Robert McGhie’s Cigarette Is the Obvious Part of the Photo. What Are We Actually Looking At?
Robert McGhie’s post-1973 Grand Final photograph seems to explain itself in a second.
A Richmond premiership player is sitting on the MCG turf with a cigarette in his mouth. To a modern football eye, the image is funny, jarring and almost impossible to imagine being produced around an AFL player now.
That makes the cigarette an easy story. It may also be the thing that distracts us from the photograph.
The frame comes from a game already demanding enormous commitment from its players, but before football had become the fully professional industry supporters now know. McGhie does not look staged, managed or separated from the afternoon around him.
What exactly does the photograph capture about Richmond in 1973 that would be difficult to reproduce around a premiership player today?
The cigarette gets your eye. The more important part may be everything around it.
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