Semi self portrait, Hunter Valley

David Moore, photojournalist, worked as a photographer in Sydney for four years before commencing an international career in 1952. That year the London bureau chief of Life magazine leafed through his portfolio of shots of Redfern and Surry Hills slums and suggested that Life and its sister publication Time could use him as an informal portrait photographer. For many years thereafter Moore worked freelance in the United States, the UK, Europe, Africa and Australia, for publications including Time, Life, the New York Times, the Observer, Fortune, National Geographic and Look.

Moore returned to Sydney in 1958. Over the ensuing 44 years he combined international with local Australian assignments, while continuing to build a body of private work. His photographs are in many institutional collections including those of the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and the Smithsonian Institute, Washington. Moore's photographs always explored form, composition and structure; he was a consummate photographer of buildings, bridges and ships. While he was not known primarily as a portrait photographer, the National Portrait Gallery held a major retrospective of his work in 2000, tracing his vital contribution to the body of Australian and international portrait photography over the second half of the twentieth century.