Born in London, John Swainston migrated to Australia in 1979 and raised his family in Sydney. In 2020 he moved to Bowral in the Southern Highlands of NSW.
John’s 50-year career in the Australian and international photo industries includes 24 years as MD of Maxwell Optical Industries, the Australian distributor of Nikon photographic equipment. He served as Executive Vice President of the DayMen group, manufacturers of Lowepro and Joby photo accessories, in charge of Asian and EMEA sales to distributor markets until 2015.
In 2018 and 2019 John was president of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP), of which he was made an Honorary Fellow in 2005. He was also twice president of the Photo Industry Council of Australia (PICA). From 2013 to 2021 John was an Advisory Board member of the Head On Foundation, which stages Sydney’s annual Head On Photo Festival. In 2021 he rejoined the board of the Australian Centre for Photography and was part of a team that negotiated the transfer of ACP assets and its archive to the Powerhouse Museum.
John’s unique visual record of the Covid pandemic, Sydney Locked Down, is a 2½ year coverage of Sydney’s places and people from the first worrying days of March 2020 until July 2022.
John is currently completing a major book covering the 42 Anglican cathedrals of England and Wales and some of the region’s major chapels and abbeys. To be published in 2023, I will lift mine eyes traces the origins and development of these extraordinary buildings, describing the people and resources that created them and their connections with other great ecclesiastical buildings in France and beyond.
Since the beginning of his working life in the early 1970s John has been a broadcaster and writer, and is an international keynote speaker on photo industry issues and photography more broadly. From 1980 to 1999 he presented the Nikon Press Photographer of the Year Awards, the predecessor of the current Nikon-Walkley photographic awards, which began in 2000. John continues to address camera clubs and community organisations around Australia, supporting and inspiring others in their own photographic pursuits.
John has exhibited his photographs in Sydney, Melbourne and the Southern Highlands. His recent presidency of the Highlands Garden Society Bowral merged his passions for gardening and floral photography. A freelance contributor to both local Highlands weekly newspapers, John will edit The Highlands Garden Bulletin from January 2023.