Hislop, who was hooked on music as a teen when he heard the news opera “Tommy”, says I went on to become as volunteer editor of Sydney radio 2MBS-FM’s monthly magazine at age twenty. Since then he has single-handedly turned himself into Canberra’s most dedicated visual chronicler of fine music performance.

Trained in photography but later turning for career purposes to graphic design, he is a long-time resident of Canberra who has, starting in 2006, documented hundreds of performances each year, gratis, donating them to the National Film and Sound Archive where they provide a record of music in the territory.

But the exhibition goes back further than that. Marking his 40^th year in practice, Hislop is staging a retrospective exhibition at the High Court which in part counters the trend amongst journalists, including this writer, to look out for “hero shots” rather than photographs that show how musicians work.

Certainly there are hero images, including a striking one from 2013 of conductor Roland Peelman in full flight at “Voices in the Forest”. But Peelman is also part of a charming picture showing him with his predecessor at the Canberra International Music Festival, Christopher Latham in a rare casual moment. He also turns up in a four-headed happy snap of himself, composer Elena Kats-Chernin, academic Vincent Plush and National Library music curator Robyn Holmes.

Sometimes it’s a matter of being at the right place at the right time, and this is so in a close-up look at choral conductor Bengt-Olov Palmqvist as he takes his farewell of the School of Music in 2012.

Hislop claims to have less than 50 per cent hearing, but he’s made up for it by his regular attendance at rehearsals, becoming by any estimate a connoisseur of fine music.

The title of the exhibition suggests a three-way focus on people, performances and places with the aforementioned examples and striking photographs of pianist Lisa Moore performing at Mt Stromlo and a dawn shakuhachi recital by Rupert Summerson in James Turrell’s “Within Without” at the NGA, we should also add a fourth focal point – the instruments.

Mysteriously, a set of fingers appears from beneath to pianos about to be used by Larry Sitsky and Adam Cook. Julia Janiszewski’s cello is the hero of a shot in which she appears.

And sometimes Hislop’s attention is on musicians past as with his two insightful works involving the late Peter Sculthorpe.

This summer exhibition is primarily for music lovers who will enjoy identifying their favourite artists and reconnecting with experiences of their art.