And it didn't disappoint, the visions of Americana (Memphis, Tennessee) that he was capturing well matched to the period of the 1960s and 70s.
It's not a stretch to find his imprint on Coppola either, especially in her first feature, The Virgin Suicides. What is interesting is his insistence that he photographed people - and, for that matter, people he knew, whether close family or broader associates (including Alex Chilton!) - in the same way as other subjects (no more sympathetically nor 'subjectively'), making the 'portrait' theme of this particular exhibition both somewhat counterintuitive and perhaps illuminating.
I also realised, afterwards in the darkening early evening, sitting in Transport at Fed Square scrolling through thumbnails on my phone, that I was having a Personal Shopper moment (or, from another perspective, again how dead-on that film was in its contemporaneity).
***
Ross Coulter's "Exhibition" is made up of hundreds of black and white photos of people in empty Melbourne art galleries, performing responses as instructed. Enjoyable on several levels, not the least of which was the familiarity - in general, not individuals - of the people shot.
