Max Dupain’s Sunbaker, 1937 is Australia’s most iconic photograph. Yet all known prints have been taken from a second negative, adjacent to the original, which was published just once in 1948 (plate 7 in Hal Missingham’s Max Dupain: photographs). The original negative seems to have been lost.

The first Sunbaker had his hands clasped together, but all known prints, which were made between 1975 and1991 (when the image became popular) were taken from the second negative, showing the right hand relaxed. That is, until the recent discovery of the ‘Vandyke album’.

The unique ‘Vandyke album’ is exceptionally important in Australia’s photographic history. Compiled by Max Dupain’s friend, the architect Chris Vandyke, it contains 108 original photographs taken by Dupain and his future wife Olive Cotton, during camping trips to Culburra Beach on the South Coast of NSW in 1937. This album provides welcome context to Sunbaker, but more importantly contains the only known print of the original Sunbaker, together with another side view of Harold Salvage, the tanned young man lying on the sand, who through Max Dupain’s lens, became the quintessential Australian.

The Culburra Beach camping group portrayed in the album includes Max Dupain, Olive Cotton, Harold Salvage, Chris Vandyke, Gladys Harrison, Una and Peter Dodd.

Olive Cotton is responsible for the 11 portraits of Dupain spread throughout. Although a highly personal album, it also contains at least 24 landscapes of the Culburra Beach area taken for their aesthetic merit by Max Dupain and possibly Olive Cotton.

Dupain’s preferred version of Sunbaker had clasped hands – the original print of this image is in this album and the negative is lost. The well known 1937 print of Sunbaker – where the right hand lies with sandy fingers extended – was probably taken just after the ‘clasped hands’ shot and it is thought there are around 200 signed prints in existence.