I have now spent 40 years working on Australian Camera magazine

Paul Burrows
Paul Burrows in his home office, pictured in 2011. (Image credit: Future)

I chalk up 40 years at Australian Camera magazine with the issue that has just gone on sale. I joined the company that started it – Iris Publishing – on 15 March 1982 as an editorial assistant, after answering a job ad for a trainee journalist that had appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on 23 January. I’d graduated from Sydney Teachers College at the end of the previous year and, with no immediate prospect of getting a teaching job in the NSW state school system, I’d started looking around for something else. Ironically, at the time I was working at a local furniture factory, assembling school chairs for the NSW Department Of Education.

The job interview on 9 February was at Iris’s small office in Brookvale on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I was then living by one of the southern-most beaches (Cronulla), so it was with some fear and trepidation that I set off on the trek in my 1963 Mini 850… not the most reliable vehicle even if you were just popping down to the shops. All went well until, going up Spit Hill, the clutch return spring snapped, requiring a rudimentary repair with a bent paper clip so I could select gears. I still got there in time and obviously without looking too ruffled, because my appearance on the interview form was described as “neat” (actually, I think I wisely took a change of clothes). Many years later, probably during an office clear-out, I was given my application form and I’ve kept it ever since. 

Find out how to get hold of the current issue of Australian Camera magazine (Image credit: Future)

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Paul Burrows
Editor

Paul has been writing about cameras, photography and photographers for 40 years. He joined Australian Camera as an editorial assistant in 1982, subsequently becoming the magazine’s technical editor, and has been editor since 1998. He is also the editor of sister publication ProPhoto, a position he has held since 1989. In 2011, Paul was made an Honorary Fellow of the Institute Of Australian Photography (AIPP) in recognition of his long-term contribution to the Australian photo industry. Outside of his magazine work, he is the editor of the Contemporary Photographers: Australia series of monographs which document the lives of Australia’s most important photographers.