“Sexuality makes itself obvious. Sensuality is fleeting, it seduces us through subtle body language, looks and gestures. It’s a brief moment of intimacy that reveals the soul.

It’s that which I seek to capture.”

- TONY POTTS

Tony Potts has spent a lifetime both in front of, and behind the camera. His provenance is creative. Tony’s mother, Judy Barraclough, was a world-famous model of the 1950s & 60s and his Uncle, David Potts, was one of Australia’s best-known Time/Life photographers of the 1940s & 50s. Tony’s brother, Timothy, is the Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.

As a model, Tony appeared in the editorial pages of almost every Vogue magazine in Europe, saw the world, and worked with some of the very best photographers in the world of fashion like Helmut Newton, Denis Piel, Patrick Demarchelier, Albert Watson, Oliviero Toscani, Norman Parkinson, and other legends.

Tony has lived and worked in Sydney, London, Paris, New York, Milan, and Bangkok. Sydney has been and still is his home and Australia is his inspiration.

Returning in 1981 from 6 years modelling overseas, Tony was soon shooting editorial fashion for all the leading contemporary Australian fashion designers and magazines, including Vogue Australia, Vogue Thailand, Vogue Bride, Cleo Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, New Woman Magazine, Karen Magazine, Inside Sport Magazine, Black&White Magazine, Follow Me Magazine, Mode Magazine and Harpers Bazaar Australia amongst others.

Tony has shot campaigns for virtually every Australian Designer during the 80s, 90s and well into the 2000’s. He has shot Advertising campaigns for companies such as Ansett Airlines, Club Med, Apple Mac, Procter and Gamble, L’Oreal.

Tony is still actively shooting, however his focus these days is in the art world of photography, the exhibition of his work, and the management of his 40 year archive, offering limited editions of his past and present work, with a collection of single edition vintage prints on show. His best known images hang in prestigious private collections in Australia, Europe, the US, and he has been exhibited in galleries and art fairs in Milan, London, Paris, Shanghai and Sydney. He is known particularly for his B&W nudes and his fashion editorial, particularly his Australian work in the 80s, 90s and early 2000’s.

Tony is also showing a selection of photographs of life on Sydney’s Bondi Beach where he also shot a lot of his fashion editorial. This series is an important time stamp on the beach culture that is quintessential Australian life over more than 3 decades.

His work is a combination of sensuality and chic sophistication in a captured moment that reveals the soul.

“My love of B&W photography stems from my regular dive into Mum’s mostly B&W prints of her career, and my first encounters with the work of Max Dupain and Ancell Adams when I was studying photography. Adams invented the grey scale and talked of how the subject or the “raison d’etre” of a photograph is instantly apparent in a B&W photograph. I am drawn to a B&W image framed on a wall for its striking simplicity. I love the challenge of shooting with B&W as contrast and the grey scale become so important, and it’s a challenge to not allow colour to trick me into the wrong decisions. I have always gravitated to shooting B&W, even on a beach, where the blue of the water and warmth of the sand can be tempting. I don’t think that Max Dupain’s iconic image “The Sunbaker” would have the same impact in colour.

I would try to create an environment that allowed for natural, spontaneous body language. This, I hoped, gave me the opportunity to capture a moment, a moment of sensuality in particular. This became my objective every time I picked up the camera, and still is. Sensuality, as distinct from sexuality, is a glimpse of that person’s unbridled soul. Seeing a photograph like this is revealing.

Forty years of photography, and I’m still shooting. I can’t imagine not shooting. I still get an enormous thrill from a good shot. Finding the sweet spot between vulnerability and strength, the chemistry between camera and subject.”

Join us for Opening Night of

D/O.80 Tony Potts - A Moment of Intimacy

Thursday February 15th from 5-7pm at Disorder Gallery

RSVP For OPENING NIGHT

Tony’s work will be on display from

February 15th through March 2nd at Disorder Gallery