In his day job, Russ is a freelance nonfiction editor concentrating mainly on domestic and international politics, history, and biography. Since 2003, to hold despair about the state of things at bay, he has worked with some of Australia’s finest shit-stirrers and satirical artists to curate and publish the best-selling annual survey of political culture, Best Australian Political Cartoons. Russ can’t draw to save his life and was profoundly embarrassed to receive the Australian Cartoonists Association’s Jim Russell Award for his contribution to Australian cartooning.
Russ has recently rediscovered a love for photography extinguished years ago by studio production-line family portraits. These days he has a predilection for uncovering the secret landscapes concealed in mundane, badly rendered cement walls, as well as in more conventional seascapes, particularly the zones of convergence of sea and sky, of space and light.