John Waters (b. 1948) sang with London band the Riots before moving to Australia at the age of twenty. In the 1960s and 1970s he performed in the hit musicals Hair, Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar. He made his debut in Play School in 1972 and appeared regularly until 1991. Meanwhile, between 1974 and 1976 he set hearts aflame as Sergeant McKellar in the ABC drama Rush. He was still on television more than forty years later, appearing in All Saints (2006–2009), Offspring (2010–2014), Rake (2016) and Mystery Road (2018). Other stage appearances include The Sound of Music (2000) and The Rocky Horror Show (2008). Since 1992 Waters has toured intermittently in the two-man John Lennon tribute stage show Lennon: Through a Glass Onion. The show was performed across Australia and ran for good seasons in London and New York in 2014–2015.
This portrait of Waters in his trademark black was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2014. George Fetting said at the time that, having left it until the last moment to enter, he raced out with Waters and photographed him against the door of disused public convenience in The Rocks; the whole session took about ten minutes.
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2014 Finalist
Gift of the artist 2015
© George Fetting/Copyright Agency, 2022
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