Dr Peter McNeil

BIOGRAPHY

John Swainston has been a photographer, writer and keynote speaker for 50 years. He regularly addresses Camera Clubs on the history and practice of photography. He has joined the Arts National Australia speaker group in 2023, talking on architectural developments in Anglican Church History, illustrated with his Fine Art photography. After an early career in music retailing and radio, he served roles in the UK, Europe and the USA in photography-related businesses. As Managing Director of the Nikon camera distributor in Australia for nearly 25 years he worked with some of the leading photographers from Australia and coordinated the planning for Nikon’s Sydney 2000 Olympic photographer centre. He presented the Australian Press Photographer of the Year Awards for 19 years from 1980 and negotiated the merger of those awards with the Walkley Awards in 1999. His own photographic work has been exhibited in Sydney and Melbourne and is in a number of private collections in Australia, the UK, USA and Canada. He was Deputy Chair of the Australian Centre for Photography (2002-2004) and served for 8 years on the Advisory Board of the HeadOn Foundation until 2022. He was Publisher of and a contributing writer to Nikon Light Reading Magazine for 15 years. He served as president of the Photo Industry Council of Australia, as well as the Australian Institute of Professional Photography, from which he received an Honorary Fellowship. He is currently completing work on a book of photographs and the history of the Cathedrals of England & Wales, for publication in early 2025, titled I Will Lift Mine Eyes. His book, Sydney Locked Down and the Exhibition that goes with the book, has been released in Sydney in February 2023. It tracks two years of lockdowns, the places and some of the people, in fine art images that uniquely record the pandemic’s impact on the City of Sydney and surrounds. He continues to edit and produce a monthly gardening magazine in the Southern Highlands and shoots for two local newspapers there as a freelance.

TALKS

  1. Arts 1900 – 1920: Tornado of Change
  2. I Will Lift Mine Eyes
  3. Sydney In Lockdown
  4. The V&A Photography Collection: The World’s First