and my dad won a Walkley for it, and I think Ricky should have been really winning a Walkley as well. So I thank you for that because I know you played a very large part in that, Rick.

Both of these guys, I found an inspiration in my career and Ricky has mentored me from an early age and a lot of my success is due to what Ricky taught me.

Lorrie, what's your earliest memory of photography? Can you pinpoint when you first thought 'this is actually what I want to do'?

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, my dad gave me a book by Margaret Bourke-White when I was 14. And she was the first life photographer. She wasn't the first female life photographer, she was the first life photographer. And there is seriously something in you have to see it to be it. So I realised that there was a job called photojournalist, but it took a bit of time to get there for me from that.

Mike Bowers: Ricky, what about you? Can you pinpoint the time you?

Rick Stevens: Well, there was no real light bulb moment for me because I started my career as a wall and floor tiler with my grandfather and we were living in Manly and they decided they wanted to go back to England. And I said, "Oh, I don't want to go there." And I was 16 years old, so I had to get myself a job otherwise I was made to go with them.
So I got myself a job through a friend who put me onto somebody that worked at Fairfax, and they were a copy boy. And I said, "Well, that sounds all right." Saves going back to the UK with my grandparents because I was adopted by them when I was six years old. So they chuffed off and there I was waving goodbye from Circular Quay going, I'm 16. I said, "What have I done? What am I going to do now?" Anyway, so I worked as a copy boy for two years with 'Women's Day' magazine, which was then owned by Fairfax.

And the editor of 'Women's Day' said, "Rick, you've been here for two years. What are you going to do?" I said, "I don't know, wouldn't mind being cartoonist, but I can't draw." I wanted to be a policeman, I was too small. I said, "But there's got photographers around there, maybe I could try that." So she said, "Look, I'll get you in there as a copy boy and maybe we might get you a cadetship." So I chuffed around to the photographic department and they finally gave me a cadetship and I thought, "God, this is good. I better learn something about this." So I borrowed a camera from a few photographers, because they didn't give me a camera when they gave me a cadetship, did they? They never-

Lorrie Graham:
I got a camera.

Rick Stevens:
I suppose because that's who you are, you see? I was thrown in to mix up the chemicals. So anyway, so he gave me a camera. It was one of those twin lens reflex things where you look down in there like that and you're looking up at the subject all the time. And I used to photograph all the hobos around the boarding house where I used to live and it just made good footage. So I used to practise on them. I'd just come home from work and I'd go around with the camera and start taking pictures of them and things like that. So that was my first introduction to photography. I didn't have no idea. I thought I was going to be a wall and floor tiler, but I didn't.

Mike Bowers: Lorrie, you entered a very male-dominated workforce. I mean there was no such thing as a copy girl, right?

Lorrie Graham: No.

Mike Bowers: So, it must've been a very hard, these boys weren't easy. They weren't easy when I started. I can't imagine they would've gone easy on you when you started.

Rick Stevens: I was a gentleman.

Lorrie Graham: Always a gentleman. Look, I mean it wasn't, no, look, it was me and 60, so it was pretty kind of uneven.

Mike Bowers: 60 men?

Lorrie Graham: There were 60 photographers.

Mike Bowers: So that would have been the 'City Morning Herald', the 'Sun Herald,' and 'The Sun'?

Lorrie Graham: And 'The Sun', yeah. And also dark room people. So they had people work in the dark room. And it's a really hard thing to describe because basically sexual harassment, those words didn't exist. So the environment was a little tough. I mean when I got my cadetship, basically I got it because I'd been coming and showing my pictures to Frank Burke for a couple of years.

Mike Bowers: Who was he? A picture manager?

Lorrie Graham: He was a picture manager, and I'd been shooting for 'Rolling Stone' for no money, just free tickets and film. And he'd always look at them and he'd say, "Yeah, but we don't have any cadetships and we don't have any women's toilets." They had two men's toilets, mind you. "We don't have any women's toilets on the floor."

Rick Stevens: There was one on the fifth floor though, wasn't there?

Lorrie Graham: Yes. But you had two toilets on the sixth floor. And the language, "You won't be able to handle the language. And the equipment's so heavy." There are all these excuses. So 1975 rocks around, and I think it was actually his secretary, Jenny White, who kind of nudged him and said, "You really can't say no to her now."

Mike Bowers: It's International Year of the Woman, you need to put a woman on the staff.

Lorrie Graham: But I had to come in for two weekends in a row to see whether or not I could handle the language, and I had to rock the dish, which I don't know if anybody actually understands just how hard that is. So, rocking the dish on a weekend on a newspaper, there's a lot of sport and basically eight photographers come back at the same time and they're all processing it and they throw pieces of photographic paper in the dish, the developing dish, and you, rocking the dish, have to scream back, "You're on the wrong grade, you're over, you're under," try and save the print. So imagine the abuse. But I handled that. I mean I managed to get through it. I mean my language has never improved after those two weekends, but I got my cadetship.

Mike Bowers: Let it be said that this is being recorded by the ABC. So we're all on our best behaviour.

Lorrie Graham: We're all on our best behaviour.

Mike Bowers: All of us don't have great language normally.

Lorrie Graham: No.

Mike Bowers: So we're on our best behaviour. Now, the dark rooms, you had your own personal dark rooms at the 'Herald', and it was called Alcatraz.

Lorrie Graham: We had shared cells and it was called Alcatraz because basically it was this corridor and these cells went off. How many were there?

Rick Stevens: I've never been in a prison, I wouldn't know.

Lorrie Graham: You were there? I think there were about-

Rick Stevens: It was probably about 35 or something.

Lorrie Graham: ... 35 cells.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Bowers: And so you shared.

Rick Stevens: It was in a T shape, so it was long corridor there and then there's another little corridor coming off there, and there was dark rooms on either side and it had just a sink, developing tanks.

Lorrie Graham: Sink, developing tanks, where you kept your gear.

Rick Stevens: Yeah.

Lorrie Graham: Where the blokes kept their pictures.

Mike Bowers: Dirty pictures?

Rick Stevens: My darkroom still holds a record for the most people in there for one party. And they used to smoke too. It was terrible.

Mike Bowers: So you had open dishes of sodium thiosulfate for fixing and you'd be smoking in there? That must've been very.

Lorrie Graham: It's a very healthy environment. And we all had brown nails.

Mike Bowers: Yeah, from the developer.

Rick Stevens: Terrible. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Bowers: I want to go through the biggest mess up you've ever done. I'll start, to lead you all off. During the '93 campaign, which was Hewson v. Keating, I shot for about three quarters of a day and I thought, "Boy, this film's lasting a long time." What I'd failed to do was properly engage the leading tail into the sprocket and wind it properly so that it. But having said that, when I did realise, I did never make that mistake again. Okay, now I've led off.

Rick Stevens: Okay, '75. 1975. '65? '75? '75. Yeah.

Mike Bowers: I don't know, Rick. It's your story.

Lorrie Graham: No, it was '65.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, it was '65.

Lorrie Graham: It was 65. I know his story better than he does.

Mike Bowers: Maybe we'll get Lorrie to tell it.

Rick Stevens: 1965, there's bushfires in Victoria. I think it was 1965 bushfires. And there was one of our senior photographers by the name of Ron Stewart was covering the bushfires there. Anyway, sent up some rolls of film to be processed. It was 35 mil. So the packet of film comes in and the picture editor calls out, "Rick and Merv," Merv being Merv Bishop, who was the first Indigenous photographer to work at 'The Herald'. And Merv and I were both cadets at the same time.

So when we get back to talking about those long corridor, individual dark rooms, Merv comes into my dark room. We've got two rolls of film. Now, if you understand about processing 35 mils, there's a roll of film there and the photographers always left a little sleeve out of the film, so you didn't have to break over the cassette to get the film out. So what you did, you just pulled it like that. So I'm here like this, Merv's there, the light switch is here. "You right, Merv?" "Yeah, Rick. I'm right, I'm right. Let's go."

Picture editor's banging on the door and he's banging on, "How's that film going?" "Yeah, we've got it under control." Switch off the light. "Oh, damn, I've just dropped my spiral." There's Merv with his roll of film out looking at me like this. "Oh, I'm sorry, Merv." I switched the light back off after I picked up my spiral. "Let's go."

Mike Bowers: So basically one half of that film was exposed.

Rick Stevens: Not quite a half.

Mike Bowers: Right.

Rick Stevens: About a quarter of the film.

Mike Bowers: So, Merv, you had pulled it out? Or Merv?

Rick Stevens: No, Merv had pulled his out, but I dropped my-

Mike Bowers: And you switched the light on?

Rick Stevens: I dropped my spiral so I had to turn the light on.

Mike Bowers: So this was completely your fault?

Rick Stevens: It was. It was. And the picture editor is still, he's still knocking on the door and he's saying, "How's that film going?" I said, "Yeah, it won't be long, boss. Mine's fine, but Merv's got a problem." So we didn't actually tell anybody. We didn't tell anybody about this. So the film comes out, okay, a quarter of it's fogged. Merv said, "What are we going to do?" I went, "We'll just cut it off." So we cut it off and we took it out and he said, "Well, I need this and this." And he said, "Hang on, I've got captions here for this and I can't see it." I said, "Oh, we forgot they got captions." Anyway, so nobody ever said anything. So we just continued on. So that was a bit of a.

Mike Bowers: That was a good one. What about you, Lorrie?

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, mine was kind of more, do you remember when, do this is post the Whitlam-Kerr thing.

Mike Bowers: Dismissal?

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, the dismissal. And everywhere Kerr went, they wanted pictures. And he went down to Jarvis Bay to do a, I guess it was a sort of military outing thing. And I thought I got the picture. It was basically him with the mascot of the troops that he was, it was Navy, that's right. It was a dribbling bulldog.

Mike Bowers: Right.

Lorrie Graham: And he was walking with the bulldog in front of the, and I thought, 'Oh, got it.' So I raced off to the bathroom on a toilet break and I came back and the shot that actually somebody from t'The News Limited' got was the bulldog sitting on his lap.

Mike Bowers: Dribbling?

Lorrie Graham: Dribbling. So I got back and Frank said, "Where's that picture?" And I went, "Oh."

Mike Bowers: They're the worst words you can ever hear from your picture editor, isn't it? "Where's that picture?" Or, "Do you have it in vertical?" It's like, "No, boss, because I didn't have time between to turn the camera sideways, you idiot." But anyway.

Lorrie Graham: No, but I mean I think bladder control is one of the big things that I've learned from my career. I'd say it's one of the most important things you can have as a photographer.

Mike Bowers: Yes, that and comfortable shoes.

Lorrie Graham: That and comfortable shoes.

Mike Bowers: Both these guys have taken what I believe to be the iconic shots of. Lorrie's got two, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. And Ricky has one of Gough Whitlam. Just run us through the shot you took at Bankstown Sports Club in 1972, I think it was, of the lady kissing Gough Whitlam's hand. And the details are that Bob Hawke is, of course, in the shot as well, as well as Little Pattie and-

Rick Stevens: Col Joye.

Mike Bowers: ... and Col Joye and Corrine Senior.

Rick Stevens: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I don't know why they sent me actually. It was probably because I was working night work because all the juniors used to work night work and all the seniors used to.

Lorrie Graham: Get the good shifts.

Rick Stevens: All the good shifts and all the good jobs and things. So I was pretty lucky to get out there, but it was. I never ever thought about ever being a political photographer or anything like that, but we got out there and the atmosphere on that night was something I'd never really come across again while I was taking photos. And I mean the place was packed, but it was dark like this and the audience was just, and Gough's up there and we're all shuffled down to the front and I'm down the front there and Gough's up here and all the people are behind me. I'm saying, I'm shooting straight up Gough's nose while he's speaking here. I said, "It's not a good look." So I wasn't allowed on the stage and so.

Mike Bowers: Since when have you ever followed the rules?

Rick Stevens: Well, they did give me the nickname, I used to have a nickname, they called me the Rat because they used to reckon that I used to scuffle around like a little rat sort of thing, getting into corners where.

Mike Bowers: His nickname is still used today. We call him the Rat.

Rick Stevens: So anyway, I said, "This is no good. I've got to be able to see all these people in the background here." But it's dark and Gough's got a light on him and how am I going to balance that? And I don't like flash photography. I hate flash photography.

So it was one of those situations where, being the time it was, '72, I had to use a flash, but I had to compensate and try and shoot at a very slow shutter speed because I needed to get the people in the background. So I snuck up past the security and there was a curtain. There was a curtain like this, exactly like this. So I got up and I got up behind there and I thought, "Oh, this is a better shot." So I'm taking a few shots of Gough talking.

And then this woman, Dorothy Scott, races up and grabs him by the hand and he leans down and I'm going, "Oh, yes, bang, bang, bang. Oh, no flash. The flash hasn't gone off."

Mike Bowers: Flash would have killed that.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah. Absolutely.

Mike Bowers: The flash would have absolutely killed.

Rick Stevens: Exactly.

Mike Bowers: So it was an accident. You're telling us, you won a Walkley Award on an accident.

Rick Stevens: But nobody knows.

Lorrie Graham: Nobody knows now.

Rick Stevens: Anyway, the flash hasn't gone off. I go, "Oh, God." And it's not instant now. I mean it's instant now. You look at the back and say, "Oh, I've got nothing." But you don't look at the back. You've got to go all the way back to the office in Broadway.

Mike Bowers: Must have been a nervous drive.

Rick Stevens: It was very nervous.

Mike Bowers: Were you working out your excuses? "Boss, I missed it."

Rick Stevens: Well, nobody else got it.

Lorrie Graham: Nobody else got it.

Rick Stevens:So they wouldn't have known, you see. Well, the cameraman did. There was a TV.

Mike Bowers: If you were the only one there, it didn't happen.

Rick Stevens: So anyway, I went back and we go through the process. I made sure I didn't turn the light on when I was pulling out the film. So, I put it in there and it came out, "Oh, yes, I've got an image." But there was two images. There was two images, exactly the same, but one didn't have Bob Hawke in it. So I must have moved around a little bit or gone that way to get Bob Hawke because I've got another image and Bob's not even in there.

Mike Bowers: Col Joye's got his back to us, Ricky.

Rick Stevens: No. No, he hasn't. No, Little Pattie's got, that's Little Pattie. Yeah. Patricia Amphlett, yeah. So Hawkey must have snuck in there while that was happening to get closer. So, yeah. So, yeah, look, lucky, lucky. Sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's bad luck. Merv had bad luck, I had good luck.

Lorrie Graham: Merv had bad luck because he was in the dark room with you.

Rick Stevens: That's right. Anyway.

Mike Bowers: Lorrie, I think this is the iconic shot of Bob. Did you see it as soon as you got there?

Lorrie Graham: I saw the potential of that shot when I walked into the Opera House, but it took the entire time to get it. And if you looked at the proof sheet, that's the only frame. There are three proof sheets.

Mike Bowers: So you shot three rolls?

Lorrie Graham: I shot a lot of other pictures, but.

Rick Stevens: Three rolls of 36?

Lorrie Graham: There are other pictures amongst it, Rick, like Hayden looking miserable. But yeah, there are a lot of pictures where the, yeah. Because I was working for 'The National Times' and I had to get a shot that was going to last a week. It wasn't going to be a news picture, it had to be something else. So I was.

Mike Bowers: I did some time on 'The Sunday H' too. You had to shoot quite differently, didn't you? For a-

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, you had to be thinking, this has got to last and it's got to have a different angle and it's got to have something else going.

Mike Bowers: So you couldn't take a photograph. When you work for a Sunday or a weekly as the 'Nation Review' was, you had to get a picture-

Lorrie Graham: 'National Times'.

Mike Bowers: 'National Times', sorry. You had to get a picture that wasn't going to be in the paper the next day because it would feel old by the time it was run. So, you really had to exercise some creativity to get different things. Yeah. And were they happy?

Lorrie Graham: I don't think Hawkey ever liked it, no. I think they also made a big, apparently a couple of people said that they always used to check the mics also. They never had that sort of-

Mike Bowers: It's very rare that that happens nowadays.

Lorrie Graham: That mic sort of situation ever again. Yeah.

Mike Bowers: Yeah, no, I think they learned their lesson.

Rick Stevens: You didn't mind shooting up his nose? No, that's a lovely picture.

Mike Bowers: I can't see Hawkey would have been too enamoured with that.

Lorrie Graham: No, no.

Mike Bowers: Ricky, this is your Bob Hawke photograph. What was the circumstances? He's standing on a chair here. What was going on?

Rick Stevens: I think he was just racing to get up back up to the stage or something. I can't remember really.

Lorrie Graham: Where was it?

Mike Bowers: Where was it?

Lorrie Graham: Where was it?

Rick Stevens: It was in Sydney, the Opera House.

Mike Bowers: Definitely your flash went off there.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, it did. Yeah. I think he's, did he have bare feet?

Mike Bowers: Oops.

Lorrie Graham: Whoops.

Mike Bowers: Sorry.

Rick Stevens: No, he's got his shoes on, hasn't he?

Mike Bowers: Yeah, he's got shoes on. Hazel was still around. So, I think this is the actually iconic photo of PJK. Just tell us the circumstances. You shot it for 'Rolling Stone' magazine. It was in your studio?

Lorrie Graham: It was in my studio, but we'd had a shoot with him at the pub where his band, what were they? The Ramrods or something?

Mike Bowers: Yeah.

Lorrie Graham: When he managed a band. So we'd had the morning with him and then he was coming to my studio in Surry Hills after that. And the studio, I lived in the studio illegally. And anyway, he turned up with his [unclear] suit over his shoulder and he walked in and he looked around and went, "This is a little bohemian, Lorrie." And I blacked it out because there was also a potential that we might need a colour shot and they needed it to be quite controlled. So, it was quite hot. It was January. And so I had a fan and he didn't want the fan on because it was going to wreck his hair. And then we're sitting there and I decided not to put film in the camera. I shot it two and a quarter and I just figured it was going to be all sort of white knuckles on knees for the first half hour or something.

Mike Bowers: So you warm into a shoot basically. And especially during those, it's okay now with digital, but the first 30 frames for something like this-

Lorrie Graham: A waste.

Mike Bowers: ... would be a waste.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah. Anyway, I mean I had the idea for the shot before and I had three lots of different sunglasses with the idea that he might play, but we also had to get rid of his minder.

Mike Bowers: Who was?

Lorrie Graham: Anne Summers, which wasn't easy. Told her that there were really bad parking police around where I lived. Got rid of her. Anyway, I mean she actually loves the shot now. Anyway, so I gave him, I just said, we did the white knuckled shot, we did the jacket off, we were trying absolutely everything. And it was just. I said, "Maybe a prop would help." So I gave him this and of course he went for the Ray-Bans immediately and he just.

Mike Bowers: Played around.

Lorrie Graham: Played around with it.

Mike Bowers: And how many shots do you reckon are usable?

Lorrie Graham: I'd say probably about four of various.

Mike Bowers: The sun?

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, the sunglass ones. I mean he did that, looked out over the top of them. We've got sort of different variations on them.

Mike Bowers:  Yeah, it's one of the better covers that I've seen of a politician. So, well done, you two.

That was the best I could achieve for Keating and Icon. It was the '96 campaign and he heard some school kids screaming when he was inspecting a church, which had been burnt out at Parramatta. And he ran across the road and you've never seen anything like this because we realised he was going to get up on the wall. So there's cameramen with lenses flying out of their pockets. We used to wear those camera vests at the time, you can see Andrew Taylor on the other side there, and there was film and lenses and stuff because we all had to get up on the wall to be able to get a decent shot of him. And the TV guys were sort of dropping cameras, so it was anarchy. And I had to shoot with the camera out to get some angle on it and I had to send the films back and had no idea if I'd got it. But there was one frame.

Rick, we've all had assignments which have really affected our careers and have been sort of a breakthrough moment. You went out to Richmond Air Force Base in Christmas Day, 1974, and you never came home for five weeks. Just run us through how you ended up covering Cyclone Tracy in Darwin.

Rick Stevens: Again, a lucky break being the junior photographer working Christmas Day. Cyclone happened. Nobody knew in Sydney how bad it was. The first reports we had, there was 10 dead and then there was 20 dead or something. There was very little staff in Fairfax at the time, but the chief sub, a guy by the name of Bob Howarth said, "Look, we're going to have to try and get there, but first we have to do, we've got to go out to Richmond and take a photograph of the Hercules taking up all the emergency equipment, generators and things like that." Because there was no power, there was no nothing.

We went out there and we heard that Hercules had already left with power and the ABC was on board and I think 'The Telegraph' was on board, but they'd gone. So we had to do. Bob Howarth got on the phone to Canberra and said, "Look, we've got to get a crew on there, we've got to go." My wife, Paula, who's also a journalist, was also working on Christmas Day. She was down on the fifth floor working. And I rang her, I said, "I think I'm off to Darwin. I'm not going to be able to make Christmas dinner tonight." So in the end, we got on the flight and it took off. And we arrived in Darwin first light. There was just enough light for us to land.

And I stepped off the plane and there was just mayhem everywhere. The planes are upside down and everything was going on. People were being gathered, the people were being taken out. And I think, 'What am I going to do here? How am I going to get my film out of here?' There's no power, there's no water, there's nothing I could do. So I spent about an hour and a half at the airport as soon as I landed and photographed everything I saw in sight; planes thrown into the hangar and things like that.

Then I saw these people being evacuated. So I grabbed photos of the people being evacuated. And there was a guy on a stretcher and I asked the people, I said, "Where's he going? Where's he going?" They said, "Well, we're taking him to Sydney. As far as I know, he's going to Sydney Hospital." "Good. Give him this film and tell him, as soon as he sees a doctor, tell him to ring 'The Sydney Morning Herald'. Tell him you got film." That was the only way I was going to get film out, because there was no way of processing, there was nothing I could do. There's no good having great pictures in your camera and not being able to do anything with them, is there?

And they got out and they got to Sydney and 'The Herald' was contacted and they went to Sydney Hospital, they picked up the film, and they developed it.

Mike Bowers: Jobs like that where you have to really think on your feet and.

Rick Stevens: Well, we had that. There's no accommodation. I actually did, if it hadn't been for Bob Howarth, we probably would have slept on the street because Bob Howarth was from that area. That's why he came. The chief sub came with me. We didn't have any journos on that day so the chief sub came up there. And he knew a guy worked for Qantas, a guy by the name of Danny Rifiki, and Danny Rifiki then was able to get my film out for me and I was sleeping on the floor of his house at the same time. So I mean it's. You don't think of those things when you go, you get there, then you've got to get it out. It can be.

Lorrie Graham: It's a glamorous job.

Mike Bowers: Yeah, it's really glamorous. Did you have a job which was a defining job for your make or break your career? Or is there something that sticks out in your memory where you thought, well, that was really a very important job that I did?

Lorrie Graham: I think there are kind of areas of work that I've done that I think are probably important. I did a book with Robert Milliken on the rural crisis in the 80s. That was pretty important to me. Those sort of bodies of work I think are pretty kind of defining for me, rather than just one image or one assignment.

Mike Bowers: And is that what attracted you to 'The Observer', the fact that they were one of the pioneering publications that just did photography as standalone?

Lorrie Graham: They did photography. They respected it. They actually used, I mean they had a great respect and a great. They would design the pages around images. When we were still working at 'The Sydney Morning Herald', you'd fill a hole that the subs had left. So things would be cut to fill the hole as opposed to letting the image speak for itself.
So, yeah, I mean 'The Observer' was incredibly important and also it only had five photographers, it was a weekly, they had no problem sending you away for an assignment for a week. I mean they gave you time, they respected, everything was always bylined. There was this thing where no image was ever printed without the black neg line around it. And when I came back and started working on 'The National Times', I introduced that, which the subs hated me for.

Mike Bowers: Way to go, Lorrie. So the black neg line is the bit created by the shutter gate to prove that this is the entire negative. So when you see the black neg line, you know this is a print of exactly what was exposed in the camera.

Rick Stevens: You see that car in that picture?

Mike Bowers: Yes.

Rick Stevens: I borrowed that for three days.

Mike Bowers: Which one?

Rick Stevens: That one on the right there. The one in the middle.

Lorrie Graham: The one that doesn't have any.

Mike Bowers: The Fairlane?

Rick Stevens: Yeah, the Fairlane. Yeah.

Mike Bowers: That was 'The Sydney Morning Herald' car?

Rick Stevens: Transport. Yeah, yeah. I said, "I'll give you some photos afterwards if you give me your car." True.

Mike Bowers: It's strategically placed there, Ricky, I think.

Rick Stevens: No, I didn't place it. I didn't place it. I even remember their names. That was a man.

Mike Bowers: Speaking of bylines, if you've been to the exhibition upstairs, you'll notice there are very few bylines because photographers never used to really get them on their work. One of the few people we know who shot a lot of that stuff upstairs was Herbert Henry Fishwick, who used to sign his negatives with HHF and circle them. And if you have a look at some of his prints, you'll see actually on the negative, printed into the work, HHF. And he used to circle it, HHF.

Ricky, you had a great deal to do with getting photographers on parity during the 70s with journalists because they used to get paid much less than journos.

Rick Stevens: Oh yeah, a lot less.

Mike Bowers: And mixed up with that, of course, was the recognition with the bylines. Could you tell us a bit about how that fight unfolded?

Rick Stevens: Well, it was the AJA then, which is now the Media Alliance and sort of said, a group of photographers, we got together and we said, "Look, why are photographers paid so much less than journalists? I mean we're just as smart really." So, we are, aren't we?

Lorrie Graham: Sometimes smarter, I reckon.

Rick Stevens: Is that right? True? Yeah.

Mike Bowers: Paula's partner is in the front row here. The partners of photographers are the ones that suffer the most because we're away for such long periods. And the long suffering Paula Goodyear there.

Rick Stevens: Well, yeah, Paula's a journalist so she understands it. So it wasn't too bad. But anyway, back to parity. Yeah. So a group of photographers, Ian Mainesbridge and myself and a group of photographers, we sort of used to hold meetings together and say, "Look, we've just got to get into the AJA's ear and say, look, that we just need to try and get an upgrade in some money because we were paid far less than journalists. And lo and behold, we won our case. Nobody thought we'd ever get it, but we got it. And now we're getting paid more than the journalists.

Lorrie Graham: Are we?

Rick Stevens: No, not really.

Mike Bowers: I'm not sure that's true.

Rick Stevens: Yeah. So yeah.

Mike Bowers: Lorrie, this was during the Drover's Dog election, I think you could call it. My father told me that John Button, who was the one who delivered the news to him, that he had to step down in favour of Bob Hawke, had told him that he retreated into his private space and howled like a wounded animals. That was what my dad told me. So it was a painful experience for him, obviously. And this was, where was this?

Lorrie Graham: That was in the audience when Hawke was-

Mike Bowers: Giving his speech.

Lorrie Graham: ... giving his speech.

Mike Bowers: So was this at the microphone event?

Lorrie Graham: See, I didn't shoot all of Hawkey.

Rick Stevens: No, no, no. I can see that.

Lorrie Graham: I was busy doing other stuff.

Mike Bowers: I think you can see the pain on Bill Hayden's face as he's watching what he described as a Drover's dog could have won this election. So, well done there.
Rick, you photographed lots of royal tours. This was Diana Spencer. You managed to get this and none of the Fleet Street press did.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, that's why they called me the rat. You see? So what's happening there is that we were on a train around Adelaide, and it was heatwave conditions and obviously Diana, and that's her security guard behind her, had decided she wanted to get a bit of fresh air. But yeah, I'm sure she wasn't accustomed to the heat of Australia, but it was really, really hot.

But we were in a. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Sorry. We were in a carriage in front of her, and at no stage did I take my eye off Diana. So I could see her, but I couldn't really photograph her. But I saw her get up and I thought, "There's only one place she's going," because there was no bathroom on thing. So there's only one place she's going that she was going to come out to the door. So I raced to the back of the carriage and got the only window spot there was. And she came out and that was as soon as she opened the door, that's what hit her. And that was the look she gave me. And I thought, that's the picture.

Mike Bowers: It looks like.

Lorrie Graham: She looks like she's crying.

Mike Bowers: She looks like she's crying.

Rick Stevens: No, she's not. It was just the heat. It was just the expression on her face when she felt the heat because the train's moving.

Mike Bowers: And how did our colleagues from Fleet Street react?

Rick Stevens: I was their best friend after that, I think. So again, a bit of luck. But it's one of those things that if you. It's not just about turning up and looking for a picture. You've got to think a little bit and you've got to move around. I mean if there's 10 photographers over there, you don't want to sit with 10 photographers and all get the same picture. You've got to move away. So, I mean that's basically the way I used to operate. I tried to get something a little bit different. A bit like Lorrie does when we were working for 'The National Times', because she couldn't produce the same picture as me.

Mike Bowers: That must've been a dream job, Lorrie, because.

Lorrie Graham: It was a dream job.

Mike Bowers: How many photographers worked for them?

Lorrie Graham: Me.

Mike Bowers: Just you?

Lorrie Graham: Then it turned into 'The Times' on Sunday, and I got Pete Solness and Pete Ray to come over.

Mike Bowers: Peter Ray?

Lorrie Graham: Peter Ray didn't last very long because that's when Warwick and Lady Mary decided to try and expand Fairfax by.

Mike Bowers: By bankrupting it. Well done. This would fall into the category of having to survive the normal shots of.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah. Well this is also because it was an election campaign, there are three shots. It's a trilogy.

Mike Bowers: So the John Howard Trilogy?

Lorrie Graham: It's a John Howard trilogy. So the first shot is, I should have actually sent you these three shots, is just the eyes over the edge of the thing. That's the middle shot, which got basically used the most. And then there's the final shot with the big smile. And then we could kind of reverse them depending on how he was going in the polls.

Mike Bowers: So you got a selection of John Howard just to suit any headline basically?

Lorrie Graham: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't like those either.

Mike Bowers: Rick, you spent a lot of time in the forests around New South Wales.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, that was up near Dorrigo there.

Lorrie Graham: That's lovely.

Mike Bowers: So these are what the forest processes used to set up to try and impede the progress of-

Rick Stevens: Logging.

Mike Bowers: ... bulldozers and logging trucks, and they were tripods made out of really long pieces of trees, basically. I hope they didn't cut them down.

Rick Stevens: No. Ian Cohen's up there too. Do you remember Ian Cohen? He also-

Mike Bowers: Yes.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Bowers: He was a Greens MP.

Rick Stevens: He was hanging on the front of a warship too in the middle of Sydney Harbour-

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, yeah. Middle of Sydney.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, Cohen was up there as well too. So yeah, I did that job with Paul Bailey, a journo. There were some nice images.

Mike Bowers: There are various journalists you work with who absolutely get what it is you're trying to do. They're the ones you try to go out with, aren't they?

I had a journalist, Anne Davies, who was so well trained, she would interrupt an interview and say, "Well, the sun is about to dip behind the horizon and Mike will kill me unless I hand over to him now because this is the light he wants to use." And that's kind of a rarity, isn't it?

Lorrie Graham: My God, yeah,

Mike Bowers: I know, right? Anne Davies. Tony Stevens was another one who.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, Tony.

Mike Bowers: He got it.

Rick Stevens: That picture there, it looks so much better. If that was in colour, I don't think it'd have the same impact. I love black, I love black and white, I still love black and white. I think you love black and white, don't you?

Lorrie Graham: Mm-hmm.

Rick Stevens: I mean, it's.Yeah.

Mike Bowers: How much of your archive would be black and white as opposed to colour, Lorrie?

Lorrie Graham: Probably about 65% of it.

Mike Bowers: Yeah.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah. I actually went digital. I have John Swainston to thank.

Mike Bowers: John used to run the Nikon dealership here, Maxwell Obstacle Industries for many years. And he's been a great friend for photography over the years.

Lorrie Graham: Very great friend of photographers. He lent me a. I got sent to cover the Boxing Day Tsunami in Sri Lanka. And they said, "No, you've got to have a [unclear]". "Great," I said, "fabulous." I've never shot digital. And John, not just lent me the camera, he sat down and talked me through the camera, before, which was very, very sweet and very kind of him.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, John's been a very close friend of photographers.

Lorrie Graham: Photographers. Yeah.

Rick Stevens: He supplied the Herald with all the cameras, didn't you? All the Nikon.

Mike Bowers: Until we went to that other mob who begins with C.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, that's right.

Lorrie Graham: I never did. I never crossed over.

Mike Bowers: We had no choice.

Lorrie Graham: Oh, okay.

Rick Stevens: I think it was in 2000 when the digital system came out that we swapped over because I think.

Mike Bowers: 1998 we got the first units because Canberra was the first to get them.

Rick Stevens: Yeah. I think the digital camera was, the other mob was a little bit faster, wasn't it?

Mike Bowers: The first digital cameras had a thing called shutter lag on them and it was particularly bad for the sports guys because when you'd put your finger on the shutter and it would take a little bit for it to actually react. So the guys who shot tennis were telling me that they would put their finger on the button when they heard the ball being hit at the other end of the court-

Rick Stevens: I think, no, when the guy was serving to the guy, they'd press the button and the guy receiving would.

Mike Bowers: And by the time the shutter actually actuated, the ball would be in the shot at the other end of the court. So.

Rick Stevens: Is that right, Steve Holland? Is that right? Is that right, Steve Holland? That's how slow it was?

Mike Bowers: We had to shoot the Olympics with these cameras and it was a challenge, I'm told.

Rick Stevens: Steve Holland was my darkroom assistant in the 1983 Edinburgh Games, wasn't it?

Lorrie Graham: That was a dangerous job then, obviously. Did you turn the light on on him as well?

Rick Stevens: No, he was trying to print pictures and it was in a caravan type thing on wheels, and every time somebody walked in, the caravan would shake and so the image would be no good. He had to keep on doing it.

Steve Holland: Stand still and printing.

Rick Stevens: Stand still and printing, yeah.

Mike Bowers: Lorrie took a photo of my father, the journalist, Peter Bowers when he retired and she turned up in his hotel room. I love this picture because he's in his underwear. And he used to spend a fair bit of his time in his underwear and it's just so him. I love the image, not so much my mother, when it ran. She said, "Peter, you're in your underwear. What were you thinking?" But I think Lorrie nailed it. It's very much my father. So, I love this picture, Lorrie.

Lorrie Graham: Good. Well, it was one of the times he retired.

Mike Bowers: Yeah, he retired a few times.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah. He retired a few times.

Mike Bowers: Rick, this is your portrait of Barry Humphreys. Celebrities can be quite difficult or they can be really easy, which.

Rick Stevens: Barry Humphreys was probably one of the first celebrities I met. And again, I was very young and when you go meet a celebrity with a name like that, I was quite nervous about the whole thing. But the story behind that, it was that that was Barry's favourite room and that was in the State Theatre in Market Street in Sydney. And the favourite room happened to be the women's bathroom. And I said, "Well, how are we going to do that?" He said, "Just stay with me. We'll be right. We'll be right. We'll just wait till the interval finished and we'll just go in there." I said, "Yeah, but..." And I didn't know what was in there because I'd never been in there before. So.

Mike Bowers: So there's butterflies all through the room?

Rick Stevens: Yeah. There's butterflies all through the room. But I walked in, I said, "But how am I going to get him up there?" So I had to get a table with a chair on. So he's standing on it and I think I missed a picture because I think it would've made a better picture if I'd have left the table and the chair.

Lorrie Graham: In the shot.

Rick Stevens: In the shot. So, I regret taking that one, but I still like it. Yeah, that was his favourite room in the State Theatre was the women's bathroom.

Lorrie Graham: How did he know about that?

Rick Stevens: Well, maybe he'd been in there as Dame Edna, I don't know.

Mike Bowers: Probably.

Rick Stevens: Probably, yeah.

Mike Bowers: Yeah. Lorrie, Rex Jackson was a New South Wales politician.

Lorrie Graham: Minister for Corrections.

Mike Bowers: Minister for Corrections. He was pretty much the pinup boy for the phrase, 'colourful racing identity', right? And he actually went to jail. And you've actually managed a picture where he looks like he's peeking out through jail bars. How'd you manage this one?

Lorrie Graham: So this was for 'The National Times', and David Hickey, who used to spend a lot of time at the racetrack, knew that he'd be there at Canterbury. And this was the week before he actually went to jail.

Mike Bowers: Fantastic.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, I was pretty pleased with it.

Rick Stevens: Did you know someone, did you?

Lorrie Graham: You know how some people tell you stuff?

Rick Stevens: That's right. Yeah.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, yeah. No, I was pretty pleased with that. The editor was pretty pleased with it as well.

Mike Bowers: I bet he was. Yeah. Perfect if you're going to jail next week.

Lorrie Graham: Buckets. His nickname was Buckets.

Mike Bowers: Buckets, yeah, I remember that. Rick, you've spent a lot, I had the pleasure of taking Rick out to Lake Eyre about a decade ago now, and I learned more about photographing animals in that few weeks we were away than I'd learned in the entire lifetime in photography. What attracted you to animals? And we used to send you out to Taronga when we needed a nice picture for page three.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, well, I mean I actually grew up in Zimbabwe, but I didn't care about photography then. Of course, I was still going to school and everything, but I've always had a love for animals and I don't eat meat and they know that I don't eat meat, so they're good to me.

But yeah, George Lippman, who was one of my mentors, a great photographer that we worked with at 'The Sydney Morning Herald', and one of his rounds was Taronga Zoo. And I used to come in on my day off when I was young just to go out with George so I could learn the trade, see how he worked, because he was absolutely brilliant, but very annoying. He just would never say no. He would [unclear].

Mike Bowers: An annoying photographer? Imagine that.

Rick Stevens: Yes, very annoying. And so I started taking photos there and also my tech teacher, Harry Millen, used to be the zoo photographer. I pinched the job off him actually, which didn't go down too well. And I still do. I still do animal photos today and I go out to Western Plains Zoo about three times a year and spend a number of days out there and just taking all their pictures they need and everything like that. And I love doing it because they never complain about having a bad hair day. They never do. Never had one complaint from, "Wrong side. Hair's not right." So, yeah.

Mike Bowers: I asked him once, when I was his picture editor, what attracted him to it. And he said to me, "Well, Mike," he said, "they never ask you for a print."

Lorrie Graham: That's lovely.

Rick Stevens: And then again, a lucky shot. I mean-

Lorrie Graham: Stop saying that, Rick. God.

Mike Bowers: You're there with a camera getting four giraffes and an emu lined up in sort of height order.

Rick Stevens: It's the early bird gets the worm, you see? You've got to get up early and as photography, the best light's in the morning and the best light's in the afternoon. In the middle of the day, you can sleep. I mean because.

Mike Bowers: He told me that when I was a pretty young photographer, you've got to get up and work both ends of the day. And I've got to say, I've kept that my entire career and it does actually work.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, I mean photography's light. That's what it's all about. And Australia, the sun is very harsh at midday and you don't want to take pictures there, but they were heading off for a feed and I just told them, "Can you go in that order?" And they did it.

Mike Bowers: We'll open it up to questions very shortly, but I just thought we should briefly touch on AI because it scares the living daylights out of me. And I think it'd be great to have the reflections of both you on what you think is the future with AI photography because it scrapes our pictures from the internet and basically can use them to do anything. Rick, have you got strong opinions on this? I think we shouldn't touch any publication [unclear].

Rick Stevens: I mean one of the major problems with that, you just don't know what's real anymore. I mean every picture you've seen here today, they're real. There's no manipulation there. That's basically how it was shot. And that's the way, I've always been honest with the people that have viewed my pictures, that that's what I see through the lens and that's what you're going to get.

I'm not going to fiddle with it. I'm not going to take anything out. If there was a pole between those, I probably wouldn't have published it. I just would have put it aside, but I wouldn't take it out. But I mean today with AI, I mean it's just you don't know what's real and what's not. They've got to come across with some sort of putting a watermark on it that's only visible by the computer, that the public wouldn't see the watermark, but then the computer will pick it up.

Lorrie Graham: I think that could.

Mike Bowers: Some of the camera producers, Leica, are putting a provenance item in there so you can prove that this is the original, as it came out of the camera. I'm not quite sure how it works, but it seems to me like all the cameras are going to have to go down this path because I've always felt that the great Katharine Graham, who was publisher of 'The Washington Post' after her husband, Philip, she used to quote her husband and say that newspapers were the first rough draught of history. And I've always felt that pictures are the receipts for those draughts and they prove that the item, the thing that unfolded, actually happened and you could fall back on them. But AI will negate that, in my opinion.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, I mean you can, it's very hard to pick the ones that you see now, unless they've got six fingers when they should only have five or something. But I mean it's actually quite scary.

Mike Bowers: Well, look, the problem, I don't know if you saw during the Olympics, there was this amazing surfing shot where the surfer came off the top of the wave and the board is perched perfectly beside him and he's sort of standing there like it's posed. And the very first reaction to a lot of people on social media was that this was an AI image and it wasn't. It was a completely.

Rick Stevens: No, no, it definitely wasn't. I would have liked that picture in my portfolio.

Mike Bowers: Me too.

Lorrie Graham: Well, I just think libraries and places like this are going to become increasingly important because.

Mike Bowers: They're the providence.

Lorrie Graham: They're the providence, yeah. And also I think probably getting to know photographers is going to be increasingly important.

Mike Bowers: So the name is trusted.

Lorrie Graham: The name's important, it's trusted. I don't know. It's terrifying.

Mike Bowers: I think it is.

Rick Stevens: I mean it's used a lot in the platform that I use at the moment, but I never, it's there, it's in my Photoshop, but I just never look at it.

Mike Bowers: Yeah. Well, the final 10 minutes, we might open it up to the floor and see if anyone. We've got a microphone. Jen's got a microphone down here. If you want to just indicate. There's another microphone over there and we'll try and answer them the best way we can. No one? Oh, yeah, there's one there.

Audience member 1: That was fantastic. Thank you so much. It was actually really exciting. Do you guys ever use iPhones and would you ever use them professionally?

Mike Bowers: Yes. I've done many pictures on iPhones, sometimes because I've had to, but you tend to shoot a lot of video on your iPhone. When you do, I just got back from Boganville and I was up there in '93 when the civil war was on. And I went back to meet some of the BRA rebels that I was out in the jungles with. And I took a picture of [unclear] during '93 when he was fighting the PNG army. And I met up with him the other day and I knew that they'd be asking for video with it. So I shot a lot of video on it. It actually does a pretty good job. You can get a decent still out of it too. It's not like the image will fall apart. It's not great because it just doesn't feel right to me to not have a SLR at your eye level. But I use it a lot. What about you guys?

Lorrie Graham: I used it during COVID. I shot entire COVID on an iPhone just because I was out walking. But I haven't used it since really. I mean I have it and I have Instagram, but not professionally.

Mike Bowers: I've got to say, I think my career would have been over a long time ago because some of the things I did, people would have got vision of it.

Rick Stevens: I use it to photograph my grandkids when they're being naughty and things like that. But it's not something that I, well, as a matter of fact, I mean my phone, the camera in my phone broke down a couple of weeks ago and I had to buy a new phone because I just felt a bit naked without the camera working because I couldn't scan anything, I couldn't do anything. But I just use it for my personal use, family stuff around the house and things like that.

Mike Bowers: But there are photographers that use them exclusively. I know some guys on Instagram that just use it and they get amazing results out of it.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, it looks all right if you're looking at an image like that, but if you're going to blow it up or something, it breaks up a bit. I mean it's.

Lorrie Graham: No, no, no. Because you can shoot raw on them now.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, but that's just going to take, oh, okay. I don't know.

Mike Bowers: The big thing nowadays with the file sizes as they are is data management.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's huge.

Mike Bowers: You spend most of your time dumping your discs onto hard drives and the data management is just woeful pain in the butt.

Rick Stevens: And doesn't it slow the phone down or something? I mean.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, no, no, no, it does. The reason I got it was because I wanted to do a... I swim at Icebergs and I wanted to do a kind of diary of a year and you can't shoot with your camera there. So I thought, and they never stop anybody shooting with their phone.

Mike Bowers: Shooting on a phone, right.

Lorrie Graham: So I thought, okay, I'm going to shoot it on my phone and use raw.

Rick Stevens: I was reading something the other day and I think it said something, it was 40 or 60 billion photos are taken a year by people. That's a lot of photos to edit, isn't it?

Mike Bowers: That's a lot of photos to edit.

Anyone else? John?

Audience member 2: Yeah.

Rick Stevens: Better not be technical, John.

Audience member 2: No, it's not technical. Are you hearing?

Lorrie Graham: Yeah.

Audience member 2: There is a long history of library collections going back to the VNA in the 1870s. And always it was a print that was acquired by the library. These days, some institutions, certainly not knowing about this one, are demanding to have the raw file and nothing else. Surely, the person who has printed a picture and toned it and done all that kind of adjustment to the picture to make it make this statement that they wish to communicate is lost if all we're going to get is the raw file. Do you have a view about that?

Lorrie Graham: Well, I've just, my archive's just been acquired by the State Library and-

Mike Bowers: That's the State Library of New South Wales?

Lorrie Graham: New South Wales. And those images, the digital images are images that I processed. I mean that's what they've got. There'd be no point in them getting raw files because it's something that I had to process. So, yeah.

Mike Bowers: Yeah. I hate handing over the raw files that I haven't actually worked on, and I don't do too much to them. I light and darken it maybe.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, same. I mean I don't sort of manipulate, do any of that.

Rick Stevens: Yeah, I edit it raw, but I just convert them to TIFs.

Lorrie Graham: I can't see the point of actually them having raw files really.

Mike Bowers: Michael.

Staff member: I've just got a couple of online questions for our online audience and we'll head up there. How hard did you have to fight to publish a shot full frame?

Mike Bowers: Full frame.

Lorrie Graham: Sorry?

Mike Bowers: Full frame, yeah. How hard did you have to fight to.

Lorrie Graham: Look, one of the serious pluses, when I came back from 'The Observer', I got the job on 'The National Times' on the editorial floor. So I didn't ever go back to the photographic department. And because of that, I had a level of control that wasn't possible. I don't know whether or not 'The Sydney Morning Herald' ever went full frame and you could put a black line around it.

Mike Bowers: I never, in the nine years that I was supposedly the boss of photography, I never won a fight as far as a photo went. Never once because the editors, the subs, and the journos always thought they knew better.

Lorrie Graham: Better.

Mike Bowers: I can't remember one fight that I ever won.

Lorrie Graham: No, it wasn't.

Mike Bowers: And some of it was like, "We're going to take this person out of the photo in Photoshop." And I just said, "No. No." And you'd go to the mat and you'd say, "I'm washing" You'd throw a full tantrum, all toys out of the cot and you'd never win. You'd never win with them.

Lorrie Graham: It was a battle, but it was basically won. And we actually kept that line also on 'The Times' on Sunday, none of our images were ever cropped.

Staff member: And one more comment from online. A documentary filmmaker said her work was driven by the idea that visual storytelling and images have the power to change the world. Does this power still exist?

Lorrie Graham: Yeah, of course it does.

Mike Bowers: I think it does. Yep. If you get the right photo. The problem is that this sort of stuff is expensive. Going to Bougainville for 14 days was extremely expensive. Because media organisations are in such, they're in survival mode and they're unwilling to commit like they did in the old days to funding visual excursions, I would call them, where you can really get your teeth into proper photojournalistic work.

And I had to tip a fair bit of my own money into this, and I'm happy to do that because I wish to actually try to do jobs that make a difference. The Bougainville people are fighting for their independence still after 32 years and all the sacrifices that they made. And there's important stories to be told in the Pacific, and it just gets harder and harder with media companies when they refuse. Well, I understand why, they're in survival mode and they don't have the money to survive, let alone expend it on these sort of projects.

Rick Stevens: Yeah. I mean you go back to the 60s when I started, I think how many photographers? 60 odd photographers we had.

Lorrie Graham: 60.

Rick Stevens: And I think Fairfax.

Lorrie Graham: 60 men.

Rick Stevens: 60 men, and one.

Mike Bowers: And one woman.

Rick Stevens: Well, you weren't there then, so 60, but look at them now, what they've got 12?

Mike Bowers: 12.

Rick Stevens: Yeah.

Mike Bowers: When I took over in 2001 as the pictorial editor at 'The Sydney Morning Herald', there were 47 what they called FTEs, full-time equivalents. And so that has fallen from that in 2001 to there's 12 of them I'm told in 2025.

Rick Stevens: Yeah. I had a break from news photography in '88 when 'The Sydney Sun' closed down.

Mike Bowers: Let me put the subtitle in that; Rick took a redundancy. Rick cleaned up.

Rick Stevens: I volunteered and took a redundancy because. And two years later I had a free ticket for the opera house and I went down to the free ticket and there was the editor-in-chief of 'The Sydney Morning Herald' was sitting beside me and he said, "Rick, good to see you. How's your boofy mate going?" I said, "Oh, he's good too." And I won't mention who he is. He said, "He's good too." He said, "Come and see me on Monday, will you? I want to give you blokes another job."

So my mate, my boofy mate, what he called, went in and saw him on Monday morning and he came back to our studio. We had a little studio in Newtown. We were doing freelance stuff. And he said, "Oh look, they want us to come back." And I said, "Well, what do you want to do?" And he said, "I think I might go." And I said, "Well, I'm not really interested. I think I'll hang out for a little while longer." Two weeks later, I joined him. So we went back and we actually got double the money we were getting when we left.

Mike Bowers: And both of them took another redundancy.

Rick Stevens: And then we both took another redundancy 13 years later. So I mean, yeah.

Mike Bowers: We were working on a third when I left.

Rick Stevens: No, I'm not going back. No, I'm happy doing what I'm doing at the moment and I do it when I am. And I've got three grandchildren. I've got two living with me full-time at home. So, I mean I've got to give a bit of time I think.

Mike Bowers: Right. Yeah.

Audience member 3: We all know that there's been significant changes in both photography technically, from looking at your exhibition that you pulled together upstairs, coming from glass prints through film-

Mike Bowers: From stuff shot on this.

Audience member 3: ... through Tri-X to digital and now iPhones. And the same has sort of happened to journos being able to file, basically there are huge advantages in getting pictures out from anywhere in the world now, basically as long as you can get access to satellite, and the technical advances have been great. But how confident are you, now the marketplace is just full of images, full of blogging, full of words, how confident are you about quality journalism and quality photojournalism into the future?

Mike Bowers: Well, there are less and less of us around and I think it makes you more valuable, not less, because good imagery tends to bubble up to the top. And you can have hundreds of iPhones in an event, but if you've got a couple of professionals there, the good material will bubble up and you see it on social media, it rises to the top. And I think the fact that there's hundreds of cameras around makes you actually more valuable, not less. What do you think?

Rick Stevens: Yeah, I agree with you.

Lorrie Graham: Yeah. And there's also this weird thing that people constantly say, "This is a great phone and I'm going to get." And you go, "Yeah, but the phone doesn't take the pictures, mate."

Rick Stevens: Yeah.

Lorrie Graham: I mean.

Mike Bowers: My real bugbear in life is when someone sees some of your work and goes, "Wow, you must have a good camera," like it's the camera that.

Lorrie Graham: Camera just walked out there and took it.

Mike Bowers: Camera walked out and took it. It's like I traipsed through jungle to get that shot.

Rick Stevens: Yes. The old saying, "Give a man a hammer, but it doesn't make him a carpenter."

Mike Bowers: Yeah. My other big bugbear is a thing I call 'journo tears'. And journo tears are when a journalist writes a story and someone's voice cracks, right? Now, someone's voice cracks is not crying, it's voice cracking and you can't show that visually. There are no tears running down their face, their voice cracked. They got close to crying, but they didn't cry.

When the editor or the sub reads the voice crack, you invariably get the call, "Where are the pictures of the crying?" And you go, "There was no crying." "But the journalist has written this." And so we call them, photographers call them journo tears, they're non-existent tears basically. So that's my big bugbear.

Lorrie Graham: We shouldn't start down the path of journos really. I mean we'll.

Mike Bowers: There's a couple in the audience I see. Karen, my good friend Karen Middleton there, there's no person. I don't think you've ever journo-

Karen Middleton: I would never do that to you.

Lorrie Graham: You never journo teared me.

Rick Stevens: I'd always get the phone call and the picture editor ring up and say, "Have you got a page one picture?" And I'd say, "Mate, if you put it on page one, you've got a page one picture."

Mike Bowers: He actually said that to me once. I said, "Is it a page one picture?" He goes, "If you put it on page one, it is, Mike."

Yeah. Hi.

Audience member 4: Hello. Can you hear me?

Mike Bowers: Yes.

Audience member 4: Journos have had a pretty rough time this evening. It has been great and great to hear the stories. I'd just like one reminiscence. I was a young reporter on 'The Sydney Morning Herald' and one day the Chief of Staff came running out and saying I had to get down to the Opera House with the senior photographer, Rick Stevens, in order to take a photograph of Dame Joan Sutherland and Dame Margot Fontaine coincidentally meeting at the Opera House.

And I got in the car, the 'Herald' car, and I had no idea what I was going to ask these two wonderful artists. And Rick said, "I've got a great idea for a photograph; Dame Joan Sutherland standing on the steps of the opera house holding Dame Margot Fontaine in her arms. But you have to ask her." And I'm going, "I can't ask her to do that." He had me going all the way down in the car. I was nervous as anything. We got to the Opera house and of course, he took a very superb picture overlooking Sydney Harbour or something like that. But he had me going all the way down.

Mike Bowers: That's why they call him the rat.

Rick Stevens: Speaking about, you're talking about cars, in the early years at the 'Herald', we had car drivers. We employed car drivers to drive us to and from jobs. And there was a fire down at Black Wattle Bay one day and we had this two-way radio where you just spoke, this is all analogue days. So you had this two-way radio where you spoke to the driver and you said. So we called him up and we said, "John, we need you to go down and have a look at this fire down at Black Wattle Bay. We'll be down." We go down to pick up the car. It's not there. We wait, we wait, we wait. And so we called him up again, "John, where are you?" He said, "I'm down looking at the fire." I said, "Aren't you supposed to have a photographer and journalist with you?" But he'd taken off and he was just down at the fire. So, anyway, we missed that job.

Mike Bowers: We've got to wind it up, but we might have time for just one more question if there's one? Yeah, just wait till the microphone. Up there. Sorry. Yeah, sorry.

Audience member 5: Good evening. And thank you for mentioning Harry Millen and I think he invited you across the road, Lorrie, to talk to young photography students many years ago. But just to clarify, the archiving collection, most collecting institutions don't want raw because they're often proprietary, so they're not guaranteed forever. Most of them take tiffs, which are manipulated and tidied up. And they're bloody big files too.

Lorrie Graham: They are bloody big files, yes.

Mike Bowers: We've just got one more down the front here. Can we have a microphone to this person here?

Rick Stevens: Yeah. I use tiffs because the zoo used the images quite well and they're as big as that screen and they come out quite good.

Audience member 6: I just wanted to ask, where are your boundaries when it comes to privacy?

Mike Bowers: Well, this is a tough one. I certainly won't do anything illegal, but you've also got to be careful. You're poking your lens into people's lives at times of great stress. If you are in a flood and someone has lost their house and all their goods, or worse still, they've lost a loved one, it's a terribly confronting thing to have a lens poked at you. When I was younger, I used to just sort of race in, but I take much more care nowadays and I think you owe a duty of care to the subject that you're photographing. And nine times out of 10, they want you there. They want to tell their story, they want you to be able to share this terrible thing that's happened to them. But it happens sometimes that they don't. And you've got to respect that, I think.

Rick Stevens: Yeah.

Karen Middleton: [unclear]

Mike Bowers: Oh, yeah. Well, politicians deserve it.

Rick Stevens: It's a difficult question there because it affects me sometimes. I had to photograph Walter Mikac in the Port Arthur massacre, and I wasn't very comfortable about doing it because he was really in a bad way. But you pick up the camera and you try and think, 'Well, this is not real.' I could never understand how somebody could do what they did and it's very difficult, but I'm there to do my job and I do it and then I leave it up to the editor to decide what to do.

Mike Bowers: Karen was referring to the shot of the lodge with Keating showing Howard around the Lodge.

Karen Middleton: Other way. Keating showing Howard.

Mike Bowers: Yeah, yeah. Keating showing Howard around the Lodge. So, I talked about this with my father and he actually predicted it. He said, "Mate, Keating will show, he'll invite him up. He doesn't do things that normal politicians do and I reckon he'll show him around the Lodge." So we worked out where I could photograph it from, and we may or may not have assisted the hedge growth with a bit of a spray of Roundup in the months prior to it actually. We used to have this basset hound that dad would walk down by the Lodge. Maybe that happened.

Lorrie Graham: Maybe?

Mike Bowers: Maybe it didn't. Well, I don't wish to verbal myself on destroying federal land, Lorrie, but there was a hole through the hedge, and I managed to get a shot of him showing Howard around the Lodge. And it was an iconic moment. I think it was an iconic moment. He got very upset with me because I was told something by one of his staff, and I put it under the caption once on an anniversary, and he got very, very upset with me. And let me tell you, you do not want to make Paul Keating very, very upset because he has a certain way with words, does Paul Keating.

Well, I think that's it for tonight. We want to thank you all very much. If you haven't seen Fit to Print upstairs, it's one of the better things I've done in my career. We could have actually had about double those pictures on the walls and it feels very good to be part of a department that shows the early stages of photography. And I feel like we're standing on the shoulders of those early photographers who produced that magnificent work using really quite antiquated technology and glass plates. And if you haven't seen it, get along to see it, it's well worth your time. I want to thank you all for coming along tonight. I want you to thank these two icons of Australian press photography who have inspired me through my career. And I hope it's been an interesting night. Lorrie Graham and Rick Stevens.

Lorrie Graham: Thank you, Mike.

Rick Stevens: On behalf of Lorrie and I, just thanks for turning up today. It's been a pleasure.

Lorrie Graham: Thank you. Yeah. And Mike.

Luke Hickey: Thanks. Thank you so much to Mike, Lorrie, and Rick for sharing your stories and your experiences, particularly those tougher experiences and some of the things that you've described tonight as well. It really does go to describing that ingenuity that you had, the perseverance, all that experience, and Lorrie, you chipped Rick about him constantly referring to luck. Big believer in good players make their own luck and each of you are proof of that. Brilliant at your craft. Huge thank you for your contributions in capturing Australia's visual history and we're so proud that you got those collections and those things are going to live on in posterity, even if they maybe are with some of our competition, Lorrie, but nevermind. We can talk about that later.

It really is a privilege to hear how you do work your craft and see that bigger picture in your life, and particularly that life behind the lens. So thank you again for sharing that with us all tonight.

If you enjoyed this event, and apologies to the many questions online and in the audience that could have got to. Mike, as you said, we could do another three exhibitions easily on that. We could have done another three events on this tonight and not covered everything, but please tell your friends, keep an eye out on our What's On page for future events. You can rewatch tonight's discussion as well, which is on our YouTube channel, and find recordings of previous events as well.

We'll also take this opportunity to let you know our final event, celebrating the excellent Fit to Print exhibition will take place on the 20th of June, which is an opportunity to sit down with Mike, have a three-course meal with drinks upstairs in the Library's Bookplate restaurant, with a one-hour presentation from Mike hearing a little bit more about his career, his work, and his musings on life and as you've heard tonight.

Mike Bowers: I'll tell the story of how we invented Insiders when I passed through Brussels with Barry Cassidy in the year 2000. And I don't know if you've ever been to Brussels, but involved a lot of bars. So, it's brilliant.

Luke Hickey: I've seen some of that story and that will make it a night to remember, trust me. So you can have a look at our What's On page for more details. Again, please join me in thanking each of our panellists tonight.