Matt Dunne: Tall Poppy Press

There has always been an incredible art scene in Australia, yet on a global level it seems rendered invisible.

Of course, there are the people who make it through the cracks, but they always seem to have to move to Europe or the States to truly get their shine. 

Tall Poppy Press is a Melbourne-based photobook publisher that wants to lend its hand in getting those incredible artists the shine they deserve by showcasing the incredible work coming out of Australia. Started by photographer Matt Dunne in 2021 to get Australia’s best photography in the hands of fans worldwide, all while providing a very financially fair model for the artists. The books are serious yet playful, they’re fun to look at, they grab your attention and they stand out.

With Matt’s personal creative practice being centred around the treatment of the environment, it has bled into a lot of what Tall Poppy publishes. Work by Morganna Magee explores memory and how being alone in nature influences those things, which can be seen in her book Beware of People Who Dislike Cats. Yet, the work published by Tall Poppy isn’t exclusively about the environment, Rochelle Marie Adam’s book Before This Comes to Pass is about moving on and people becoming more domesticated in their lives. Tall Poppy Press is here to highlight Australian stories, stories of the environment, identity, culture, belonging, life and the changes that come with it.

Matt and Tall Poppy are here for the underdogs. Tall Poppy isn’t going anywhere. Long live print. Long live the small independent press.

Let’s start by talking about the name Tall Poppy Press, it comes from a phrase popular within the Australian vernacular but for those elsewhere around the world it probably has no meaning. Why did you choose Tall Poppy as the name?

It has to do with Tall Poppy Syndrome. It is the idea that if you’re saying you’re really good at something, or if you are being perceived by other people in society as being too in love with your own stuff, it is fair game to criticise you and make you feel like shit. There are some pros and cons to that of course. The thing that sucks me in is that we aren’t good as a community at saying that we did a good job at this, I think we have some really good artists in Australia. I came up in a time when cultural cringe was hugely influential.

Cultural cringe was something from the mid-2000s to mid-2010s where anything that was overtly Australian would make the artsy sort of people be like, ‘Ugh it’s too okka, it’s too Australian’. I hated that. I thought it was so short-sighted because we are who we are, and it is more important to be better at who you are than mimicking someone you’re not. The name Tall Poppy Press was me giving the middle finger to elements of Australian thinking that I find restrictive and suffocating because the point of the business is to say we do cool shit, look at it, love it, buy it. I don’t want to be subtle about that, I think we have really good art here and I am really proud to be a cheerleader in showing that stuff off to people who don’t know that.

Tall Poppy syndrome is such a big thing. As someone who grew up here, it’s hard to be like ‘You know what, I’ve done something good’ because you’ve grown up being told you can’t say or even think that.

I think the most Australian criticism is ‘who are you to say that’. I’m not sure that in many countries around the world if you said, ‘I made something good’ the response would be, ‘Who are you to say anything good’. I am my harshest critic, again I am not trying to advocate for a society where everyone is like ‘I am the best no matter what and I take no feedback’ but I suppose I was trying to take it back and say we have a lot of quality art and I want to be open and proud of that.

For sure. On that level, what is the importance of a small independent publisher?

Access to the community and the ability to take chances on people. Sometimes in the publishing world, there is this belief that there are too many books and too many publishers. Those same people are the ones complaining that photobooks are only for photobook fans. Then it’s like where do you think new fans and new artists are going to come from if not new publishers and new books? We have seen some great photobook projects that speak well to particular communities that maybe aren’t interested in photobooks at all but are interested in their own story. We spoke to an artist earlier in the year, who is making a body of work about Box Hill [a Melbourne suburb], where he lives. Wouldn’t that be a great thing that an international publisher wouldn’t care about, why would someone in Greece care about Box Hill? Wouldn’t it be nice to see that work have a home and see it find people who want to own it and cherish it who maybe don’t care too much about photobooks or photography?

Yeah, definitely. If no one gets a chance to publish those projects those communities get lost in time. That even comes into your emphasis on publishing artist’s first books. Is it something you think about, giving people that opportunity that they might not receive without you?

I absolutely detest it when you go to a prize or a show and it is the same twenty people getting the same opportunities they’ve had for ten years. It is stale, it’s lazy, it’s boring and I don’t want to do that. There are some people we have worked with twice; we’ve done two books with Morganna Magee and Rochelle Marie Adam. There are people that we want to continuously work with because it is fun. But how could you say you are for a scene becoming more interesting and diverse if you aren’t actively trying to find people who haven’t done books yet?

Sometimes I feel excluded, and I hate trying really hard and feeling like this grant was only open to ten people or this show was only open to five. How do you show those people in those institutions you’re good enough if no one is taking a chance on you?

Do you think that was a big reason you started this?

Yes. A hundred per cent. It was definitely a conversation I had with someone where we were both like how are we supposed to have a competitive bid for a grant if we aren’t getting residencies in shows because people who have been doing those residency shows for ten years have a more reliable CV.

Your personal work is centered around the environment and a lot of the work you have published so far with Tall Poppy is also about the environment. Is it something you want, to publish work that runs parallel with your work?

No but yes. With Tall Poppy, the main thing I want to do is find good work that is made here and good work in this case is work that really resonates with me. I need to really love it because publishing and selling it takes a long time and I am not going to be able to sustain that effort if I don’t. Yes, a lot of the work we publish is about our relationship to the environment and the ways we look at the land, in the case of Morganna McGee’s work it is a lot about memory and experience and how being alone in nature influences those things. This year we are doing a lot of work that isn’t about the environment, we’ve got a lot of work that is much more about people, identity and history. There is always a little bit of trying to find yourself in the work you are sharing rather than going, this is a good business decision or is this just a significant body of work but not something we can make sing?

There is a big publishing industry in Melbourne but globally the Australian photography and art scene doesn’t have many eyes on it and is quite isolated. Do you feel almost invisible on a global scale?

For me the idea that we are isolated is true, but I think that is exasperated by who Australians try to engage with. I went to a Singapore book fair earlier this year and they were so happy to have someone from Australia there. There are book fairs in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. Asia is closer both geographically and culturally in some ways. It makes me think, do I want to get poor man’s crumbs in Paris, or do I want to be with genuine friends in Singapore? I don’t always have the answer to that but what I will say is international attention is nice but what is important for me is people coming to see the books and buying the ones they love.

Moving forward something I am always thinking about is, that I can’t engage with all the continents equally, so I wonder if I can just engage more with Asia.

Do you think you are entering an untapped market engaging with Asia, as a lot of publishers and artists are trying to engage with Europe and the USA? When we think of scene our minds immediately go to Europe or the USA.

I enjoy engaging with Europe and the States and I would love to do a book fair in the States in the next year or two. When I did a book fair in Asia my biggest takeaway was, that I needed to publish something interesting to the audience there. I have this book by Rochelle and a lot of it is about the experience with people moving on and becoming more domesticated in their lives. The way it looks in Sydney compared to the way it looks in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur are so different. I found that a lot of people picked up this book and just couldn’t quite find their way through it. Next time I come back here I want to bring some stuff that people who come to that fair really connect with or have a better chance of connecting with. I really loved being there it was a really mind-opening experience. When I went to Paris it was a bigger fair, we sold a lot more books, everyone spoke English and it was really easy. The people who were buying our books were big names like Todd Hido and I was like awesome, but the Todd Hido of Singapore gave me a book and I never knew who Theseus Chan was, everyone was like this guy is huge he shot Comme Des Garcons and is Singapore’s idol. International engagement really matters but I don’t only want to focus on the anglosphere.

That’s really interesting. As you are currently so focused on Australian artists do you think you would ever open up to publishing artists from Asia?

We did this book With and For, which was a collaborative book between Rochelle who is Australian but lives in New York and Sophie who is American. None of the work that Sophie contributed to this book has anything to do with Australia, but I really loved the idea of putting an Australian and an international artist together. It’s not like they had been working on this project, I reached out to them and was like you both have really beautiful practices would you like to try to make something together? I would love to explore that and try to partner with someone in Australia and Taiwan. I love the idea of making work that comes from Australia but not just from Australia.

Next year we are doing a book with Phuong Nguyen and a lot of that is about Vietnamese identity in Australia and I think more people in Singapore would resonate with that. It sounds shallow to say it that way, but I do think the stories and spaces that Phuong is photographing can be read in a more nuanced way by audiences who grew up Asian. In the same way that Rochelle’s book doesn’t translate to someone who grew up in a massive apartment building in the middle of Singapore.

Same with the first book we are coming out with in 2024, Ayman Kaake’s book which is about Arabic queerness. It is made by someone who lives in Australia, but it isn’t about Australia, it is about queerness and Pan-Arab traditions. My hope is that when we go to Singapore again a lot of these books are received differently.

It’s funny when I was in Paris, people were like ‘It’s a long way for you to come’ and part of me was like you’ll never come to me. But another part about me was surprised that they do know a bit of stuff about Australia. For whatever reason this German student who was at the book fair to get some inspiration was telling me things about Australia and maybe we forget that sometimes. Yeah, we are small, and we are never going to have a billion people living here or be a global heavyweight, but we do exist, and people do notice us, and you can forget that sometimes.

It's so easy to forget especially in the art scene. So, it’s been two years of you doing this now. Do you know where you want to take this?

Yeah, I want to take it to ten years and then see how we feel. I think I want to push what we publish to be a little bit more experimental, with the binding, the packaging, and things like that. I want to continue for people to be like ‘Oh you published that?’ If people are saying ‘I wasn’t expecting that from you’, I’ll be happy. We never want to have a house style, we never want to sit still, and we never want to stop growing, changing and taking risks.