Jeff Moorfoot OAM has built a prolific and unconventional career spanning more than four decades of Australian photography. Although he left school early, he went on to work as an advertising photographer, university lecturer, Master Photographer, festival director, editor, publisher and independent curator. Along the way he received the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to photography. He has also survived a bushfire, built his own house and, somewhat unexpectedly, achieved a measure of rock star status in China.
Early years
Moorfoot spent his early years well outside the art world. He dug graves, drilled oil wells in the North Sea and grew vegetables. He also worked as a roadie for an Irish pub band and built sheds and mud-brick houses. Photography came later. With it came the realisation of how far one could travel on what he describes as “a mixture of bluff and illusion”. These formative experiences continue to shape his work. They give his photographs a grounded and direct engagement with lived experience.
After two decades in commercial photography and part-time university lecturing, Moorfoot closed his studio and moved to the countryside. There he shifted his focus toward fine art photography. Since then he has developed an extensive body of work exploring landscape, regional communities and the layered histories embedded in place. His projects examine how environment shapes culture and how memory persists within both built and natural worlds.
Beyond his own photographic practice, Moorfoot has played an important role in shaping Australia’s photographic community. He has contributed through publishing, curatorial projects and festival leadership. His influence is not only significant in scale but also sustained over many years.
Now well into what he describes as the “third quarter” of his time on the planet, Moorfoot continues to work with clarity, independence and a healthy scepticism toward pretension. At Maud Gallery, his work appears across multiple viewing rooms that reflect the breadth and evolution of his practice.
Selected Exhibitions: Scan (2020) | Artifact (2021) | conTEXT (2022)
