Philip Quirk

Philip Quirk (11 November 1948, Melbourne) is an Australian photographer, photojournalist and educationist, known for his specialist imagery of landscape, geographic and documentary photography, and as a founding member of the Wildlight agency. Early life and education Philip Quirk was born in Melbourne, Australia on 11 November 1948 to Valentine Quirk, a communications engineer, and mother Phyl. He grew up with a younger sister and older brother in East St Kilda & Caulfield and attended St Kilda Christian Brothers College where he completed Matriculation before briefly studying Business at RMIT. From the age of 14 he had been a keen surfer around Torquay, but in a 1969 car accident he suffered a severely broken arm and over the year that it took to recover, he started to photograph his surfer friends with a 35mm Pentax Spotmatic and telephoto 500mm F5.5 Takumar lens. Through a friend Quirk met the Melbourne fashion photographer and stylist couple Bruno & Hazel Benini who gave him access to their darkroom in which to process his surfing shots. His first published photograph was in the Melbourne Herald for an article on Bells Beach by Victorian surf champion Rod Brooks. In 1970 Bruno Benini encouraged him to enter Ilford Australia's national competition the 'Age of Aquarius' for a return trip to London, in which he was short listed in the final ten, though then disqualified as an amateur. He went on to assist Benini, who arranged a meeting for him with the contest winner Paul Cox, who was lecturer in photography at Prahran College of Advanced Education. With his parents' blessing Quirk enrolled to study there 1971-3 under Gordon De L’Isle, Athol Shmith and Cox, while continuing as Benini's assistant until 1974.