Gerard O’Connor and Marc Wasiak are a unique photographic duo. O’Connor is a photographer, set and film maker, and Wasiak, is a wardrobe, prop and set designer. This unusual combination of talents creates unique and remarkable work. Work that has been part of striking advertising campaigns, for brands such as MLA, new Balance and V, and work that has been shown off in exhibitions throughout the world, including the Festival De La Luz in Argentina and the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China and this year. In 2019 and 2020 they presented Queens of the Pub, a celebration of the weird, wild and wonderful people who drove Melbourne’s pub life in the ‘70s.

In this exhibition, Wasiak’s styling was allowed to flourish even more than it had done in the images of past showings. Queens of the Pub was a collection of both photographs and costumes.

The duo’s next work was perhaps an obvious evolution (although “obvious” is a word one would never use to describe their work). O’Connor and Wasiak have presented a standout series of images for the young fashion designers collection at Melbourne Fashion Week. The pair was commissioned by the Kangan Institute to show off the young designers’ innovations on health care workers’ scrubs.

The show, Scrub Chic, was presented digitally and its secondary purpose is to applaud the courage of health workers during the pandemic.

The images are heat sensitive and for O’Connor and Wasiak, they are stand against the far too many images used to sell garments that are polluting the world.