Robert Ashton (photographer)

Robert Ashton was born on August 11, 1950 in Melbourne. He studied Photography at Prahran College 1969-71 and graduated with a Diploma of Visual Arts and Design.

In the early 1970s, Robert Ashton shared house with Carol Jerrems and Ian Macrae in Mozart Street, St Kilda,[1] their artist associates being Ingeborg Tyssen, Paul Cox and Bill Heimerman, and Ashton's cousin Rennie Ellis with whom he shared a studio[2] in Greville Street, Prahran. From 1974 to 1981,[3] Ashton was assistant director at Ellis's Brummels Gallery in Toorak Road, South Yarra,[4][5] where he also exhibited.[6]

Photography curator Judy Annear notes that;

"Robert Ashton's work is typical of the highly personalised documentary photographs that began to emerge in the 1970s."[7]

His subject matter includes urban indigenous, life and incidents in inner suburbia in Melbourne,[8] particularly Fitzroy.[9][10] Writer and musician Mark Gillespie, who had become involved in a new publishing venture, Outback Press, with Fred Milgrom Colin Talbot and Morry Schwartz, commissioned Ashton for the book Into the Hollow Mountain. Its images,[11] of "kids on the prowl, the old Salvo street bands, the Koorie clans, the card joint kaphenois",[12] were first shown at Brummels in a exhibition of that title in 1974, and when re-exhibited forty years later at Colour Factory, "serve as a rare documentation of day-to-day Melbourne and glimpse into an era that, while not actually all that distant, is most definitely a thing of the past."[13]

Ashton has published several other books, of portraits and close-up, abstracted landscape, and exhibited widely in Australia. His photograph Bernard Diving[14] featured in the 1988 exhibition, and on the cover its catalogue, The Thousand Mile Stare, a survey of Australian photography published by the Victorian Centre for Photography.[15]

In pursuing the best quality output for his imagery, Ashton uses hand built large format cameras and advanced printing techniques including photogravure and the Collodion process.[16]

He lives on Victoria's Surf Coast, and imagery of the ocean and landscape is a consistent interest.

• Hallmark Cards Collection, National Gallery of Australia[25]
• National Gallery of Victoria[26]
• Phillip Morris Collection, Australian National Gallery
• Art Gallery of New South Wales
• Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
• John Sands Collection
• Charles Darwin University

• Ashton, Robert; Gillespie, Mark (1974), Into the hollow mountains, Outback Press, ISBN 978-0-86888-006-8
• Park, Andy; Smolan, Rick (1981), A day in the life of Australia, A Day in the life of Australia Pty Ltd, ISBN 978-0-9594244-0-9[27]
• Smolan, Rick; Park, Andy; O'Loughlin, Peter (1983), A day in the life of Victoria, DITLA, ISBN 978-0-9594244-3-0
• Bennett, David; Agee, Joyce; Victorian Centre for Photography (1988), The thousand mile stare : a photographic exhibition, The Victorian Centre for Photography Inc, ISBN 978-0-7316-2054-8
• Crombie, Isobel; Byron, Sandra; National Gallery of Victoria (1990), Twenty contemporary Australian photographers : from the Hallmark Cards Australian Photographic Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, ISBN 978-0-7241-0142-9
• Ashton, Robert; Day, Gregory (2003), Trace, Merrijig Word & Sound Co, ISBN 978-1-74066-109-6
• Blackmore, Paul; Malouf, David, 1934-; Juan Davila collection (1999), Australians : responses to the land, St Martin Press, ISBN 978-0-646-37815-2CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)[28]
• Calado, Jorge; Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon, Portugal); 100 Days Festival ((1998 : Lisbon, Portugal)) (1998), Waterproof : water in photography since 1852 ([Hardcover ed.] ed.), Edition Stemmle, ISBN 978-3-908161-26-4
• Crombie, Isobel; Blainey, Geoffrey, 1930-; National Gallery of Victoria (1992), Sites of the imagination : contemporary photographers view Melbourne and its people (English language ed.), National Gallery of Victoria, ISBN 978-0-7241-0161-0CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)