LEGAL HUMOUR

QC TAKES THE LAW INTO HIS OWN HANDS,
AND SHOOTS

BARRISTERS are usually seen in black and white, but Mark Tedeschi, QC, reckons they're very colourful. The state's senior Crown prosecutor has captured 20 of his colleagues as wigs out of work in a photographic exhibition that opens on Saturday at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum.

There's Bar Association boss Anna Katzmann taking out her frustration on her personal trainer, and Crown prosecutor Frank Holles peering out from an army tank, looking like Rumpole of the Bailey. Director of Public Prosecutions Nick Cowdery is wobbling in an orange rowboat; his former deputy Greg Smith, now a Liberal MP, strums a guitar in chambers; Crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen is up to her elbows in domestic duties.

The images were painstakingly captured through Mr Tedeschi's Nikon D200. "Most people see barristers as members of a cloistered society of which they have no knowledge," he said.

Mr Tedeschi sought to go beyond the wigs and robes and only one of the 21 people he approached - former Bar Association president Michael Slattery - knocked him back. "I approached people I thought would be willing victims," he said. Mr Tedeschi, 55, has been a barrister for 30 years and a Crown prosecutor for 24. He said that while photographing his colleagues was fun, he rated an image of two children staring at a giant shoe at an art exhibition as his favourite.

He is holding back the image for an unpublished pictures competition.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Lisa Carty)
Photo: Mark Tedeschi