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Polixeni Papapetrou was immeasurably creative, remarkably indefatigable and unstintingly focused on her photographic practice. Poli skilfully melded her family life with her artistic output by casting her beloved children, Olympia and Solomon, in her photographs as a way to cherish and conjoin both spheres, while her husband, art critic Robert Nelson, painted her backdrops under strict instruction, and her seamstress mother Eftihiya sewed costumes.
Poli was born to Greek immigrant parents and grew up in Port Melbourne. She recalled pushing her younger brother around in a pram, feeling like an outsider. Initially, she became a lawyer graduating from the University of Melbourne, but she also studied Australian history with Geoffrey Blainey. In 1984 she started to pursue photography, resulting in a vast opus of wondrous, precise and uncanny images. She was curious about those on the outskirts of society and developed an early preoccupation with the work of Diane Arbus, leading to her own forays into photographing drag queens at the Calypso Cabaret in Bangkok, children, and holy men in Nepal.
Closer to home Poli depicted body builders, Elvis fans and homeless men who lived in a city shelter. In the late 1980s she photographed clowns at...