Rod McNicol

Rodney McNicol (1946 – 8 October 2025) was an Australian photographer.

Life and career In 1968 he left for Europe and spent the following four years travelling and working in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. He returned to Australia in 1973 and studied photography at Prahran College in 1974. In 1975 he co-founded The Photographers' Gallery and Workshop in South Yarra.

McNicol held his first exhibition (shared with Carol Jerrems) at Brummels Gallery in 1978. Later that year he moved into an old warehouse studio in Fitzroy. He lived and worked in the old daylit studio since then, refining and defining his fascination with photographic portraiture.

McNicol found his sitters from among those around him, his peers, his friends and other subjects from the rich inner-city life of his milieu. Echoing early 19th-century photographic portraiture by evoking a gentle stillness tempered by an unrelenting directness to the camera, he pared portraiture back to something of its bare essence. and in 2007 he completed an Masters of Fine Art degree at Monash University. at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and in 2012 he won the National Photographic Portrait Prize, held at the National Portrait Gallery (Australia). He worked in major collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery (Australia), the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

McNicol died on 8 October 2025, at the age of 79.

Selected solo exhibitions

2018 Portraits from my Village, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Victoria. 2016 Rod McNicol: Memento mori, Arts Space Wodonga, Victoria 2016 Rod McNicol: Memento mori, Yarra Ranges Art Museum, Victoria 2015 Life and time: Portraits by Rod McNicol, National Portrait Gallery (Australia), ACT 2015 Rod McNicol: Memento mori, Tweed River Art Gallery, NSW 2014 Rod McNicol: Memento mori; MAPh, Victoria 2009 Portraits from last century, Place Gallery, Melbourne 2008 Auto-portrait, Place Gallery, Melbourne 2005 Portraits from my village, Watson Place Gallery, Melbourne 1987 A Portrait, Studio 666, Paris, France 1986 A Portrait, Gallery Foto-Video, Cracow, Poland 1985 A Portrait, United Artists Gallery, Melbourne 1978 Permanent Mirrors, Brummels Gallery, Melbourne

Collections

National Library of Australia, Canberra Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France City of Port Phillip, Melbourne City of Yarra, Melbourne Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Gold Coast, Queensland

Tweed River Gallery, NSW Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, Queensland

Publications McNicol, Rod (2014) "The Existential Portrait", MGA

McNicol, Rod (2024) "BRUMMELS 1978", Light Of Day Books

Video interviews

"Rod McNicol and his Portraits", 2024, a Light Of Day film by Yanni Florence