Softer focus to rugby’s hard men
RUGBY League is a brutal sport that allows men weighing more than 100 kilograms to run into each other at full speed because every metre counts on the field. And off the field many of the players aren’t considered the brightest with a reputation for misbehaving.
So when Nicky McWilliams of Sydney’s Eva Breuer Art Dealer gallery suggested to Mark Tedeschi that he photograph National Rugby League (NRL) players in the course of their everyday lives, he was surprised.
Tedeschi, who is a Queen’s Counsel and New South Wales Senior Crown Prosecutor as well as a keen photographer, said: “I had never had any contact with footballers but I’ve done a series, Legal Chameleons, which is barristers in their robes doing their private activities.”
“Nicky thought it might be of interest to the NRL to do the same.”
Tedeschi and McWilliams met with David Gallop, then NRL chairman, and he agreed that it would paint the players in a very good light and would enable the community to understand that the clubs push their stars to prepare for life after football.
“The NRL urges players to get an education, an apprenticeship of something to sustain them after football, and this project had the opportunity to show that,” said Tedeschi.
“So the NRL agreed to be sponsors of a book to publish my photos in return for me taking 20 portraits of Rugby League players.”
The result is an exhibition of photographs Onside With the NRL on display at the State Library of New South Wales from Saturday.
The exhibition coincides with the launch of Tedeschi’s book, Shooting Around Corners, featuring more than 130 black-and-white and colour photographs taken during the past 25 years.
His subjects include indigenous communities, barristers enjoying their hobbies, portraits of children and the elderly and moving images of Buchenwald concentration camp.
Shooting Around Corners is published by The Beagle Press in association with the NRL and Eva Breuer Art Dealer.
The exhibition was officially launched on June 19 by NSW Governor Professor Marie Bashir and is part of the Festival of Photography, which opens at the State Library later this month.
Tedeschi is well known for his work as a photographer, with his photos included in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Library in Canberra, the State Library of NSW and the Centre for Fine Art Photography in the US state of Colorado.
He was a finalist in this year’s National Portrait Gallery Photographic Prize.
For the photographs in the new exhibition, Tedeschi combined a number of shots of the one person into a single image to portray different aspects to their lives.
Tedeschi said he found the NRL players were delightful people with a wide variety of interests, and believes that even the most avid Rugby League fan will be surprised at some of the images.
Newcastle Knights centre Junior Sa’u is a hairdresser when he’s not training, while Bulldogs forward Corey Payne has set up a foundation to encourage students in Sydney’s Western Suburbs to pursue tertiary education.
Sydney Roosters winger Sam Perrett started his own building company and Penrith Panthers winger David Simmons is studying theology.
“Like many of the barristers I previously photographed, the players are mild socially, even if they are a lion on the field,” said Tedeschi.
“I photographed Paul Gallen, who has a reputation as being aggressive on the football field, but when I met him he was at his home reading a storybook to his children.”
Tedeschi’s book isn’t only about the NRL players – it is an opportunity for him to look back on his many years of photography.
“I have been wanting to do a book for some time and the offer to publish a book came from one of Australia’s foremost art publishers, Beagle Press.”
Tedeschi said several photos have special significance to him.
“My favourite photograph is of a Chassidic rabbi in New York in a railway station, because in the photograph everyone else is rushing but time, for him, is always standing still. It shows how time is relative.”
Tedeschi said the 60 portraits of Holocaust survivors and people that had been declared Righteous Among the Nations that he photographed for the Sydney Jewish Museum in 1992 are among his most prized works.
Tedeschi’s son Simon is a leading international concert pianist.
Onside with the NRL is at the State Library of New South Wales, Macquarie Street, Sydney until August 5.
REPORT by Joshua Levi
PHOTO of Mark Tedeschi QC with his camera pictured in 2007.
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