MAGGIE DIAZ b. 1925, USA, worked USA and Australia
‘One way ticket’
When Maggie Diaz left Chicago in 1961, it was on a whim. Her marriage to Australian graphic artist, Clem Fraser, was over and as a divorce gift he offered her a one-way ticket to Australia “to meet his family.” Strangely she accepted. Diaz was impressed by the image of the ship, ‘The Canberra’ on the brochure. She had also seen a spread in Life Magazine featuring indigenous Australians and was intrigued.
This selection of works focuses on the first 20 years of Diaz as an artist and commercial photographer. Her early series shot on 35mm of children playing war in the backstreets of Chicago, has been printed from scans of negatives that have been missing (thought lost) for the past 40 years.
Diaz has never returned to the USA because in her words, “I never had the loot!”
Gwendolen De Lacy, Curator of The Maggie Diaz Collection
Maggie Diaz was born Margaret Eunice Reid on 25 February 1925, in Kansas City Missouri, USA “out of wedlock” and spent her early childhood years in New York.
She arrived in Melbourne in 1961, on a one way ticket (a divorce gift from her Australian husband), and soon established herself has one of the city's leading commercial photographers. She contributed to Group M’s Photovision in 1964 exhibiting at John Reed’s Museum of Modern Art, with well-known contemporaries Wolfgang Sievers and Mark Strizic. An award-winning photographer in Chicago and resident photographer of the famous Tavern Club, Diaz became known for her use of available light. She went on to capture the essence of Melbourne's arts and wider community over four decades.
Diaz's photographic oeuvre dates back to 1950s Chicago, and includes haunting images of the housing project known as Lower North Center. She depicted Melbourne ‘battlers' in a yearbook for The Brotherhood of St Laurence, and was commissioned to produce night shots of the city for promotional purposes. An article in The Age Newspaper of 1964 notes that ‘A series of photographs which form part of the interior design of the new 3AW studios in the Southern Cross Plaza are the work of a woman.’ The work of Diaz has always been marked by the contrast between the glamorous commercial world and those outside of society, with whom she felt a connection.
