GENDER '70S is Murray Cammick's third exhibition at Photospace Gallery, after 'Flash Cars' in 2020 and 'Music Photos' in 2022.
Gallery hours: 10am-3pm Mon-Fri, 11am-2pm Saturdays, closed Sundays and public holidays.
Holiday hours: The gallery will be closed from 24th Dec. to 5th Jan. inclusive, and running reduced hours in the week 6th to 11th January, 2025. Contact [email protected]

This new collection of photos by Murray Cammick includes 15 photos that have not been exhibited before plus 20 images that appeared in the 2019 show “Queens St” in the Auckland Photo Festival. That show portrayed different takes on gender, so the title has been changed.
“We have added more images that ruminate on gender – glam pop, theatre queens, show queens and more street queens – they all enlivened our living in the ’70s,” says Cammick.
Singer Mark Williams was top of the Pop Charts with an androgynous threads he sewed himself while Gary Glitter toured as a glam star and as “Frank-N-Furter” in Rocky Horror. Zero, the Suburban Reptiles singer joined the production as “Columbia”.
The Queen Street, Auckland, images were photographed by Murray Cammick while he was doing his V8 series “Flash Cars”. The photographer met the beautiful and bold Keri and Violet Pratt and friends on their nightly walk from a Customs St cafe “Ca d’Or” to Mojo’s nightclub, opposite the Town Hall.
After each curb side encounter, Cammick would print up postcard-size prints and mail them to Keri and Violet’s home address in Glen Innes. They liked the results and on their next photo-stop they would once again pose like fashion models with Cammick as their David Bailey.

“Some nights the city was busy and the girls were as high as kites,” recalls Cammick. “To avoid making a scene we’d disappear down a more private arcade or lane to take photos. One impressed onlooker, a US Marine, asked me: ‘Where do you get these girls?’ I don’t think I replied. Keri, Violet and I left him standing there, as we headed in different directions.”
The photos in the show include Keri and Violet’s other family members – their sister frequently and sometimes their brother  – plus friends who might be looking for a good time, that night.
“Their walk up Queen Street could cause a stir – high fashion, high platform heels and high as a kite,” recalls the photographer. “You would see them approaching and I was usually keen to take photos but sometimes I chose to cross the road to avoid the encounter.”
“In the late 70s there was a mix of subcultures in inner city Auckland. I recall having to run the gauntlet past Babe’s disco to get to the punk club Zwines in Durham Lane and teen punks have claimed they were harassed by V8 guys. For young guys in drag, some nights Queen Street must have been like running the gauntlet.”
Sadly, one of  Cammick’s Queen Street photos of Violet appeared in the Sunday News (27 July 1980) under the heading: “Violet Should Not have Died.”
She had died after being arrested at a nightclub for “not being able to walk without assistance.” Violet died from a drug overdose when left unattended and semi-conscious in the charging room at Auckland Central Police station. She was 27 and the Sunday News wrote, “Violet had been a transvestite for 11 years and was the most beautiful ‘queen’ in Auckland her friends say.”
Cammick’s portraits of Violet and Keri documented the good times. The photographer is unapologetic: “I am pleased that I captured their dream of being fabulous models. Their beauty was real.”

The photographer’s two prior shows – “Flash Cars” and “Music Photos” – were exhibited at Photospace Gallery, Auckland’s Black Asterisk Gallery, and Sydney’s Darren Knight Gallery.
Cammick’s photographs are part of the Te Papa Collection and his work appeared in their 2009 publication, “Art at Te Papa.”
This exhibition of limited edition, silver-gelatin prints were printed directly from the original negatives by Jenny Tomlin.

Gender ’70s
“Murray Cammick’s photographs of the people on and around Auckland’s Queen Street in the late 1970s are a unique record of life in Aotearoa New Zealand.
It was an era when gender stereotypes were being challenged – politically, socially, and culturally. It would be a time of visible change, although homosexuality itself would remain illegal until 1986. ‘Queer Bashing’ by groups of young males could still occur with frequency.
Many young people were seeking a good night out but also discovering an identity in which they could be comfortable. Queen Street was the frequently the venue. It was a reasonably safe public place, relatively free of restriction, without admission-fee, open to the all ages and those who could not afford or could be refused pub or club-admission.
Cammick records the many diverse personalities of Queen Street, their sense of display for an audience, which included the photographer, and the human bonds and camaraderie that existed between the people he met. He captures private worlds in public places.
They are often joyous and generous photographs, admitting a later viewer into a lost world where boundaries were being blurred, where an individual’s personal image was a statement and their life in that gone instant of time was being savoured and experienced.” 
By David Herkt
 
David Herkt is an awarded TV documentary-maker, writer, and journalist. His work includes “Trans-Wellington”. published in North & South July 2024, and “Queen City: A Secret History of Auckland” Jan 25, 2013 on publicaddress.net

Murray Cammick was born in 1953 and currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand, where he maintains his interest in popular culture and music as a contributor to AudioCulture - The Noisy Library of New Zealand Music and as the presenter of his long-running radio show, Land of the Good Groove on 95bFM. His Queen Street photographs are included in the photography collection of Te Papa, the Nation Museum of New Zealand.