How one photographer’s generosity is shaping the arts media landscape

BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE


It’s hard to find the right words to introduce Peter Hislop. He’s a photographer who has spent much of his life capturing classical music concerts and events in his community. If you’re a musician in Canberra, you may have been on the other side of his lens. If you’re an audience member, you’ve probably attended a concert and then seen his photos in a review, or used by the artists to promote their next event.

I can tell you what Peter does, but it’s significantly harder to explain just how deep an impact his work makes on the Australian music and arts media landscapes. Peter isn’t just a photographer doing his job: he’s a photographer who does his job unpaid and essentially full time, volunteering himself to document up to 200 music events every year. He foots the bill for his time in the concert hall, and afterwards when he processes his photos — more than 10 hours of work per event.

He buys his own equipment with the intention of maintaining the highest standards for those he photographs; his latest batch of gear cost him $10,000. He climbs up ladders holding kilos of gear to capture the best shots, which he allows others to use and publish for free.

And the reason he does it is one of compassion: he knows arts organisations and individuals work on a shoestring budget. He’s just been the one to put up his hand to help.

Peter has featured in CutCommon before — not only his photos, but in an interview about his first solo photographic exhibition, which in 2017 was displayed in the High Court of Australia. In the years since our conversation, he has started to think about where he wants to take his practice in the future — and how this will affect the sustainability of classical music photography in the ACT. It’s Peter’s vision to train up a new generation of photographers who can eventually step in to take photos like he does, and continue to document these transient arts events. But a lack of funding for his art form, as well as a high entry cost into the profession, presents a challenge.

We catch up with Peter to learn more about his invaluable contribution to the Australian arts industry, and where things are headed from here.

Peter, thanks so much for your time with us here at CutCommon. Speaking of your time, you have contributed so much of it to the Australian arts industry — I’d love for you to give us a refresher on what you’ve been doing in the past few years with your photography.

We last spoke on the occasion of my 60^th birthday retrospective exhibition over Christmas 2016 at the High Court, Canberra. The period since has been photographically exciting for me, mainly due to developments in technology. The concert hall has always presented challenges for photographic technology, and photographers’ budgets — including dim lighting, fast motion, long sightlines, and keeping quiet, which is necessary when working close to the audience.

While I was editing the 2MBS-FM magazine in 1975-76, I started photographing concerts because very few concert photos were available. Most performers and ensembles did a photo call on stage at the beginning of the year so that flash bulbs and the clunk of the camera wouldn’t disturb audience members. Little changed until the introduction of the first digital cameras in the mid-2000s. Although images could be enhanced and transmitted digitally, the cameras were still noisy, which limited the shots I could take and where in the venue I could work. 

So how has the technology changed in these years – and what did it take for you to keep up to date?

At the time of our last conversation, silent electronic shutters were finally appearing in concert-capable cameras. Unfortunately, they weren’t offered by the brand I’d been using for decades, so I took the opportunity to reassess my needs and purchase a whole new range of camera gear and lenses. That cost about $10,000, but despite the foibles of silent shutters, they along with new cameras, and range of lenses have enhanced my shooting experience and improved outcomes for me, the performers and audience members.

Working silently and discretely has also improved my reputation and I receive more requests to photograph concerts than the 150-200 that I have accommodated each year. 

In addition to this ongoing work, I prepared another solo exhibition in conjunction with the Bowral Autumn Music Festival in March 2020. It documented the various learning interactions in musicians’ careers, and featured some artists appearing at the festival. The prints were framed and packed ready to leave Canberra when word was received that the festival was cancelled due to COVID. They’re still stored at home, but I haven’t yet decided how to re-focus the exhibition without the festival it was designed to respond to. Watch this space.

Why have you chosen, for so many years, to contribute your photography for free – and how did you decide how many concerts you wanted to take on per year?

Photographing Canberra concerts pro-bono was a response to the shoestring budgets of the many top-end student and community organisations performing in Canberra. They cannot afford to pay professional photography rates, so it was a choice between boycotting a significant proportion of Canberra’s concerts, or shooting pro-bono.

I’ve borne the several thousand dollars cost per annum myself up until I retired, but the real expense has been time.

Beyond the event itself, how long does it take you to process the pictures behind the scenes?

Processing and tagging the photos from each event takes 10-12 hours after I get home, depending on the complexity of the ensemble and the quality of the venue’s lighting.

The balance between paid work, family responsibilities, and concerts has been a fluid conversation, responding to the needs and availability of each. The Canberra concert community runs an online spreadsheet, which venue managers and performers update to give visibility to each year’s concerts, avoid concert clashes, and help other stakeholders including recording engineers and reviewers plan their work. This is much easier than scouring a multitude of random advertisements, mailed newsletters, websites, and publicity releases!

Each week, I review the spreadsheet to see what’s coming up, and discuss my availability with my partner, reviewers, student and community performance organisations, and touring performers to give the best possible documentation and promotion of Canberra’s concert life.

It sounds like a full-time job in itself! And yet you had previously worked in a full-time paid position in the Department of Defence, which I understand you’ve since left via long service leave, so you can focus more on your volunteer photography. Why was it meaningful to you to prioritise your contribution to your local arts community in this way?

A few factors contributed to the decision to take long service leave and retire from my paid work this year. As you’ve observed, I have been working two full-time jobs for the last 15 years, one paid and the other unpaid, and I want to spend more time with my partner while we can both enjoy time living and traveling together.

While I still love photographing concerts, standing up a ladder holding a couple of kilos of camera up to my face and another around my neck for the duration of a concert is physically demanding – and I’d like to become less indispensable by passing on my knowledge through mentoring other photographers.

I’d also like to make their work easier by training concert producers to look at venues through a photographer’s eyes.

Since we last spoke about your exhibition in 2017, you’ve taken a new turn with your practice and have started taking on more of a new role as a mentor, helping to develop the skills of other music photographers. How do you do this, and why did you want to get into mentoring?

I’ve worked with current photographers who have been interested in extending their practice into this specialisation. I use an evolving slide pack to illustrate a discussion about working in a concert hall – viewpoints, lighting, expectations, concert etiquette, equipment, file types, etc.

From your experience, how difficult or easy would you say it is for classical musicians or groups to find a photographer willing to take on their concerts?

I’ve found that most performers or venues engage photographers whose work they’ve seen and liked. But anybody can call themselves a concert photographer. I was shooting a concert when a professional photographer hired by the venue burst in during the performance, flash blazing as they walked down the aisle and up onto the stage where they circled the performers before being told to get out. But most professional-level specialist photographers have followed a passion – children, wildlife, sports, or classical music.

Concert photographers are rare. It is a demanding field that is not easy to get a start in [due to] the expense of long and wide lenses, cameras that can capture fast motion under difficult lighting while remaining silent, and having a knowledge of repertoire that will help anticipate and capture the emotion of the performance. Turning photos from a series of concerts into a useful body of work requires an even higher level of dedication to spend hours after the concert editing and tagging the people in each for easy discovery later.

Appropriate funding and recognition of the skill, expense, and time needed would encourage more photographers to document our individual and collective music-making.

So how has the local music community “given back” and shown how they value your work?

I’ve found the concert-going community – performers, audience members, organisers and reviewers – show overwhelming support and respect for my work in many ways: face to face, in written thanks, and in the use of my photographs. In 2021, I was nominated for an APRA AMCOS Art Music Award – Luminary Award.

But outside the close music community, the work of photographers seems less valued. I request the courtesy of attribution when my photos are used or posted. Despite them being tagged, ‘Free to use with attribution – a usage fee may be incurred if published without acknowledgment’, attribution is sometimes seen as optional by users in an age where creativity has been devalued: everybody carries a camera and anybody can take photos.

One Canberra newspaper refuses to use my photos rather than credit me as the photographer and copyright owner, but educative conversations with other publishers have resulted in them acknowledging all the photographers whose work they use.

Where do you see your practice in the coming years? 

With more time available, I have a few photographic projects I want to work on, passing on as much experience as possible to future photographers and concert organisers.

Technology and my skills have improved since I started shooting digital, so many early digital images would benefit from remastering and better tagging for accession to the National Film and Sound Archives as part of its record of Australia’s music-making.

I’d also like to advocate for better documentation of our wonderful performances, and public awareness of the professionals who undertake that work.

What message would you like to send our readers about the importance of good photography, and how they can show respect to the music photographers they work with?

Concert photographs fulfil several purposes. In many instances, they are the only record of the performance or the activities of its organisers. Their sharing can promote its performers, and over an extended period they document the evolution of a performer, ensemble, or organisation.

I believe that the role of a photographer at a concert is comparable to other venue staff, such as lighting or recording technicians, and deserves similar professional recognition and support.

Thanks Peter. Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Looking at the bigger picture, I think that the documentation of the arts sector appears to be ad-hoc, and our national collection agencies under-resourced. Many of our cultural records sit on the hard drives or in the filing cabinets of individual practitioners.

Neither is money recognised as a barrier to that documentation – users are assumed to have funds to pay for photography at market rates, arts promotion grants are tied to specific projects, and expenses incurred undertaking such volunteer or charity work are not claimable as tax deductions. I’d like to see more effort made to preserve our collective cultural memory.

Images supplied.