Curio

State Library of New South Wales

Moving in, Kings Cross, 1970–71

Silver gelatin photoprint

PXE 858/12

A4280012

Ellis the flâneur

By Susan van Wyk

"The ubiqutous presence of Rennie Ellis positions him as something of a late twentieth centruy flâneur. The figure of the flâneur - a stroller or an idler, one who wanders through life- came to prominence in the nineteenth century. The French writer Charles Baudelaire characterised the flâneur ...  when he wrote 'The crowd is his domain, just as the air is the bird's, and water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd'. Ellis described himself in a similar fashion when he said, 'I'm a restless person, a passionate lover of the streets, of faces, of true life stories"

Susan van Wyk No standing only dancing - Photographs by Rennie Ellis 2009 pg 16