Legendary filmmaker Paul Cox has teamed up with Bryan Gracey, a fellow Prahran College teacher and photographer, to present a retrospective of John Cato’s photographic work between 1971 and 1991.
The exhibition of black-and-white landscapes is already on display and runs until September 15 at the International Foto Biennale in Ballarat. A book of Cato’s enduring works will also be released as part of the exhibition.
It was in the 1970s that Cox and Cato first met, as part of a cultural revolution at the Prahran College of Advanced Education. Cox considers those times as Australia’s “little Bauhaus” in a nod to the landmark German school of art. Cox’s journey soon blossomed into an internationally acclaimed film career, with almost 40 films, documentaries and shorts completed.
Cato died at the age of 85 in 2011 but Cox continued to believe that his work was deserving of a larger audience. Cato worked under a cloak of anonymity, and often signed his work “Pat or Chris Noone”, enabling him to push boundaries and remain true to his ideals. According to Cox:
“Ego is always the biggest limitation of an artist, but John had no ego. He was a free man.”
Cato headed up the Prahran photography department from 1979 until 1991. Back then, there were no qualified teachers in his department. In those days, students and teachers learnt alongside each other. The reputation of the photographic arm of Prahran College lives on, with modern Print company techniques transforming Cato’s old black-and-white images into artistic masterpieces.
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