1977-1978 were tumultuous years in Britain. In 1977 Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Silver Jubilee but the disaffection and alienation of large sections of society were evidenced in the numerous riots, strikes and protests that spread across the country. There were many “youth cultural movements in the late 1970s in the UK – namely skinheads, punks, and soulboys – along with the social, political, and cultural tensions between them.” Racism and homophobia were rife in both West Indian and white British communities.
Punk ruled the airwaves and the streets, the “Yorkshire Ripper” was running amok and undertakers went on strike in London, leaving more than 800 corpses unburied. “On 7 June, Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and the record label Virgin arranged to charter a private boat and have the Sex Pistols perform while sailing down the River Thames, passing Westminster Pier and the Houses of Parliament. The event, a mockery of the Queen’s river procession planned for two days later, ended in chaos. Police launches forced the boat to dock, and constabulary surrounded the gangplanks at the pier. While the band members and their equipment were hustled down a side stairwell, McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, and many of the band’s entourage were arrested.”1
On the 13th August 1977, the Battle of Lewisham took place took place, “when 500 members of the far-right National Front (NF) attempted to march from New Cross to Lewisham in southeast London and various counter-demonstrations by approximately 4,000 people led to violent clashes between the two groups and between the anti-NF demonstrators and police.”1 On the 30th January 1978, then opposition leader Margaret Thatcher says that many Britons fear being “swamped by people with a different culture”.
And on the 4th May 24-year-old Bengali leather garments worker Altab Ali is murdered in East London in a racially motivated attack which mobilises the British Bangladeshi community to protest. These photographs pay tribute to the activists who mobilised around the rallying cry of justice that followed.
Socio-documentary photographers like Paul Trevor are vital in recording the roiling emotions and feelings of people during periods of great stress, protest and change. What is striking about his documentary photographs of the local Bengali community’s mobilisation against racist violence and institutional police racism is their power and directness – the grim determination of the people and their anger against what was and had been happening to them for a very long time comes across in the photographs with visceral force, perhaps even their anger against being photographed as well. The looks of defiance aimed at the camera lens is an act of defiance toward racism itself – no more they are saying. Never again!
We can see it in they eyes of the elderly gentleman in shirt and tie (with the protective, open hand across his chest) and the women at right in the photograph Adler Street, London E1, 14 May 1978. The start of the march behind Altab Ali’s coffin from Whitechapel to Hyde Park, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attack (ACARA) (1978, above); we can observe it in the stare of the man underneath the placard at left in the photograph Hyde Park, London W2, 14 May 1978. Rally following the march behind Altab Ali’s coffin from Whitechapel, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attacks (ACARA) (1978, below); and we can feel it in the gaze of the man at right in the photograph Leadenhall Street, London, 14 May 1978. Thousands of Bengalis follow the coffin of Altab Ali from Whitechapel to Hyde Park, organised by the Action Committee Against Racial Attacks (ACARA) (1978, below). We can feel the emotion, outrage, and passion in all of these photographs. We are human beings and we don’t deserve to be treated like animals…
Today, arm in arm, we still need to march to protect our freedoms and rights as human beings. And we still need photographs to document our resistance toward right wing ideology, discrimination and racism. Which reminds me – in the recent Commonwealth Games, “In 35 out of the 56 Commonwealth nations homosexuality is considered a crime, with some countries still punishing it with the death penalty… Seven Commonwealth nations have a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for being gay.”3 Still this, in the 21st century. It’s barbaric. And none of this hiding behind the cloak of religion and religious dogma … for religion is just a salve to the conscience of the unconscionable.
Brothers, we need to protest against discrimination and racism of any form around the world.
2/ Anonymous. “Battle of Lewisham,” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Online] Cited 21/08/2022
3/ Benjamin Butterworth. “Commonwealth Games 2022: Tom Daley and protesters criticise anti-gay laws in 35 Commonwealth countries,” on the iNews website, July 28, 2022 [Online] Cited 21/08/2022
Many thankx to Four Corners for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“Tolerance, inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected.”
Kofi Annan
“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.”
Angela Davis
“Freedom is never given; it is won.”
A. Philip Randolph
On display at Four Corners: an exhibition of photographs by Paul Trevor, celebrating east London’s Bengali activists of 1978.
This exhibition reveals the dramatic events which were sparked by the racist murder of Altab Ali, a 24-year-old Bengali leather garments worker, and pays tribute to the activists who mobilised around the rallying cry of justice that followed.
Local East End photographer Paul Trevor documented how members of the local Bengali community endured racial abuse as a constant factor of everyday life, and the moment at which they mobilised against racist violence and institutional police racism. The exhibition brings together 75 of Trevor’s photographs for the first time, alongside oral history recordings by original activists.
The show marks the culmination of a major heritage project led by Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust, in partnership with Paul Trevor. With the help of volunteers and original activists, the project is creating a record of this watershed moment as told by local people. The exhibition, alongside project oral history interviews, short films and podcasts, will be available as a touring show, and will be lodged at the Bishopsgate Institute Archives.
Text from the Four Corners website
Altab Ali Day is held each year on 4 May. It commemorates the racist murder of a young Bengali man in 1978 and the transformative events that followed. East London’s Bengali community mobilised with mass demonstrations, meetings and sit-down protests. Their actions were a turning point in resistance against racism and discrimination in Britain.
Photographer Paul Trevor captured the dramatic events of that year. Guided by these photographs, Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust are working with local volunteers to record the memories of people involved at the time, creating a vital record of this watershed moment.
“On the week after that murder had taken place, maybe … six or 7,000 people, all different backgrounds, came to the park. And we walked behind his coffin in a black… van… We walked to Downing Street to protest and appeal for help. That was an extraordinary gathering of people from different backgrounds, from the mosque, from the churches, all sorts of people, different politics, Anti-Nazi League then joined us, but it was done at no notice, very just quickly from the heart. And it was yes, an important turning point I think.”
~ Dan Jones
“It was cold and wet and horrible, and a lot of people went home before we left Altab Ali Park as it is now… it was you know predominantly Bangladeshis that went, a lot of the men who’d normally be working but would have Sunday off were on it. It was quite remarkable like that… there was a great sense of solidarity in that.”
The hard facts about the resistance movement of the 1970s in East London are that different umbrella organisations at different periods of time were formed to mount the resistance movement in the 1970s in East London. It was never ever a national organisation and certainly not an individual, but the local community groups who mobilised the Bangladeshi community to mount the resistance movement. When the community was under attack by the far-right National Front (NF), we looked to the authority to protect us from the vicious racist attacks. However, the police turned a blind eye to the situation. Various local Bangladeshi organisations and the anti-racist individuals felt the necessity of forming an umbrella organisation to protect the community from racist attacks. The first such umbrella organisation was the ‘Anti Racist Committee of Asians in East London’ (ARCAEL). The ARCAEL organised a mass meeting at the Naaz cinema Hall in the middle of Brick Lane on 12th June 1976 and convinced the Bangladeshi community that we could not rely on the authorities to protect us and we had to fight back and defend ourselves. ARCAEL organised vigilante groups and confronted the NF thugs who would run their stall at the corner of Bethnal Green Road and Brick Lane every Sunday to sell their filthy propaganda literature and to recruit new members. The police took notice of these confrontations. However, this resulted in increasing numbers of arrests of the Asians. At one point the police told us that whichever group went to the spot first would be allowed to have their presence. We started mobilising ourselves early in the morning and the NF tried to be there before us. We then decided to start gathering at the corner of Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road on Saturday evenings and kept on occupying the spot overnight.
It was the entire community under the leadership of ARCAEL engineered the resistance movement in East London in the 1970s.
After Altab Ali was brutally murdered on 4th May 1978, the Bangladeshi community vowed to stamp out racist attacks once and for all. We took to the street and we shouted slogans, “Enough is Enough” “Come What May, We Are Here to Stay.” “Here to Stay, Here to Fight” “Black and White Unite and Fight”. Immediately, after the death of Altab Ali, another umbrella organisation, “Action Committee Against Racial Attacks” (ACARA), was formed for the specific purpose of organising a national demonstration. In just 10 days preparation, ACARA successfully organised a National Demonstration to highlight the lack of police action to protect the victims of racial attacks in East London. We marched from Brick Lane to Hyde Park for a rally and then went to Downing Street to give a petition to the Prime Minister demanding a full investigation into the police handling of racist attacks in East London and more protection of immigrants. The petition was given by the chair of the ACARA, Mr Taibur Rahman who was accompanied by the General Secretary, Jamal Hasan and five other committee members, namely Shiraz Uddin, Shoeb Chowdhury, Gulam Mustafa, Akikur Rahman and Zia Uddin Lala.
One can see the news coverage with a photograph in front of 10 Downing Street in the East London Advertiser, dated 19th May 1978. This is available in the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, 277 Bancroft Rd, London E1 4DQ (near the Queen Mary University). Two days before the national demonstration, ACARA issued a press release which appeared in the East London Advertiser on 12 May 1978, “… In a joint statement, committee members Taibur Rahman, Jamal Hasan and Shiraz Uddin told the Advertiser: ‘This march condemns the death of Altab Ali. It has been called to publicise what is happening to Asians in East London so that everyone can learn of the attacks which make us daily victims…'”
From these two newspaper articles, it is obvious that it was the umbrella organisation ACARA which mobilised the community and organised the national demonstration. There were a few more umbrella organisations since 1978. Hackney and Tower Hamlets Defence Committee was another important umbrella organisation which organised a one day strike by the Asian and black workers in East London and had a sit-in protest in front of the Bethnal Green Police station demanding the release of some of our members who were arrested in the demonstration. The police had to give in to our demand and released the three of our members arrested earlier.
Jamal Hasan. “The big lie,” on the Altab Ali Foundation website May 2019 [Online] Cited 05/08/2022
Exhibition reveals a dramatic struggle for justice in east London. A major exhibition of photographs by Paul Trevor documents a dramatic struggle for justice.
Following the racist murder of Altab Ali in May 1978, east London’s young Bengali community took to the streets in protest. Four Corners’ new exhibition, Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point, brings together seventy of Paul Trevor’s images alongside accounts of pioneering activists, to produce a powerful narrative of the time.
The show marks the culmination of a major heritage project led by Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust with a dedicated group of volunteers, and who have interviewed many people involved in these momentous events. The exhibition pays tribute to a generation whose actions changed the course of civil rights in the UK.
Julie Begum, Chair of Swadhinata Trust, said, “It is important to commemorate Altab Ali Day to remember the racist violence the Bengali community faced in the East End of London, and to celebrate the community’s united defence to defeat the evils of racism.” Paul Trevor said: “They say a photo is worth a thousand words. But sometimes, as in this case, words are essential. This project is an opportunity to add the voices of those who made history to the images of that story.” Carla Mitchell, Artistic Development Director at Four Corners said: “This history is highly relevant today, with an increase of racist attacks and violence making the headlines. Thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to ensure that this powerful heritage is made publicly accessible for a wide audience of current & future generations.”
Historical background
1978 began with opposition leader Margaret Thatcher on ‘World in Action’ television programme saying that many Britons feared being “rather swamped by people with a different culture.” Her comments were seen as a direct appeal to would-be National Front voters in working class neighbourhoods. Racist violence was endemic in east London, and particularly around Brick Lane recently arrived Bengali migrants worked in the local rag trade, as had the Jews before them.
The National Front’s newspaper pitch at Brick Lane’s Sunday morning market attracted skinheads who harassed the local Bengali community. They were a target for far-right groups, who wrongly blamed them for high unemployment and bad housing. East London has always been a haven for migrants, from the French Huguenots fleeing 17th century religious persecution, to the Irish poor of the 19th century, and Jews escaping Cossack pogroms in Russia and Poland. It also has an equally long history of racist violence and resistance to it. Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists tried to march east to the docks in 1936, but were stopped by Jews, Irish dockers and communists in the famous ‘Battle of Cable Street’.
Altab Ali’s murder on the night of the May 1978 local elections in which 41 National Front candidates stood, marked a turning point for the Bengali community. 7,000 people marched behind his coffin to a rally in Hyde Park, then to Downing Street where they handed in a petition demanding police protection. That year young Bengali people mobilised in a community-led, anti-racist struggle which brought about a radical social transformation both locally and far beyond.
Anti-racist protests against the electoral threat of the far right National Front party were supported by a grass-roots, multi-cultural movement – Rock against Racism – which held open-air concerts in nearby Victoria Park, headlined by The Clash, Steel Pulse and Tom Robinson. Community protest and music radicalised a generation, and helped destroy National Front support.
Local photographer Paul Trevor documented the dramatic events of the era in over 400 photographs, many of which will be on show for the first time in this exhibition. His photographs show how the local Bengali community endured racial abuse as a constant factor of everyday life, and how they united to end violence and institutional racism. Trevor was also a member of the Half Moon Photography Workshop collective, whose work focused on socially-committed photography. Some of his images were covered in their Camerawork magazine: Exhibition Poster for Brick Lane 1978 A Community Under Attack; Review of the exhibition Brick Lane 1978. A community under attack.
By the end of 1978, the National Front was forced to leave its headquarters near Brick Lane, though far-right racist attacks in east London persisted into the 1990s. To this day the name Altab Ali remains linked with the struggle against racism and for human rights in London’s East End.
Press release from Four Corners, London
Paul Trevor
Trevor was born in London (b. 1947) and grew up on a kibbutz in Israel. He studied at the National Film & Television School, and was a founder member of Camerawork, the UK’s first radical photo magazine. In 1973, together with the photographers Chris Steele-Perkins and Nicholas Battye, he formed the Exit Photography Group. Their largest project, Survival Programmes documented life in the inner cities, both in photographs and recorded interviews over a period of six years. Works from the project were shown at the Side Gallery, Newcastle in 1982 and brought together in a book; the photographs here are drawn from this project. The works were as much about documenting the squalor of the inner cities, as they were about recording the process of poverty – inadequate housing, unemployment, overcrowding, illness and old age. The Exit archive is now housed and administered by the LSE.
“… the Bangladeshi workers who used to work in sweatshops by and large in the East End, experienced a lot of what they called Paki bashing… People would just for fun… they would beat isolated people walking on the streets.”
“And there was of course, the death of Altab Ali which caused the huge huge meeting, which of course we went to the community centre and we said we ought to call a protest and get the government to see that this stops because the police are not paying any attention… So from the Altab Ali meeting from the meeting of Anti-Racist Committee of Asians in East London, we called it ARCAEL… huge meeting in a cinema in Brick Lane. And when we called the meeting, we thought we’d get you know fifty people – thousands of people turned up, the cinema was full, and the entire Brick Lane was packed with people listening through loudspeakers outside… and the emotion poured out, the determination to do something poured out.”
The banner at left refers to Enoch Powell (British, 1912-1998), “politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950-1974) and was Minister of Health (1960-1963) then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974-1987)…
Powell attracted widespread attention for his “Rivers of Blood” speech, delivered on 20 April 1968 to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre. In it, Powell criticised the rates of immigration into the UK, especially from the New Commonwealth, and opposed the anti-discrimination legislation Race Relations Bill. The speech drew sharp criticism from Powell’s own party members and the press, and Conservative Party leader Edward Heath removed Powell from his position as Shadow Defence Secretary…
Polls in the 1960s and 1970s showed that Powell’s views were popular among the British population at the time.[35] A Gallup poll, for example, showed that 75% of the population were sympathetic to Powell’s views. An NOP poll showed that approximately 75% of the British population agreed with Powell’s demand for non-white immigration to be halted completely, and about 60% agreed with his call for the repatriation of non-whites already resident in Britain.
The Rivers of Blood speech has been blamed for leading to violent attacks against British Pakistanis and other British Asians, which became frequent after the speech in 1968; however, there is “little agreement on the extent to which Powell was responsible for racial attacks”. These “Paki-bashing” attacks later peaked during the 1970s and 1980s.
Powell was mentioned in early versions of the 1969 song “Get Back” by the Beatles. This early version of the song, known as the “No Pakistanis” version, parodied the anti-immigrant views of Enoch Powell.
On 5 August 1976, Eric Clapton provoked an uproar and lingering controversy when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated, Clapton voiced his support of the controversial speech, and announced on stage that Britain was in danger of becoming a “black colony”. Among other things, Clapton said “Keep Britain white!” which was at the time a National Front (NF) slogan.
In November 2010, the actor and comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar recalled the fear which the speech instilled in Britons of Indian origin: “At the end of the 1960s, Enoch Powell was quite a frightening figure to us. He was the one person who represented an enforced ticket out, so we always had suitcases that were ready and packed. My parents held the notion that we may have to leave.”
Whilst a section of the white population appeared to warm to Powell over the speech, the author Mike Phillips recalls that it legitimised hostility, and even violence, towards black Britons like himself.
In his book The British Dream (2013), David Goodhart claims that Powell’s speech in effect “put back by more than a generation a robust debate about the successes and failures of immigration”.
“Just when a discussion should have been starting about integration, racial justice, and distinguishing the reasonable from the racist complaints of the white people whose communities were being transformed, he polarised the argument and closed it down.”
“I thought Britain would love us. But in fact it was the opposite, they hated us. So the reason I never had my childhood teenage I was frightened. I was living in fear. We never had a place to go to apart from Brick Lane.”
“… people got beaten up in streets, people used to get mugged… after work coming home by racists. Then we came into the realisation that we… have to fight back. Then all some of the young teenager we named we set up an organisation called Bangladesh Youth Front.”
“… 1978, I was 18 or 19 at the time… Then I came to know the name of Altab Ali… We organised a demonstration to march from Whitechapel St Mary’s Churchyard to Hyde Park Corner… And that was the day gave us the strength after seeing all these people supported us. All these people was chanting. ‘Here to stay. We are here, here to stay’… and there was… slogans saying ‘black and white, unite and fight. We are black, we are white, we are united.'”
“We wanted to defend our community. We wanted to show the world that Altab Ali was a very simple and innocent garments worker who was murdered by racists for no reason. He was simply working in rag trade, and on his way from work to home he was murdered.”
“We marched from Brick Lane to Hyde Park corner, we marched to House of Commons, we marched to major roads in London protesting the murder of Altab Ali.”
“… there were a huge number of people that needs to be recognised by the community, by the next generation, by the future generations, by the history that you are involved. I think these people need some recognition.”
Entrance of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The black and white show
This is a challenging and stimulating exhibition at NGV Australia, Federation Square that attempts to answer the question: “who are you” when coming to terms with what it is to be an Australian.
“WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture is one of the most comprehensive explorations of portraiture ever mounted in Australia and the first exhibition to bring together the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra… [it] considers portraiture in Australia across time and media, as well as the role of the portraiture genre in the development of a sense of Australian national identity… The exhibition also questions what actually constitutes portraiture by examining the surprising and sometimes unconventional ways of representing likeness… Presented across five thematic sections, the exhibition raises challenging and provocative questions about who we are and how we view others – historically, today and into the future…
The exhibition opens by considering the connection between people and place, reflecting on the relationship between artists, sitters and the environment, as well as the personification of the natural world… A further section explores the artistic tradition of the self-portrait and portraits of artists, as well as how this convention has been subverted or challenged by contemporary artists working today… Ideas of intimacy and alienation are juxtaposed through images of family and community presented alongside those of vulnerability and isolation… The exhibition also explores portraiture’s surprising capacity to reveal the inner worlds and mindsets of both the sitter and the artist… The final section of the exhibition interrogates Australian icons, identities and how we construct them.” (Press release)
This is an ambitious agenda for several large exhibitions, let alone cram so many ideas into one exhibition. And in the end the central question “who are you” is unknowable, unanswerable in any definitive way… for it all depends on your ancestry, and from what point of view you are looking and in what context – and these conditions can change from minute to minute, day to day, and era to era. Identity is always partially fixed and fluid at one and the same time. It is always a construction, a work in progress, governed by social and cultural relations.
“Identity is formed by social processes. Once crystallized, it is maintained, modified, or even reshaped by social relations. The social processes involved in both the formation and the maintenance of identity are determined by the social structure. Conversely, the identities produced by the interplay of the organism, individual consciousness and social structure react upon the given social structure, maintaining it, modifying it, or even reshaping it.”1
Identity construction is a self-referential system where identities are produced out of social systems. They (identities) then act upon those very systems to alter them, and then those systems re-act again forming anew, an ever changing identity. “The task of identity formation is to develop a stable, coherent picture of oneself that includes an integration of one’s past and present experiences and a sense of where one is headed in the future.”2 But that identity formation, while seeking to be stable, is both multiple and contestatory. It is through those contests that a future sense of self can challenge hegemonic power differentials. As Judith Butler observes,
“Thus every insistence on identity must at some point lead to a taking stock of the constitutive exclusions that reconsolidate hegemonic power differentials, exclusions that each articulation was forced to make in order to proceed. This critical reflection will be important in order not to replicate at the level of identity politics the very exclusionary moves that initiated the turn to specific identities in the first place … It will be a matter of tracing the ways in which identification is implicated in what it excludes, and to follow the lines of that implication for the map of future community that it might yield.”3
In other words, learn from the mistakes of the past and don’t let them repeat themselves in future identities! Do not exclude others in order to reconsolidate the hegemonic status quo. But people always form identities based on the “norm” – how can you change that? As A. David Napier states, “We rely, sometimes almost exclusively it seems, upon the construction and reconstruction of an evolutionary(?) sequence of events that simultaneously excludes outsiders and provides some basis for justifying our social rules and actions. Thus, we minimize diversity by reflecting on who we are, by achieving, that is, a self-conscious state that is not only accepted but considered desirable…”4
Critical reflection is thus so important in challenging who we are, both individually and collectively. In this sense, an exhibition like WHO ARE YOU is important in helping to reshape social relations, helping to challenge hegemonic power differentials, which in turn affects our personal identity construction by reflecting on who we are and changing our point of view, so that we become more informed, and more empathetic, towards different cultures and different people. So that we do not exclude other people and other points of view.
But all is not roses and light in this exhibition with regard to exclusion.
Whilst a lot of people acknowledge and empathise with First Nations people we can have NO IDEA of the ongoing pain and hurt centuries of invasion, disenfranchisement, genocide, massacres, Stolen Generation, lack of health care, massive incarceration, suicide rates and shorter life expectancy, land loss, cultural loss that the violence of the white Anglo gaze has inflicted on the oldest living culture on Earth. While there are moves afoot (as there have been for years) for Aboriginal constitutional recognition through a Voice to Parliament, a permanent body representing First Nations people that would advise government on Indigenous policy; and a treaty that would help secure sovereignty and self-determination, enabling First Nations people make their own decisions and control their own lives, economy and land, free from the effects of changing governments – personally I believe until there is a complete acknowledgement of the pain invasion has caused Aboriginal people by the whole of Australia, nothing will ever change.
Having said that, contemporary Australia is now the most multicultural country it as ever been. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021 Census, 27.6 per cent of the population were born overseas and the top 5 countries of birth (excluding Australia) were, in order, England, India, China, New Zealand and the Philippines.5 In Australia, 812,000 people identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander in the 2021 Census of Population and Housing. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represented 3.2% of the population.6
It is interesting to note that when looking through the art works in this exhibition – nearly all of which can be seen in this posting – how much of it is (historical) white art and how much of it is contemporary Aboriginal art, with a sop being made to art made by, or mentioning, other people including Chinese, Afghan, Muslim and Sudanese. Chinese people have been living in Australia for centuries, Afghan people similarly. Greek and Italian people arrived in droves in the 1950s-1960s, Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s, Sudanese, Indian and Sri Lankan people in the late 20th century. More (historical and contemporary) work from these people was needed in this exhibition because they inform the construction of modern Australian identities.
Obviously the inclusion of so much contemporary Aboriginal work is a deliberate curatorial decision, but its disproportionate representation in this exhibition makes it feel like a “catch all”. Why do the curators feel the need to include so much Indigenous work? Is that how they truly see Australian identity? Also, does the inclusion of this art mean it is the best contemporary art that is available in Australia at the moment, or does its inclusion simply exclude other voices from different nationalities and ethnic and religious backgrounds that are just as important in the construction of contemporary Australian identities? While there is no denying the historical significance of invasion there needs to be a balance in such representation, especially in an exhibition purporting to investigate “who are you” over a broad range of references. As it stands the inclusion of so much Indigenous work feels like an agenda, a set point of departure, perhaps even an apologia for white guilt. As the critic John McDonald noted recently, we are living “at a time when museums and commercial galleries have gone completely gaga for such [that is, Aboriginal] work.”
Personally, I would have liked to have seen a greater range of voices expressing themselves in this exhibition. It struck me that the inclusion of so much (historical) white art and so much contemporary Aboriginal art formed a rather limited framework in which to examine “who are you”. Rather, I would have liked a more balanced representation through art of the many voices that contribute to the formation of evolving Australian identities, which ultimately could lead to a greater insight into the construction of our own self-portrait. That is the truly important aspect of any navel gazing exercise.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Word count: 1,450
1/ Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Allen Lane, London, 1967, p. 194.
2/ Erickson, E. Identity: Youth in Crisis. Norton, New York, 1968
3/ Judith Butler. Bodies That Matter. Routledge, New York, 1993, pp. 118-119
4/ A. David Napier. Foreign Bodies: Performance Art, and Symbolic Anthropology. University of California press, Berkeley, 1992, p.143
5/ “Cultural diversity: Census” 2021 on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website 28/06/2022 [Online] Cited 12/08/2022
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing from left to right, Polixeni Papapetrou’s Magma Man (2012, below); Karla Dickens’ Mrs Woods and ‘Ere (2013, below); and Kaylene Whiskey’s Seven Sisters Song (2021, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Polixeni Papapetrou’s series The Ghillies shows the artist’s son wearing extreme camouflage costumes that are used by the defence forces to blend in with their environment. The photographs reflect on the passing of childhood, and the journey out of a maternally centred world into a wider existence. Papapetrou proposes that this is a significant moment for many young men as they seek to separate themselves from their mothers, and assume the costumes and identities of masculine stereotypes, often hiding themselves in the process. Papapetrou photographed her children fro most of her career, and explored a range of stereotypes that surround childhood. These works examine the placement of children and adolescents in a society which is determined and defined by adults.
Tjayanka Woods (c. 1935-2014) was a senior Pitjantjatjara artist, born near Kalaya Pirti (Emu Water) near Mimili and Wataru, South Australia. She was a cultural custodian, leader and held significant knowledges regarding cultural law and medicine. As an artist, Woods often referred to the Kungkarrangkalpa Tjurkurpa (Seven Sisters) within her artworks. The Kungkarrangkalpa Tjurkurpa is an epic and ancient creation story revolving around the start cluster, also known as Pleiades. In 2013, Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens, spent several weeks with Woods and other senior Pitjantjatjara artists research the creation story. During her time in Pitjantjatjara Country, Dickens photographed Woods as the aware and intelligent cultural leader she was, with dignity and strength.
Kaylene Whiskey seamlessly combines references to daily life in Indulkana with popular culture. Painted on an old road sign, Seven Sisters Song celebrates Whiskey’s witty sense of humour and personal reflection of Kungkarangkalpa Tjukurpa, the Seven Sisters creation story. Imbued within the work themes of sisterhood and kinship bonds, Whiskey brings together two vastly different worlds. Strong female characters including Wonder Woman, Whoopi Goldberg and Dolly Parton are situated within a desert landscape and seen interacting with native plants and wildlife, including traditional Anangu activities like hunting, collecting bush tucker, and cultivating mingkulpa (a native tobacco plant).
Wall text from the exhibition
Johannes Heyer (Australian, 1872-1945) William Barak at work on the drawing ‘Ceremony’ at Coranderrk 1902 Gelatin silver photograph, sepia toned on paper 8.7 x 8.7cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased with the assistance of the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society 2000
Wurundjeri artist and ngurungaeta (Head Man) William Barak was an important cultural leader, diplomat and activist. Barak lived near Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, near Healesville, from 1863 until 1903, becoming an influential spokesman for the rights of his people and an informant on Wurundjeri cultural lore. The people of Coranderrk, however, were officially forbidden from observing traditional practices, so Barak began recording them in drawings, often using ochre and charcoals to depict ceremonies and aspects of Wurundjeri culture before colonisation. His artworks are significant expressions of cultural practice, and he is regarded as an important figure int he history of Indigenous Australian art.
Wall text from the exhibition
Beruk (William Barak) (1824-1903), an elder of the Wurundjeri clan of the Woi-worung, was the most famous Aboriginal person in Victoria in the 1890s. After attending the Reverend George Langhorne’s mission school, Barak joined the Native Police in 1844 and remained there until at least 1851. From 1863 until his death he lived at the government reserve at Coranderrk, at a site near the Yarra River in Victoria. The history of the reserve is one of official interference and mismanagement, and Barak played a significant part in representing the wishes of his community to the government. In the decade of the 1880s he made many paintings and artefacts, mostly of Aboriginal ceremonial subjects.
Beruk (1824-1903), artist, activist, leader and educator, was a Wurundjeri man of the Woiwurrung people, one of the five Kulin Nations whose Country encompasses Narrm (Melbourne). It is said that Beruk was present at the signing of the so-called treaty with which John Batman reckoned he’d acquired 240,000 hectares of Wurundjeri land in 1835. In reality, the men with whom Batman negotiated, including one of Beruk’s uncles, had not transferred ownership, but merely given Batman permission to stay temporarily. Beruk was given the name William Barak (a European mispronunciation) in 1844 when he joined the Native Police. He was among the group of people from across Victoria who were the first to join the settlement at Coranderrk, near Healesville, established by the Aboriginal Protection Board in 1863 following several years of petitioning by community leaders. Beruk emerged as a leader at Coranderrk, which developed into a self-sufficient agricultural settlement. Following the passing of his cousin Simon Wonga in 1874, Beruk became Ngurungaeta (head man) of the Wurundjeri people. During the same period, when European pastoral interests started lobbying for Coranderrk to be broken up and sold off, Beruk led the campaign to prevent the settlement’s closure. It was gazetted as a ‘permanent reservation’ in 1881.
By this time, Beruk was recognised as a leader of his people and as a revered custodian of language and cultural knowledge. As the people at Coranderrk were officially forbidden from observing their traditional ceremonies, including corroborees, Beruk began recording his knowledge in drawings, utilising introduced methods and materials including paper, cardboard, and watercolour to preserve and communicate important stories and aspects of culture and spirituality. On the one hand, his drawings and the artefacts he made functioned as a commodity and were sold as souvenirs to increasing numbers of tourists. Museums in Europe began acquiring examples of his work in the late nineteenth century. On the other hand, and more significantly, Beruk’s drawings represent a profound assertion of pride in his heritage and identity, and the survival of a rich and complex culture in the face of concerted attempts to diminish it. As Wurundjeri elder and Beruk’s great-great niece Aunty Joy Wandin Murphy says: “We believe that what he wanted was for people to remember those ceremonies, so that if he painted them … then people would always know about the ceremonies on Coranderrk and of Wurundjeri people.”
This photograph of Beruk was taken by Johannes Heyer, a Presbyterian clergyman called to the parish of Yarra Glen and Healesville in 1900. The drawing that Beruk is shown working on in the photograph is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
David Moore (Australia 1927-2003) Migrants arriving in Sydney 1966 Gelatin silver print National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1961
WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture is the first exhibition to comprehensively bring together the rich portrait holdings of both the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Revealing the artistic synergies and contrasts between the two institutions’ collections, this co-curated exhibition considers portraiture in Australia across time and media.
Through the examination of diverse and sometimes unconventional ways of representing likeness, WHO ARE YOU will question what actually constitutes portraiture – historically, today and into the future. Examples of some of the more abstract notions of portraits in the exhibition include John Nixon’s Self-portrait, (1990), and Boris Cipusev’s typographic portrait of Jeff from The Wiggles, titled Jeff the wiggle, 2009-2013. Polixeni Papapetrou’s Magma man, 2013, a photograph that merges sitter and landscape until the two are almost indecipherable, and Shirley Purdie’s multi-panelled evocation of biography and Country, Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe, 2018, further challenge the conventions of the genre and touch upon the intimate connection between artist, sitter and land. NGV Collection highlights include new acquisitions: Kaylene Whiskey’s Seven Sisters Song, 2021 – a playful take on portraiture by a living artist and Joy Hester’s Pauline McCarthy,1945, a rare example of Hester producing a portrait in oil.
WHO ARE YOU is the largest exhibition of Australian portraiture ever mounted by either the NGV or NPG, and is the first time the two galleries have worked collaboratively on such a large-scale project.
Text from the NGV International website
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing Lloyd Rees’ Portrait of some rocks (1948, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
One of Australia’s leading landscape artists of the mid-twentieth century, Lloyd Rees studied at Brisbane Technical College before moving to Sydney in 1917, where he worked as a commercial illustrator. In the early 1930s he concentrated solely on drawing, particularly the rocky landscapes around Sydney, but by the late 1930s he began painting in an increasingly romantic manner. Rocks were a meaningful subject for Rees because they evoked permanency and represented the constitution of the earth. Rees humanises his subject matter by using the word ‘portrait’ in the title, which suggests the rocks have shifted from inorganic to animate objects.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at right, Marshall Claxton’s An emigrant’s thoughts of home (1859, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at right, Marshall Claxton’s An emigrant’s thoughts of home (1859, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Marshall Claxton (English, 1813-1881, worked in Australia 1850-1854) An emigrant’s thoughts of home 1859 Oil on cardboard 60.7 × 47.0cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented by the National Gallery Women’s Association, 1974
Immigration underlies the European history of Australia. Between 1815 and 1840, more than 58,000 people, predominately from the British Isles, came to Australia in search of a better life. Women migrants were also assisted to curb a gender imbalance in the colonies, to work as domestic servants and to foster marriages and childbirth.
Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website
Immigration is central to the history of Australia. The wistful tilt of this young woman’s head and her thoughtful expression are powerful symbols of the intense nostalgia and fear of the unknown experienced by those in search of a new homeland. Despite its apparent simplicity and sentimentality, the painting captures the issues of poverty, deprivation and emigration that people, especially women, faced in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
Monga Khan was a hawker, and one of the thousands of people who applied for an exemption to the White Australia Policy, a law which came into effect in 1901. Exemptions were considered for cameleers, hawkers and other traders who were considered essential workers. Drew created this poster and others in the Aussie series using photographs from the National Archives of Australia, and pasted them around Australia’s cities.
He explains: ‘When you address the public through the street you’re entering into a tradition that emphasises our fundamental freedom of expression, over the value of property. I enjoy examining our collective identities and my aim is always to emphasise the connections that bind us, rather than the fractures that divide us’.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Maree Clarke’s Walert – gum barerarerungar (2020-2021, below); and at right, Uta Uta Tjangala’s Ngurrapalangu (1989, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Uta Uta Tjangala (Australian / Puntupi, c. 1926-1990) Ngurrapalangu (installation view) 1989 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by Elizabeth and Colin Laverty, Governors, 2001 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Uta Uta Tjangala forged a new art form at Papunya during 1971-1972 with startling works such as this one. Working for the first time on a discarded scrap of composition board, artists at Papunya rendered visible and permanent ephemeral designs, formerly made only for use in closed and secret ceremonial contexts on bodies, objects or the ground. The painted designs are closely connected to the artist’s cultural identity, his understanding of Country, and of sacred men’s business, unknowable to uninitiated members of the community.
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Maree Clarke (Australian / Mutti Mutti/Wamba Wamba/Yorta Yorta/Boonwurrung, b. 1961) Walert – gum barerarerungar: Tipperary, Ireland Dunstable, Britain Yorta Yorta Trawlwoolway Boonwurrung, Muttu Mutti, Wamba Wamba (installation view) 2020-2021 Possum pelts National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchase, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2021 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Maree Clarke is recognised as one of the most respected possum skin cloak makers and teachers in the world. This work represents the first time Clarke produced a cloak to represent her own ancestral identity. Depicted on the cloak are seven important places, which her ancestors come from: Yorta Yorta Country, Trawlwoolway Country, Boonwurrung Country, Muttu Mutti Country and Wamba Wamba Country, as well as Tiperrary in Ideland, and Dunstable in Britain. Clarke has used a rare green ochre to represent her European ancestors. Together, these seven ancestral sites of significance inform Clarke’s identity.
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Maree Clarke (Australian / Mutti Mutti/Wamba Wamba/Yorta Yorta/Boonwurrung, b. 1961) Walert – gum barerarerungar: Tipperary, Ireland Dunstable, Britain Yorta Yorta Trawlwoolway Boonwurrung, Muttu Mutti, Wamba Wamba (installation view detail) 2020-2021 Possum pelts National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchase, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2021 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Portraiture
In its uniting of artist and sitter, the self-portrait is an intriguing facet of portraiture. The self-reflection is a format that appears to grant the viewer the assurance of revelation and intimate access to the artist’s psyche. However, what the artist intends to communicate to their audience through portraiture is highly varied, and the message each artist conveys is as individual as the artist themselves. Additionally, there is room for the viewer to question how the artist has chosen to depict their image.
Self-portraiture is a diverse genre: there are myriad ways an artist can present themselves. A typical way for the artist to portray themselves is in the role of ‘the artist’, including in the work a visual clue to their profession – for instance holding a brush or paint palette – or showing themselves at work in the studio. As part of an investigation of self, these representations can also communicate the complexities of status and gender. This selection of works explores what the artists intend to reveal or exclude about themselves through their self-representations, considering he environment in which the artists are placed, and the props and imagery they choose to include in the works.
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Pamela See (Australian, b. 1979) Making Chinese Shadows (sixteen silhouette portraits) (installation view) 2018 Twelve of sixteen papercut silhouette drawings National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brisbane-born Pamela See (Xue Mei-Ling) studied at the Queensland College of Art from 1997 to 1999. She began papercutting during a period when she was without access to a studio, and was subsequently awarded grants that enabled her to study the technique in several centres throughout China. Her method and style resemble Foshan papercutting, which is widely practices in the home of her maternal grandparents, in Guangdong province. These papercuts are from a series investigating the lives of Chinese-Australians who flourished prior to the introduction of the White Australia policy. The works connect and juxtapose European silhouette portraiture and Chinese papercutting traditions, exploring the notion that a silhouette profile provides a means of ‘measuring’ a sitter’s character with the totemic and floral symbols evoking personal narratives, identity and professions.
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Pamela See (Australian, b. 1979) Making Chinese Shadows (sixteen silhouette portraits) (installation view detail) 2018 Twelve of sixteen papercut silhouette drawings National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Various unknown photographers (Australian) William and Martha Mary Robertson and their children (installation views) 1860s-1870s Eight cartes de visite, hand-coloured, contained in red leather presentation case National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of Malcolm Robertson in memory of William Thomas Robertson 2018 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Popular in nineteenth-century Australia, stereographs gave the illusion of three dimensions when placed in a handheld viewer. In this work, Liu Xiao Xian enlarges a typical example of this historical form of photographic portraiture and replaces the sitter’s face with his own on one side. Through this double-take, and the playful invitation to imagine an ‘other life’ for this sitter, this work is both a subtle self-portrait and a pointed reminder of the invisibility of the Chinese migrant experience in mainstream conceptions of Australian history and identity.
Brush in hand, there is no mistaking A. D. Colquhoun’s occupation or the studio setting. The young, glamorous model is an essential part of this carefully orchestrated self-portrayal. By also including his painting of the model on the easel, Colquhoun presents himself in the company of not one, but two women whose presence asserts his own dominant masculinity. The artist’s gaze meets the viewer, placing them as the subject of the painter’s attention, creating a complex network of visual relationships between the artist, model and viewer.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at right, Shirley Purdie’s Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe (2018, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Shirley Purdie (b. 1947) is a senior Gija artist at the Warmun Art Centre who has been painting for more than twenty years. Purdie has lived on her Country, Western Australia’s East Kimberley, all her life. Inspired by senior Warmun artists, including her late mother, Madigan Thomas, she began to paint sites and narratives associated with her Country in the early 1990s. A prominent leader in the Warmun community, her cultural knowledge and artistic skill allow her to pass on Gija stories and language to the younger generations.
In 2018, Purdie was selected to contribute to the National Portrait Gallery’s 20th anniversary exhibition, So Fine: Contemporary Women Artists Make Australian History. Composed of 36 paintings, Purdie’s self-portrait Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngaginbe is an eloquent and stunning visualisation of personal history, identity and connection to Country. ‘It’s good to learn from old people. They keep saying when you paint you can remember that Country, just like to take a photo … When the old people die, young people can read the stories from the paintings. They can learn from the paintings and maybe they want to start painting too.’ Using richly textured ochres collected on her Country, Purdie’s work is a kaleidoscope of traditional Gija stories and Ngarranggarni passed down to her.
Shirley Purdie is senior Gija woman and a prominent leader within the Warmup Community in Western Australia’s East Kimberley. Combining her cultural knowledge with her art, Purdie creates visual depictions of Gija life and culture. Ngalim-Ngalimbooroo Ngagenybe, meaning ‘from my women’, is informed by Aboriginal ways of seeing, knowing and understanding oneself within the world. Each of the thirty-six panels shares a story about personal history, identity and Country to produce a non-representational self-portrait of the artist and her ongoing connection to women’s stories. By drawing on the significant women in her life, their relationships and histories, Purdie describes herself through these cultural connections and stories.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing Sam Jink’s Divide (Self portrait) (2011, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sam Jinks developed a talent for drawing and constructing his ideas alongside his father, a Melbourne cabinetmaker. Jinks worked as an illustrator before turning to sculpture. He worked in film and television special effects before becoming a fabricator for artist Patricia Piccinini. For the last ten years he has sculpted independently, working in silicone, fibreglass, resin and hair – human, animal and synthetic.
Herbert Badham was an artist, writer and teacher who specialised in figures, urban life and beach scenes. Having studied for many years at the Julian Ashton School in the 1920s and 1930s, he produced a body of painting that typified the gentle, realist aspect of Sydney modernism of the prewar years. Head of the intermediate art department at East Sydney Tech from 1938 to 1961, he published the populist Study of Australian Art in 1949, and A Gallery of Australian Art in 1954. Badham’s work underwent a minor revival in the late 1980s, with a retrospective show held in Wollongong and Sydney, and three of his urban scenes were selected for the National Gallery’s Federation exhibition of 2001. Arguably the most interesting of several self-portraits of the artist, this painting was featured on the cover of the catalogue of the 1987 retrospective.
Janet Dawson (b. 1935) is best known for her contribution to abstract art in Australia. Following her family’s relocation from Forbes to Melbourne in the early 1940s, Dawson attended the private art school run by Harold Septimus Power. In 1951, aged sixteen, she enrolled at the National Gallery School and attended night classes with Sir William Dargie. Five years later, Dawson won a National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship and went to London, where she studied at the Slade School and the Central School. Returning to Melbourne in 1961, she held her first solo exhibition the same year and in 1963 set up an art school and workshop. Dawson was one of only three women included in the influential exhibition of Australian abstraction, The Field, at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. Her work is represented in all major public collections in Australia, and has been the subject of exhibitions at the NGV and the National Gallery of Australia.
Outside of her lyrical abstract work, Dawson always practised portraiture and won the Archibald Prize in 1973 with a portrait of her husband, the late writer, actor and playwright Michael Boddy. Painted during an evening class at the National Gallery School, this self portrait shows Dawson wearing an artist’s work shirt over her elegant day clothes, gazing confidently at the viewer.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Lina Bryans’ The babe is wise (1940, below); at middle, Janet Cumbrae Stewart’s Portrait of Jessie C. A. Traill (1920, below); and at right, Evelyn Chapman’s Self portrait (1911, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lina Bryans (Australian born Germany, 1909-2000) The babe is wise (installation view) 1940 Oil on cardboard National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Miss Jean Campbell, 1962 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lina Bryans was an important part of the modern movement and a member of literary and artistic circles in Melbourne during the late 1930s and 1940s. Her vibrant paintings are characterised by bold brushwork and the expressive use of colour. In 1937, Bryans began painting portraits of her friends. Her most famous work, The babe is wise, is a portrait of the writer Jean Campbell, who had recently published a novel of the same name.
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Lina Bryans (Australian born Germany, 1909-2000) The babe is wise 1940 Oil on cardboard National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Miss Jean Campbell, 1962
Chiefly known for her use of pastel, Janet Cumbrae Stewart devoted the most significant part of her career to producing sensuous studies of the female nude and portraits of women. Her portrait of fellow artist Jessie Traill shows Traill in the dress uniform of a Queen Alexandra Imperial Nurse. Nursing was one of the few options open to women wanting to serve in the First World War. Traill, who was living in France, volunteered and was stationed in Rouen in Northern France for three and a half years. Cumbrae Stewart and Traill were friends, both having grown up in Brighton, Victoria, and attended the National Gallery School alongside one another in the early 1900s.
Evelyn Chapman, artist, studied with Antonio Dattilo Rubbo in Sydney and travelled overseas to paint in Paris, where she exhibited at the Salon. A few weeks after the end of World War 1 she took up the opportunity to visit the battlefields of France with her father, who was attached to the New Zealand War Graves Commission. Thus, she became the first Australian female artist to depict the devastated battlefields, towns and churches of the western front. Chapman remained overseas with her father, an organist who played in Dieppe, Venice and elsewhere, and married a brilliant organist, George Thalben-Ball, herself. After she married, she gave up painting, but she encouraged her daughter, Pamela, to pursue art. For the rest of her life, Chapman lived in England, only returning to Australia for a visit in 1960. The Art Gallery of New South Wales has her 1911 portrait of Dattilo Rubbo and a number of her paintings of France, Belgium and England. The Australian War Memorial, too, has several of her evocative French scenes.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, William Yang’s Self Portrait #2 (2007, below); and at centre in case, Alan Constable’s earthenware cameras (see below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
William Yang shares childhood memories in this self-portrait. He recently reflected: ‘… I cal myself Australian, but I claim my Chinese heritage because that’s the way I look. Central to my art practice is my own story, which I tell in performances with projected images and music in theatres. My story is told against a backdrop of the times. This keys into my documentary-style photography. I have done a series of self-portraits of the same stories for exhibition in galleries. So my art and my life have become entwined and they both feed into each other. And I’ve come to terms with the way I look … It’s a great relief to feel comfortable in your own skin’.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Alan Constable’s Green large format camera (2013, below); and at right Alan Constable’s Not titled (Black Mamiya large format camera) (2013, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Alan Constable’s lifelong fascination with cameras began when he was just eight years old, as he sculpted the objects picture on cereal boxes. Legally blind, Constable’s sculptural practice sometimes extends to other optical objects, such as binoculars and video recorders. Constable’s method involves holding the camera millimetres from his eyes, as he scans and feels the object, before quickly rendering his impressions in clay. Constable has worked at Arts Project Australia since 1991 and held his first solo show in 2011. His works speak to the processes of seeing and looking, and self-reflexively capture the objects that capture the image.
Display case text from the exhibition
Christian Thompson (Australian / Bidjara, b. 1978) Authoring the explorer, James Cook 2015, printed 2016 From the Museum of Others series 2015-2016 Type C photograph on metallic paper National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of an anonymous donor through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2017
‘Today, we are still conditioned by historical tropes such as the bust-style portraits of colonial men who had roles in furthering the position of colonial Britain at the height of the imperial pursuit for claiming new frontiers, at the expense of the Indigenous custodians of countries including Australia. However, as famous as these colonial figures still are, I try to demonstrate that it is never too late to pierce, subvert and re-stage the spectres of history to gain agency from the position of the other. Through the work, I am proposing: let us scrutinise your history, your identities, your flaws.’ ~ Christian Thompson, 2017
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WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture is one of the most comprehensive explorations of portraiture ever mounted in Australia and the first exhibition to bring together the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. The exhibition will be on display in Melbourne from 25 March to 21 August 2022 and Canberra from 1 October 2022 to 29 January 2023.
Revealing the rich artistic synergies and contrasts between the two institutions’ collections, this co-curated exhibition considers portraiture in Australia across time and media, as well as the role of the portraiture genre in the development of a sense of Australian national identity.
Featuring more than two-hundred works by Australian artists including Patricia Piccinini, Atong Atem, Howard Arkley, Vincent Namatjira and Tracey Moffatt, and featuring sitters including Cate Blanchett, Albert Namatjira, Queen Elizabeth II, Eddie Mabo and David Gulpilil, the exhibition explores our inner worlds and outer selves, as well as issues of sociability, intimacy, isolation, celebrity and ordinariness.
The exhibition also questions what actually constitutes portraiture by examining the surprising and sometimes unconventional ways of representing likeness, such as the abstract self-portrait by John Nixon and Boris Cipusev’s typographic portrait of Jeff from The Wiggles. Polixeni Papapetrou’s Magma Man, a photograph which merges sitter and landscape until the two are almost indecipherable, and Shirley Purdie’s multi-panelled evocation of biography and Country further challenge the conventions of the genre and touch upon the intimate connection between artist, sitter and land. Alongside these works, iconic self-portraits will also be displayed by artists including John Brack, Nora Heysen and William Yang.
Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, said: “This exhibition marks the first major partnership between the NGV and the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. By combining our respective portraiture collections and curatorial expertise in this area, we have been able to stage the largest thematic portraiture exhibition in the history of either institution. This presentation will no doubt offer audiences an unprecedented insight into the genre and its place in Australian art history.”
Karen Quinlan AM, Director, National Portrait Gallery, said: “The NPG is thrilled to work with the NGV on this extensive exploration of Australian portraiture. The exhibition comes at a time when, in the current global COVID environment, stories from home, about home, and the artists and identities who have shaped and continue to shape our nation are more compelling and important than ever. It is a privilege to be able to present our collection in conversation with the NGV’s and to explore the idea of Australian identity and its many layers and facets through the lens of portraiture.”
Presented across five thematic sections, the exhibition raises challenging and provocative questions about who we are and how we view others – historically, today and into the future. The exhibition opens by considering the connection between people and place, reflecting on the relationship between artists, sitters and the environment, as well as the personification of the natural world. Highlight works include a conceptual map depicting self and Country by Wawiriya Burton, Ngayaku Ngura (My Country) 2009, as well as the NGV’s recent acquisition Seven Sisters Song 2021 by Kaylene Whiskey, a painted road sign that is filled with personally significant, autobiographical references to pop culture.
A further section explores the artistic tradition of the self-portrait and portraits of artists, as well as how this convention has been subverted or challenged by contemporary artists working today. Works include Hari Ho’s Dadang Christanto 2005, which depicts the artist buried to the neck in sand, referencing the brutal killings of Indonesians in the failed military coup of September 1965, and Alan Constable’s Not titled (Green large format camera) 2013, personifying the act of photography with a hand modelled, ceramic camera.
Ideas of intimacy and alienation are juxtaposed through images of family and community presented alongside those of vulnerability and isolation. Works include Pat Larter’s Marty 1995, a graphic collage depicting a male sex worker, challenging the ease with which society consumes images of female nudity, and Naomi Hobson’s Warrior without a weapon 2019, a photographic series in which the artist challenges stereotypes about Indigenous men from her home community in Coen, by using flowers as a metaphor for male vulnerability.
The exhibition also explores portraiture’s surprising capacity to reveal the inner worlds and mindsets of both the sitter and the artist, as exemplified by Eric Thake’s satirical vignettes of figures in dream-like settings, and Hoda Afshar’s Remain 2018, a video exploring Australia’s controversial border protection policy and the human rights of those seeking asylum.
The final section of the exhibition interrogates Australian icons, identities and how we construct them. Works featured in this section include Michael Riley’s Maria 1986 and Polly Borland’s HM Queen Elizabeth II 2002, two works displayed side by side, drawing connections between archetypal imagery of royalty, with negative renderings of ‘otherness’ found in historical ethnographic portraiture.
WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture is presented by the NGV and the National Portrait Gallery and will be on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Fed Square from 25 March to 21 August 2022 and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra from 1 October 2022 to 29 January 2023.
WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture is generously supported by Major Partner, Deakin University.
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria International
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at centre left, Bert Flugelman’s self portrait (1985, below). The legend of the artworks on the wall is below… Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Herbert ‘Bert’ Flugelman, sculptor, painter and lecturer, came to Australia from his native Vienna in 1938, aged fifteen. In the late 1940s he trained at the National Art School; he travelled and studied overseas through the first half of the 1950s. In 1967 he won first prize at the Mildura Sculpture Triennial with a large cast-iron equestrian piece. His subsequent public commissions include the untitled copper and ceramic mosaic fountain at Bruce Hall at the Australian National University; Spheres 1977 (known locally as Bert’s Balls) for the Rundle Street Mall, Adelaide; and the Dobell Memorial 1978 for Martin Place, Sydney. Controversially, Tumbling cubes (Dice) (Untitled) 1978/1979, originally made for Cameron Offices in Belconnen ACT, was some years ago moved to a nearby park, according to the artist a ‘hopelessly inappropriate site’. Cones 1982 dominates the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Australia, and the Winged figure (Lawrence Hargrave memorial) 1988 towers 6m high at Mt Keira, near Wollongong. Flugelman taught from 1973 to 1983 at the South Australian School of Art, and from 1984 to 1990 at the University of Wollongong, from which he received an honorary doctorate. There was a retrospective exhibition of his five decades’ work at the Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University in 2009.
Lewis Morley (Hong Kong 125 – Australia 2013, England 1945-1971, Australia from 1971) Self portrait in reflection (installation view) 1973 Gelatin silver photograph National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of the artist 2003 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lewis Morley OAM (1925-2013), photographer, was born in Hong Kong and went to the United Kingdom with his family at the end of World War 2. He studied commercial art in London and spent time in Paris before taking up photography in 1954, initially working for magazines like Tatler, London Life and She. In 1961, he founded Lewis Morley Studios in Peter Cook’s London club, The Establishment. Here, he built his reputation with photographs of the celebrities that defined the hip spirit of London in the 1960s, among them Cook, Dudley Moore, Charlotte Rampling, Twiggy, Vanessa Redgrave and Jean Shrimpton. In 1963, Morley took one of the world’s most famous photographic portraits – that of Christine Keeler, short-term shared mistress of a British politician and a Soviet diplomat, naked on a Scandinavian chair. By 1971, Morley’s magazine and theatre work in London was petering out, and he emigrated to Australia, where, he said, ‘bingo! there was the sixties all over again’. Shooting increasingly in colour, Morley took many photographs for Dolly, POL, Belle and other publications that now afford an evocative record of changing Australian culture through the 1970s and 1980s. Many of Morley’s portraits from this era were shown in the National Portrait Gallery’s retrospective exhibition Lewis Morley: Myself and Eye in 2003. His work was also the subject of a major exhibitions staged by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1989-1990; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2006.
William Dargie (Australian, 1912-2003) Albert Namatjira (installation view) 1958 Oil on canvas laid on composition board National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased with funds donated by Marilyn Darling AC and the assistance of Philip Bacon Galleries 2000 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Albert Namatjira was a descendant of the Western Arrant people of the Northern Territory. Inspired by the spectacular landforms and vivid colours around his home at the Hermannsuburg Mission in the 1930s, Namatjira fused Western-influenced style of watercolour with unique expressions of traditional sites and sacred knowledge. Sir William Dargie CBE described Namatjira as having ‘tremendous inner dignity’ and within this portrait, he located Namatjira in his country in the MacDonnell Ranges. Holding one of his own landscapes, the portrait represents the intrinsic connection between the artist’s painting and identity. Namatjira was, and still is, an important presence in Australian art and a leading figure in the development of Aboriginal rights.
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William Dargie (Australian, 1912-2003) Albert Namatjira (installation view detail) 1958 Oil on canvas laid on composition board National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased with funds donated by Marilyn Darling AC and the assistance of Philip Bacon Galleries 2000 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003) Sharpies, Melbourne 1973, printed c. 1977-1978 Gelatin silver print National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased NGV Foundation, 2006
‘Rather than capturing the subjects unawares I have encouraged them to pause, and even pose, from the camera. In this way they have an opportunity to communicate directly with me and to project whatever image they believe suits them best.’ ~ Rennie Ellis
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Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992) Hera Roberts (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver photograph 23.6 cm x 21.4cm Gift of Rex Dupain 2003 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992) Hera Roberts 1936 Gelatin silver photograph 23.6 cm x 21.4cm Gift of Rex Dupain 2003 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
Hera Roberts (life dates unknown) was a painter, illustrator, designer, commercial artist and milliner. During the 1920s and 30s she produced many covers for the Home magazine, and arranged photo spreads for the magazine promoting fashionable interiors and furniture. She designed a complete room for the Burdekin House exhibition of 1929, including furniture, and also designed furniture for her companion Sydney Ure Smith. Roberts was regarded as an authoritative commentator on matters of style. She was the student and cousin of the artist Thea Proctor, who was also part of the network of ‘lady artists’ who were able to make their careers in interior decorating and taste arbitration. Co-owner of a millinery shop in Pitt Street called ‘June’, Roberts was also one of the finest female fencers in the Southern Hemisphere, operating out of the Sydney Swords Club.
Trevor Turbo Brown (Australian / Latje Latje, 1967-2017) Self-portrait, ‘I am the Dingo Spirit’ (installation view) 2015 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Trevor Turbo Brown, or ‘Turbo’ as he was known, was born in Mildura and grew up on Latje Latje Country. In 1981, Turbo moved to Melbourne were he became a celebrity in the Koori community. He trained as a boxer at the Fitzroy Stars Gym from 1986 to 1991 and would do breakdance street performances throughout Melbourne during the 1980s and 1990s. It was here that he got his nickname. Turbo was a regular character on the streets of Brunswick before he passed away in 2017. In this self-portrait Turbo impinges himself as a dingo, wild and free in the night.
John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) Self-portrait 1955 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with the assistance of the National Gallery Women’s Association, 2000
John Brack created images that explore the social rituals and realities of everyday living. Rendered in a subtle but complex colour scheme, with its subject stripped of vanity and dressed in early-morning attire, Self-portrait is a piercing study of a man engaged in the intimacy of shaving. Although images of women at their toilette have been recently depicted by both male and female Australian artists, it is unusual for men to be shown or to show themselves in this context.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne with second from left, Michael Cook’s Tunnel No. 2 (2014, below); at third from left, Ron Mueck’s Two Women (2005, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Michael Cook (Australian / Bidjara, b. 1968) Tunnel No. 2 (installation view) 2014 From the series Majority Rule Inkjet print National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Ybonne Pettengell Bequest, 2014 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
‘In Majority Rule I created staged scenarios that question Australian history and the dominance of those in power. The series features the same anonymous Indigenous Man, multiplied over and over in each image. Australia’s Indigenous population comprises around three or four percent of our total population. My images seek to defy this reality and ask the viewer to speculate about an Australia where Aboriginal people constitute the majority of the country’s population; they paint a picture of a societal structure reversed … The works also serve as reminders fo the lack of Indigenous representation within Parliament, the judicial system and the business world.’ ~ Michael Cook, 2017
Ron Mueck (Australian born England, b. 1958) Two women 2005 Polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, polyurethane, aluminium, wire, steel, cotton, nylon, synthetic hair, plastic, metal National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2007
Ron Mueck (Australian born England, b. 1958) Two women (detail) 2005 Polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, polyurethane, aluminium, wire, steel, cotton, nylon, synthetic hair, plastic, metal National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2007
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Pierre Mukeba’s Impartiality (2018, below); at second right, William Frater’s Reclining nude (c. 1933, below); and at right, Pat Larter’s Marty (1995, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Pierre Mukeba was a child when he fled with his family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Zambia, where they lived in a refugee camp before joining family in Zimbabwe. Following the Mugabe regime’s arrest order for non-nationals, the family applied for asylum through the Australian Embassy and relocated to Adelaide in 2006. In this work, Mukeba uses patterned Dutch wax print fabrics commonly perceived as being ‘African’, while in reality, they were appropriated from traditional Javanese bark by Dutch colonisers in the nineteenth century, mass produced in Europe and exported to Africa. This painting is part of a group of works by Mukeba, in which he draws on sociocultural standards of beauty and representations of his community.
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William Frater (Australian born Scotland, 1890-1974, Australia from 1913) Reclining nude (installation view) c. 1933 Oil on canvas on cardboard National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1950 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
William Frater (Australian born Scotland, 1890-1974, Australia from 1913) Reclining nude (installation view detail) c. 1933 Oil on canvas on cardboard National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1950 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
William Frater (Australian born Scotland, 1890-1974) The artist’s wife 1915 Oil on canvas on plywood 47.0 x 32.9cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne The Joseph Brown Collection Presented through the NGV Foundation by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2004
Pat Larter (Australian born England, 1936-1996, Australia from 1962) Marty (installation view) 1995 Coloured inks, synthetic polymer paint, plastic, glitter and self-adhesive plastic collage on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1997 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Throughout her career, Pat Larter produced performance art, photography and multimedia images that focus on the consumption of the naked body throughout the media. Often adapting pornographic images to encourage debate on art, the body and censorship, Larter actively looked to challenge society’s ideas of the nude by producing striking, and sometimes humorous images. Marty is part of a series for which Larter visited Sydney’s brothels to photograph male sex workers. By showing the model in a full frontal, active position, Larter reflects on the double standards of how society consumes nudity in art. Images of naked women are viewed with ease, while depictions of naked men cause shock and often outrage.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, John Longstaff’s The young mother (1891, below); at centre Patricia Piccinini’s Nest (2006); at second right, a group of four photographs one by each of Jack Cato, Virginie Grange, Olive Cotton and Athol Shmith (see below); and at right Pierre Mukeba’s Impartiality (2018, above) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
John Longstaff (Australian, 1861-1941, France and England 1887-1895, England 1901-1920) The young mother (installation view) 1891 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by the NGV Women’s Association, Alan and Mavourneen Cowen, Paula Fox, Ken and Jill Harrison and donors to the John Longstaff Appeal, 2013 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A gifted student, John Longstaff was awarded the National Gallery School’s inaugural travelling scholarship in 1887. Longstaff and Rosa Louisa (Topsy) Crocker married two months before departing to London in September 1887. An intimate depiction of motherhood, The young mother shows Topsy tenderly waving a palm fan over the outstretched arms of her son, Ralph, who was born in 1890. Topsy appears pale and slim after a long winter spent in their one-room apartment, divided by a curtain into sleeping and eating quarters. The subject of the mother and child has its origins in the depiction of the biblical Madonna and Child, and continued to be a popular subject for nineteenth-century artists recoding their personal and secular experiences with tenderness and conviction.
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John Longstaff (Australian, 1861-1941, France and England 1887-1895, England 1901-1920) The young mother (installation view detail) 1891 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by the NGV Women’s Association, Alan and Mavourneen Cowen, Paula Fox, Ken and Jill Harrison and donors to the John Longstaff Appeal, 2013 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Patricia Piccinini (Australian, b. 1965) Nest (installation view) 2006 Enamel paint on fibreglass, leather, plastic, metal, rubber, mirror, transparent synthetic polymer resin, glass (a-b) 104.2 × 197.0 × 186.4cm (variable) (installation) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2006 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at top left, Jack Cato’s No title (Nude model) (c. 1928-1932, below); at top right, Virginie Grange’s Untitled (1990, below); at bottom left, Olive Cotton’s The photographer’s shadow (Olive Cotton and Max Dupain) (c. 1935, below); and at bottom right, Athol Shmith’s No title (Nude portrait of woman on beanbag) (1970s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Jack Cato (Australian, 1889-1971) No title (Nude model) c. 1928-1932 Gelatin silver photograph Image and sheet: 44.1 × 33.7cm Support: 49.1 × 37.8cm Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by John Cato, Fellow, 2005
Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003) The photographer’s shadow (Olive Cotton and Max Dupain) c. 1935 Gelatin silver print 16.6 cm x 15.2cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2010
Olive Cotton (1911-2003) and Max Dupain OBE (1911-1992) were pioneering modernist photographers. Cotton’s lifelong obsession with photography began at age eleven with the gift of a Kodak Box Brownie. She was a childhood friend of Dupain’s and in 1934 she joined his fledgling photographic studio, where she made her best-known work, Teacup Ballet, in about 1935. Throughout the 1930s, Dupain established his reputation with portraiture and advertising work and gained exposure in the lifestyle magazine The Home. Between 1939 and 1941, Dupain and Cotton were married and she photographed him often; her Max After Surfing is frequently cited as one of the most sensuous Australian portrait photographs. While Dupain was on service during World War II Cotton ran his studio, one of very few professional women photographers in Australia. Cotton remarried in 1944 and moved to her husband’s property near Cowra, New South Wales. Although busy with a farm, a family, and a teaching position at the local high school, Cotton continued to take photographs and opened a studio in Cowra in 1964. In the 1950s, Dupain turned increasingly to architectural photography, collaborating with architects and recording projects such as the construction of the Sydney Opera House. Dupain continued to operate his studio on Sydney’s Lower North Shore until he died at the age of 81. Cotton was in her seventies when her work again became the subject of attention. In 1983, she was awarded a Visual Arts Board grant to reprint negatives that she had taken over a period of forty years or more. The resulting retrospective exhibition in Sydney in 1985 drew critical acclaim and has since assured her reputation.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne with at second left, Danila Vassielieff’s Young girl (Shirley) (1937, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977) Janet Armstrong, Woodbury Estate, Deniliquin, New South Wales c. 1939 Gelatin silver photograph 21.6 × 28.8cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, 1992
Danila Vassilieff (Australian born Russia, 1897-1958, Australia 1923-1929, Central and South America, Europe, England, 1929-1935, Australia from 1935) Young girl (Shirley) (installation view) 1937 Oil on canvas on composition board National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne National Gallery Society of Victoria Century Fund, 1984 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Danila Vassilieff (Australian born Russia, 1897-1958, Australia 1923-1929, Central and South America, Europe, England, 1929-1935, Australia from 1935) Young girl (Shirley) 1937 Oil on canvas on composition board National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne National Gallery Society of Victoria Century Fund, 1984
The 1920s saw the advancement of modernism in Australia, due in large part to the dedication of women artists such as Grace Cossington Smith to work in modern styles. Celebrated for her iconic urban images and luminous interiors, Cossington Smith first studied with Antonio Dattilo Rubbo in Sydney, and between 912 and 1914, she toured Germany and England with her family. Following her return to Rubbo’s school, Cossington Smith starting producing work in a cutting-edge Post-Impressionistic style. For several years Cossington Smith worked as a part-time teacher at Turramurra College, a day and boarding school for boys. During this period she developed a painting technique based on the idea that vibrations emanating from colour expressed a spiritual condition as well as optical movement.
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Robert Dowling (England 1827-1886, Australia 1834-1857, 1884-1886) Masters George, William and Miss Harriet Ware with the Aborigine Jamie Ware (installation view) 1856 Oil on canvas 63.7 × 76.4cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Eleanor M. Borrow Bequest, 2007 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Robert Dowling (England 1827-1886, Australia 1834-1857, 1884-1886) Masters George, William and Miss Harriet Ware with the Aborigine Jamie Ware 1856 Oil on canvas 63.7 × 76.4cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Eleanor M. Borrow Bequest, 2007
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne with at left, E. Phillips Fox’s Dolly, daughter of Hammond Clegg Esq. (1896, below); at second left, Nora Heysen’s Self portrait (1934, below); and at third right, Florence Fuller’s Paper Boy (1888, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Florence Fuller (Australian born South Africa, 1867-1946, Australia from 1868) (Paper boy) (installation view) 1888 Oil on canvas 61.2 × 45.5cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2020 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Paper boys were prominent part of street life in nineteenth-century Melbourne. Mostly from disadvantaged circumstances, boys as young as eight would work long hours selling newspapers on the city’s streets, many supporting single mothers or siblings, or working to survive independently. The boys were exposed to crime and exploitation, and were seen as hardened and cheeky, yet Florence Fuller’s portrait is sensitive and nuanced. Her work is often focused on those living in poverty, which provides insight into Melbourne’s social diversity. Fuller worked as a professional artist throughout her life – encouraged by her parents and her uncle, artist Robert Dowling – and exhibited at the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy, London.
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Josephine Muntz Adams (Australian, 1862-1950) Italian girl’s head (installation view) 1913 Oil on canvas 51.0 × 42.9cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest, 1936 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Josephine Muntz Adams (Australian, 1862-1950) Italian girl’s head 1913 Oil on canvas 51.0 × 42.9cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest, 1936
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing the work of Simon Obarzanek from his series 80 Faces (2002, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The black and white photographs from Simon Obarzanek’s 80 Faces series show frontal portraits of teenagers, captured from the shoulders up with a consistent, neutral backdrop. The sitters are all aged between fourteen and seventeen, the majority from Victoria’s state schools. When capturing their image, the artist only spends five minutes with each sitter, and discusses nothing about their life. In this body of work, Obarzanek explores the idea that the identity or appearance of an individual sitter reveals something new to the audience when viewed as part of a series.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Maria Brownrigg’s An evening at Yarra Cottage, Port Stephens (1857, below); and at second left, Samuel Metford’s MacKenzie family silhouette (1846, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Maria Brownrigg (Australian born Ireland 1812-1880, South Africa date unknown – c. 1852, Australia from 1852) An evening at Yarra Cottage, Port Stephens (installation view) 1857 Watercolour and collage on paper National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased, 2017 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Maria Brownrigg (Australian born Ireland 1812-1880, South Africa date unknown – c. 1852, Australia from 1852) An evening at Yarra Cottage, Port Stephens 1857 Watercolour and collage on paper National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased, 2017
Maria Caroline Brownrigg came to New South Wales in 1852, when her husband was appointed superintendent of the Australian Agricultural Company’s operations in the Hunter River district. The family lived at Stroud and subsequently at Port Stephens, where Brownrigg made this portrait of her six children. It is the only known example of Brownrigg’s work. Though ‘amateur’, it is valuable to decorative arts and social historians, for its detailed documentation of an appropriately conducted mid nineteenth-century drawing room, and for what it reveals about Victorian gender ideals and aspirations to gentility.
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Samuel Metford (England 1810-1890, lived in United States 1834-1844) MacKenzie family silhouette 1846 Brush and ink, pen and ink, stencil cutout with watercolour highlights on paper 43.2 x 64.0cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of the Estate of Nancy Wiseman
Samuel Metford was born in Glastonbury, into a Quaker family. In England he came to specialise in full-length silhouette likenesses, cut from black paper and embellished with gold and white paint. According to the standard text on British silhouettes, Metford made ‘some very fine family groups – Father and Mother surrounded by their children and pets, with hand-painted backgrounds of imposing rooms whose tall windows looked out on wide landscapes, or a seascape with a tall-funnelled steamship in a prominent position.’ Metford moved to America in about 1834, and spent some ten years there, working mostly in Connecticut but also in New York and South Carolina. He returned to England in the early 1840s, and lived there for the rest of his life, although he revisited America in 1869 and 1867. He died at Weston-Super-Mare.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing by unknown artists – at left, Anna Josepha King (c. 1826-1832, below); and at right, Fanny Jane Marlay (c. 1841, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Unknown artist (Australia) Anna Josepha King c. 1826-1832 watercolour and gouache on ivory Frame: 9.7 cm x 8.3cm Sheet: 8.5 cm x 6.5cm Image: 7.0 cm x 5.7cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2018
Before the early 1840s, when photography began to take hold, portrait miniatures were a favoured means by which people might secure tangible and enduring mementos of their loved ones. Typically executed in watercolour on panels of ivory and contained in petite frames or mounted in pendants, brooches, rings, and lockets, miniatures were designed to be clutched, kissed, carried close to the heart or displayed on a bedside table. Many early Australian colonists brought British-made miniatures with them, but increasing numbers of free settlers from the 1820s onwards soon created demand for miniatures by local, readily-available artists.
Unknown artist (Australia) Fanny Jane Marlay c. 1841 watercolour on ivory Frame: 7.5 cm x 6.3cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2013
Fanny Jane Marlay (1819-1848) came to Sydney with her free-settler family around 1825. In 1838, she met John Lort Stokes (1812-1885), an explorer, naval officer and surveyor appointed to HMS Beagle, which was then engaged in a surveying voyage of the Australian coast. In the course of it, Stokes charted much of what is now the coast of the Northern Territory; gave Darwin its name (after his former shipmate, Charles Darwin); and surveyed the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Arafura Sea, the Torres Strait, the Western Australian coast, and Bass Strait. He and Fanny married in Sydney in January 1841. Later the same year, Stoke succeeded to the command of the Beagle. Their daughter was born in 1842. Fanny returned with Stokes to England in 1843 and died while en route to Sydney again in 1848. Back in England from 1851, Stokes was eventually promoted to admiral. He died at his home, Scotchwell, in Pembrokeshire, in June 1885, survived by his second wife, Louisa, whom he’d married in 1856, and by his daughter from his marriage to Fanny.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ada Whiting (Australian, 1859-1953) The Earl of Linlithgow 1901 Watercolour on ivory 6.6 × 5.0cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Violet Whiting, 1989
Ludwig Becker (Australian born Germany, 1808-1861) Caroline Davidson (installation view) 1854 Watercolour on fictile ivory Image: 5.7 × 4.6cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1996 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Unknown artist (Australia) Thomas and John Clarke, bushrangers, photographed in Braidwood gaol 1867 Albumen silver photograph laid down on a section cut from a nineteenth-century album page National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased, 2019
John (c. 1846-1867) (left) and Thomas Clarke (c. 1840-1867), bushrangers, grew up near Braidwood and from a young age were schooled in nefarious activities including horse-theft. John was 17 when he first went to prison and Thomas was purported to have ridden with the infamous Ben Hall. In October 1865, Thomas escaped from gaol while awaiting trial for armed robbery; thereafter, aided by various mates, he embarked on a string of depredations around Braidwood, Araluen and further south. In April 1866, at Nerrigundah, the gang engaged in a hold-up that left a policeman dead. Thomas was outlawed in May, by which time John had joined him. Reports described them as ‘well-mounted, and armed to the teeth’. In September 1866 colonial secretary Henry Parkes sent four special constables to Braidwood ‘for the express purpose of hunting down the desperate marauders’. In January 1867, the four were murdered in an ambush at Jinden. The Clarkes were blamed immediately and the authorities offered rewards of £1000 each, alive or dead. Aided by an effective bush telegraph system, the brothers evaded capture until April 1867, when they were tracked to a hideout near Araluen, apprehended, and taken to Braidwood Gaol. There, an as yet unidentified photographer took portraits that were sold by a Goulburn bookseller for two shillings and sixpence each. The brothers were later tried in Sydney before Sir Alfred Stephen, who in sentencing them to death noted the more than 60 offences, excluding murders, of which they were suspected.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing a selction of cartes de visite: at top left, Freeman Brothers Studio, Sydney (Australia 1854-1900) Maria Windeyer (c. 1865-1868); at second left top, Batchelder & O’Neill (Australia active 1857-1863) Frances Perry (c. 1863); at second right top, Townsend Duryea (Australian born America, 1823-1888) Sarah and Ann Jacob c. 1866; at top right, Batchelder & O’Neill (Australia active 1857-1863) Lady Barkly (1863); at bottom left, James E. Bray (Australia 1832-1891) Madame Sibly, Phrenologist and Mesmerist (c. 1870); at centre bottom, Stephen Edward Nixon (England 1842 – Australia 1910) Catholic clergymen from the Diocese of Adelaide (c. 1862); and at bottom right, Archibald McDonald (Canada c. 1831 – Australia 1873, Australia from c. 1847) Chang the Chinese Giant with his wife Kin Foo and manager Edward Parlett (c. 1871) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
James E. Bray (Australia, 1832-1891) Madame Sibly, Phrenologist and Mesmerist c. 1870 albumen silver carte de visite photograph Mount: 10.1 cm x 6.2cm Image: 9.4 cm x 5.5cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased, 2017
Ah Xian (Australian born China, b. 1960) Dr John Yu (installation view) 2004 Glazed ceramic 42.0 x 42.0 depth 31.0cm Commissioned with funds provided by Marilyn Darling AC 2004 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ah Xian came to Australia from Beijing in 1989, having already gained some recognition and experience as an artist here. His application for permanent residency took many years to process, and he worked for a long time as a house painter. He began casting porcelain busts and painting them with traditional Chinese designs in 1997; an artist-in-residency followed, he sold a bust to Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, and he held his first solo show in Melbourne in 2000. The following year, he won the National Gallery of Australia’s inaugural National Sculpture Prize with his life-size painted cloisonne enamel figure Human human: “Human Human : Lotus Cloisonne Figure 1 (2000-2001)”.
Dr John Yu (b. 1934), retired paediatrician and hospital administrator, was born in Nanking, China and moved to Australia with his parents when he was three years old. Educated in Sydney, from 1961 he worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children (which became the New Children’s Hospital, Westmead), becoming Head of Medicine and serving as its Chief Executive for 19 years before retiring in 1997. For many years he chaired and served on diverse bodies related to children’s health, education, medicine and the arts. From 2004 he was Chair of VisAsia, promoting appreciation of Asian visual arts and culture. He has published a number of books and many papers on paediatrics, hospital management and the decorative arts. Accepting his Australian of the Year Award in 1996, Yu said, ‘I am proud of my Chinese heritage but even prouder to be an Australian’.
In his celadon bust, Ah Xian depicts Yu life-size with his eyes closed while four colourful miniature children clamber over him. In Chinese tradition, children indicate great prosperity and happiness. As Yu noted: ‘A lot of Chinese sculptures have young children climbing all over the subject. I was really pleased because it related to and reflected on my life work as a paediatrician.’
Ah Xian celebrates a once-threatened Chinese artisanal tradition of porcelain-ming and decoration. His portraits are a statement of creative freedom and his Chinese-Australian identity, which he shares with his sitter. The mould for this bust was cast in plaster from life – ‘a funny spooky feeling’ according to the subject, who was 1996 Australian of the Year, Dr John Yu. Yu observed of his portrait, ‘people might assume that the first thing that remains me of my heritage is my facial appearance. But it’s not. It’s actually the children … A lot of Chinese sculptures have young children climbing all over the subject. I was really pleased because it related to and reflected on my life work as a paediatrician’.
Ricardo Idagi (Australian / Meriam Mir, b. 1957) False Evidence Appearing Real (installation view) 2012 Earthenware, under glaze, wood, steel, plastic and glassMeasurements 60.0 × 37.0 × 27.0cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2013 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970) I Split Your Gaze 1997, printed 2005 Gelatin silver photograph National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds from the Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2005
‘I’ve cut the image in half and then reversed it so you can’t actually look at the person straight on. And I suppose that’s what racism is about. It’s about cutting racism down the centre. It’s about cutting differences down the centre. Neither part of the portrait in I split your gaze is whole and in being simultaneously halved and doubled the viewer is forced to stare blankly through the image, rather than making eye contact with the subject. Identity becomes mutable through repetition and we observe the man without really looking at him. The work operates as a metaphor for Australia as a society divided on issues concerning race relations.’ ~ Brook Andrew, 2005
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Mike Parr (Australian, b. 1945) John Loane (printer) (Australian, b. 1950) 12 untitled self portraits (set 3) (installation view) 1990 Drypoint on 12 sheets of paper, unique state prints on paper National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of Sara Kelly 2010. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In the early 1980s Mike Parr embarked no his ‘Self Portrait Project’, exploring representation of the psychological self. An artist who works across live performance, photography, works on paper, sculpture and installation, Parr said: ‘I am constantly finding ways to perform the alienation of likeness’. In this work, Parr’s self-image simultaneously coalesces and violently disintegrates across the drypoint plates. The work’s burrs – jagged edges where the needle has ripped through the metal – record the violence of the printing process. The butts hold more ink, creating the deep black lines and a ferocious visualisation of internal turmoil and chaos.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at centre, Peter Booth’s Painting (1977, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Selina Ou’s Anita ticket seller (2002m below); and at right, Peter Booth’s Painting (1977, above) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at second left, Petrina Hicks‘ Lauren (2003, below); at third right, Christian Waller‘s Destiny (1916, below); at second right, Charles Dennington‘s Adut Akech (2018, below); and at right, Tony Kearney‘s Gill Hicks (2016, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In this series, Petrina Hicks draws on the tension between perfection and imperfection, the ideal and the real. The model, Lauren, has a look of serenity and otherworldliness – her pale skin, white hair and angelic pose are suggestive of a sculptural marble bust. However, what appears to be a picture of absolute perfection, is a skilfully manipulated image using complex studio lighting and digital technologies, techniques common to glamour and celebrity portraiture that subtly manipulate and remove physical imperfections. The result is a face that appears both fundamentally ‘real’ yet with a flawless quality, resulting in an uncanny and eerie element to the work.
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Christian Waller (Australian, 1894-1954) Destiny 1916 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated from the Estate of Ouida Marston, 2011
Destiny, personified by a female figure, blows gently into a large bowl of water in which can be seen hundreds of tiny need figures floating within fragile bubbles. An allegory of unpredictable foreign, Destiny would have had a particular relevance in the early years of the First World War, a time when Australians were becoming aware of the scale of loss of life the war would bring. Painted in 1916 soon after the artist’s marriage to Napier Waller in late 1915, and in the same years that Waller left for active service in France, Destiny may also have had more personal associations for the artist.
Adut Akech Bior (b. 1999), supermodel, was born in South Sudan and spent the first several years of her life in the UN’s Kakuma refugee camp in north-west Kenya, after her family fled from civil war. They came to Australia in 2008 and settled in Adelaide. Her break-out modelling assignment came at the age of sixteen, when she walked the runway for Yves Saint Laurent at Paris Fashion Week 2016. In 2017, she became only the second woman of colour to model bridal gowns for Chanel. The following year she featured in the Pirelli calendar, and made 33 appearances at Paris Fashion Week. She was selected by the Duchess of Sussex to feature in British Vogue’s ‘Forces for Change’ edition in 2019, which profiled her activism on humanitarian issues, the rights of asylum seekers, and racial and gender equality.
Charles Dennington’s portrait of Akech was originally taken for the December 2018 issue of Vogue Australia. Dennington discussed plans for the shoot with Akech in advance, giving him a deeper insight into the model’s personal life. This conceptual portrait is one of a group of images that present a funky and upbeat glimpse of the Sudanese-Australian model and her family at home in Adelaide.
Gill Hicks AM MBE (b. 1968) is a peace advocate, author, musician and artist. Having grown up in Adelaide, she moved to London in 1991 and worked as publishing director for architectural magazine Blueprint and as a senior curator with the Design Council. On 7 July 2005 Hicks set out for work as usual; within hours, she was the last living casualty rescued from one of three Underground trains attacked by terrorists in the ‘7/7’ London bombings. Having lost 80 per cent of her blood, she was not expected to live. Both her legs were amputated below the knee. As soon as she was able to walk on prosthetics, Hicks visited Beeston, where three of the bombers had come from, and met members of their community, who embraced her. She returned to Adelaide in 2012, where she has continued her work within the arts, launching a studio and online business, M.A.D Minds.
Tony Kearney took this photograph of Hicks in a dark basement in one of Port Adelaide’s old woolstores. Although she was in pain, Kearney notes: ‘We worked together for more than two hours, Gill uncomplaining and cheerful. Sometimes she would need to sit absolutely still for up to sixteen seconds in order to achieve the right exposure.’
James Gleeson (Australian, 1915-2008) We inhabit the corrosive littoral of habit (installation detail) 1940 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Anonymous gift, 1941 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
As an artist, writer and curator, James Gleeson was a key exponent of Surrealism in Australia. In 1937 he studied at Sydney Teachers’ College where he encountered the psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud, and developed an interest in the art and literature of European artists associated with the Dada and Surrealist movements. He produced his first Surrealist paintings and poem-drawings soon after, in 1938. Although his style and subject matter continued to transform, Gleeson was committed to Surrealism throughout his sixty-year career and unsettling, dreamlike imagery remained a consistent thread in his work.
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Del Kathryn Barton (Australian, b. 1972) inside another land 13 (installation view) 2017 Synthetic polymer paint on inkjet print National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2018 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In this montage, Del Kathryn Barton creates post-human imagery where the female body is both human and plant. Artists belonging to the early twentieth century art movement Dadaism used collage to access the Freudian domain of the unconscious mind, and the great Dada artist Hannah Höch was a key proponent of photomontage in her exploration of the role of women in a changing world. Similarly, Barton uses collage to critique the illusion of an orderly world, in favour of absurdity. The visual delirium induces a kind of hallucinatory experience in which new creatures seem possible. In part, Barton incorporates imagery of the flower as a widely understood symbol of female sexuality: their physical resemblance to women’s genitalia is coupled with an associate significance in their blooming, invoking the creation of new life.
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Del Kathryn Barton (Australian, b. 1972) inside another land 13 2017 Synthetic polymer paint on inkjet print National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2018
Rona Panangka Rubuntja joined the Hermannsberg Potters in 1988 and has since established herself as a prominent ceramic artist. This work celebrates legendary AFL star Nicky Winmar, who in 1993 defiantly protested racial taunts by pointing to his skin colour. Winner’s action held widespread attention across Australian media and called to action the ongoing issues of racism in Australian sport. As the artist recalls, ‘I remember when Nicky Winmar lifted his shirt to show that he was black. We will always support Nicky Winmar’.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Adelaide Perry‘s Rachel Roxburgh (1939, below); at second left, Joy Hester‘s Pauline McCarthy (1945, below); at second right, Sybil Craig‘s Peggy (c. 1932, below); and at right, Constance Stokes‘ Portrait of a woman in a green dress (1930, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Adelaide Perry‘s Rachel Roxburgh (1939, below); at second left, Joy Hester‘s Pauline McCarthy (1945, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Adelaide Perry (Australian 1891-1973) Rachel Roxburgh 1939 Oil on canvas Frame:77.0 cm x 67.0cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2018
Adelaide Perry held her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 1927, when she was described by Art in Australia magazine as ‘better equipped perhaps than any of the artist of her generation in this country’. The recipient, in 1920, of the National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship, Perry had studied in Paris and at the Royal Academy Schools, and became a founding member of the Contemporary Group after settling in Sydney in 1926. In 1933 she established the Adelaide Perry School of Art. Artist and conservationist Rachel Roxburgh studies there and, like Perry, exhibited with the Society of Artists, the Contemporary Group and at the Macquarie Galleries in the 1930s.
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Rachel Roxburgh BEM (1915-1991), artist, educator, conservationist, and heritage campaigner, was born in Sydney and studied at East Sydney Technical College and the Adelaide Perry Art School in the early 1930s. Subsequently, she exhibited with the Contemporary Group, the Society of Artists and at the Macquarie Galleries, and in 1940 organised an exhibition in aid of the Sydney Artists’ and Journalists’ Fund. During World War II she joined a Voluntary Aid Detachment and qualified as a nurse at Sydney Hospital. After the war she spent time in Europe, furthering her studies at the London Central and Hammersmith Art Schools and travelling and sketching in France, Italy, Spain and south-west England. She held her first solo exhibition after returning to Sydney in 1956 and the same year became a member of the newly-formed Potters Society with whom she also exhibited. During the same period she joined the National Trust of Australia (NSW), later becoming a member of its council (1961-1976) and executive (1961-1963). She also served on the Trust’s women’s committee and as a member of the survey committee worked to identify and classify the colonial architectural heritage of New South Wales. A school art teacher for over twenty years, Roxburgh also wrote several articles and books on colonial Australian architecture.
Joy Hester is known for her distinctive style of portraiture, charged with great emotion and dramatic feeling. Hester’s preferred techniques were drawing and brush and ink, and this portrait of Pauline McCarthy is a rare painting in oils by the artist. From 1938 until 1947 Hester was part of the circle of artists now known as the Angry Penguins and was associated with the group who gathered at the home of Sunday and John Reed. Hester was also a regular visitor to Pauline and Jack McCarthy’s Fitzroy bookshop and private lending library, Kismet. When Hester was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease at the age of twenty-seven, McCarthy provided her with both emotional and physical support. Hester died from the illness at forty years of age.
Constance Stokes (Australian, 1906-1991) Portrait of a woman in a green dress (installation view) 1930 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bequest of Michael Niall, 2019 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at second left, Polly Borland’s HM Queen Elizabeth II (2002, below); at second right, Atong Atem’s Adut (2015, below); and at right, Treahna Hamm’s Barmah Forest breastplate (2005) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
‘The Studio series … has developed into an exploration of my blackness and my identity and culture through African cultural iconography, black visual languages, and diasporic traditions represented in the act of posing for a photograph. The photos are traditional, staged studio photographs similar to those found in my family albums and the photo albums of many people in the diaspora – they’re bright, colourful and depict a very precarious moment in African history between traditionalism and cultural changes brought on by colonialism … This Studio series responds to the ethnographic gaze of colonial photographs of black people and speaks to the importance of creating and owning one’s own narrative and depictions.’ ~ Atong Atem, 2019
I’m interested in people and their stories, and how someone from today is connected with the past. I like to paint people who are famous, and paint them here in my community. Painting them in the desert puts them into an unexpected place. Having just a little bit of humour can take the power out of a serious situation, whether something is happening to you right now, or it happened long ago – it lets you be in a little bit of control again, you can get a bit of cheeky revenge. A sense of humour and a paintbrush is a powerful thing.’ ~ Vincent Namatjira
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing centre on the pedestal, Charles Summers’ Edmund FitzGibbon and Sarah FitzGibbon (1877); at left, Howard Arkley’s Nick Cave (1999, below); at second left, Julie Dowling’s Federation 1901-2001 series (2001, below and at second right, Julie Rrap’s Persona and shadow: Madonna (1984, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Julie Dowling’s Federation series: 1901-2001 is a series of history paintings produced in response to the Centenary of Federation. The work registers Dowling’s dismay that the Australian Constitution did not included First Nations people when the country was declared a Federation. The narrative cycle of ten canvases, each symbolising a particular diva, presents a profound and multidimensional First Peoples history of the twentieth century. Like a family tree of resilience, the series portrays the faces of ten individual members of Dowling’s family, each affected by policies and events of history.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at second left, Brenda L. Croft‘s Matilda (Ngambri) (2020, below); at third right, William Buelow Gould‘s John Eason (1838); at second right, Augustus Earle‘s Captain Richard Brooks (1826-1827); and at right, Augustus Earle‘s Mrs Richard Brooks (1826-1827) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ngambri woman, Dr Matilda House, is an activist who has dedicated her life to the pursuit of social justice and equity for First Nations peoples since the 1960s. Dr House is renowned for her work in establishing the Aboriginal Legal Service in Queanbeyan and her ongoing support for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Using a photographic technique known as a collodion wet plate process, Dr Brenda L. Croft created a powerful series honouring the spirit of Cammeraygal woman, Barangaroo (c. 1750-1791) – one of the Eora Nations earliest influential figures. This portrait of Dr House forms part of the suite, and like Barangaroo, her resilience, cultural authority and fiercely held connection to place continues to inspire many contemporary First Nations women.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, William Buelow Gould‘s John Eason (1838); at centre, Augustus Earle‘s Captain Richard Brooks (1826-1827); and at right, Augustus Earle‘s Mrs Richard Brooks (1826-1827) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at second left background, AñA Wojak‘s Acacius (Stigmata) – Tony Carden (1991, below); at centre background, Julie Rrap‘s Persona and shadow: Madonna (1984, below); and at centre on pedestal, Charles Summers‘ Edmund FitzGibbon and Sarah FitzGibbon (1877) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at centre on pedestal, Charles Summers‘ Edmund FitzGibbon and Sarah FitzGibbon (1877); at centre background, AñA Wojak‘s Acacius (Stigmata) – Tony Carden (1991, below); and at right, Julie Rrap‘s Persona and shadow: Madonna (1984, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
AñA Wojak describes themselves as a ‘cross-disciplinary artist working in performance, painting, assemblage, installation and theatre design, with a particular interest in site-specificity, ritual and altered states’. Born in Australia, they studied in Gdansk, Poland in the period of martial law, attaining a master’s degree in fine arts in 1983. Wojak has been an Archibald finalist twice, a Portia Geach finalist several times and a Sculpture by the Sea finalist four times; they won the Blake Prize for religious art in 2004.
Anthony Carden (1961-1995), activist, studied acting in New York in the early 1980s before returning home to work in theatre, film and television in Sydney and Melbourne. After being diagnosed with AIDS, he joined ACTUP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and became a lobbyist for better standards of medical care, improved hospital facilities, and effective safe sex education. An activist against discrimination in all its forms, he was a prominent advocate for people living with HIV/AIDS. With Clover Moore, then the Member for Bligh in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, he helped raise $1 million for the refurbishment of St Vincent’s Hospital’s Ward 17 South, Australia’s first dedicated ward for HIV/AIDS patients. He died five years after his diagnosis.
AñA Wojak met Carden at an ACTUP meeting in 1991, at which time the artist had begun working on a series exploring ideas of sainthood and martyrdom. Wojak painted Carden in the guise of Saint Acacius, an early Christian martyr, as he was ‘someone who was working for the rights of others whilst at the same time suffering himself’. Employing gold leaf and a blue paint derived from lapis lazuli, the work is intended to evoke Byzantine icons and Italian Renaissance altarpieces. The portrait was displayed in Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS at the National Gallery of Australia in 1994-1995; at Carden’s wake; and later in Ward 17 South before being purchased by Carden’s mother, Lesley Saddington.
Julie Rrap dissects and subverts conventional visions of women in art history, so often depicted as ‘the Madonna’. This work is from a series called Persona and Shadow in which Rrap responded to her experience of seeing so few women artists represented in major contemporary art shows in Europe during the early 1980s. Rap takes outlines from work by Edvard Munch and incorporates a fractured photographic self-portrait. Her resulting vision personally and powerfully counters the dominant narrative of women in the art world.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at second left, John Citizen’s Eddie Mabo (after Mike Kelley’s ‘Booth’s Puddle’ 1985, from Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile) No. 3 (1996, below); at third right, TextaQueen’s Creature from the Black Platoon starring Gary Foley 2011 (2011, below); and at right, Guido Maestri’s Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (2009, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
John Citizen is the artistic alter ego of Australian artist Gordon Bennett (1955-2014), painter and multi-media artist, addressed issues of identity and power in a postcolonial context. Within two years of graduating from the Queensland College of Art in 1988 he was awarded the prestigious Moët and Chandon Fellowship. He had numerous solo exhibitions and was represented in many travelling exhibitions within Australia and overseas. Of indigenous Australian and Anglo-Celtic descent, he was concerned with the use of language in delineating ethnocentric boundaries, viewing his work as ‘history painting’ in that it indicated the ways in which history is constructed after the event. Bennett is represented under both John Citizen and Gordon Bennett in many state, regional and tertiary collections.
Koiki (Eddie) Mabo (1937-1992), Torres Strait Islander man, initiated a legal case for native title against the State of Queensland in 1982. Along with his fellow Meriam people, Mabo was convinced that he owned his family’s land on Murray Island (Mer) in Torres Strait. By contrast, Queensland Crown lawyers argued that on annexation in 1879, all the land had become the property of the Crown. In 1992, the seven Justices of the High Court found 6-1 in favour of Mabo and his co-plaintiffs, overturning the accepted view that Australia had been terra nullius (empty land) before white settlement. Mabo died before the historic decision, which was to lead to the Land Title Act of 1993, and permanently to alter the way Australians think about Aboriginal land ownership.
John Citizen is the artistic alter ego of Australian artist Gordon Bennett (1955-2014). Bennett, who worked under his own name and that of John Citizen, grew up in Nambour, Queensland and only learned of his mother’s Indigenous heritage in his early teens. He went to art school as a mature student. Stating early in his career that ‘the bottom line of my work is coming to terms with my Aboriginality,’ he continued to engage with questions of cultural and personal identity, interrogating Australia’s colonial past and postcolonial present through a succession of allusive postmodern works. He won the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997, and the NGV mounted a touring exhibition, Gordon Bennett, in 2007-2008. Bennett said that when he began to think about Eddie Mabo he ‘could not think of him as a real person … I only [knew] the Eddie Mabo of the “mainstream” news media, a very two-dimensional “copy” of the man himself.’ In making his portrait of Mabo, he used a newspaper image and headlines from newspaper articles about the Native Title furore, and combined them with an image by the American artist Mike Kelley. ‘To me the image of Eddie Mabo stood like the eye of a storm,’ Bennett said, ‘calmly asserting his rights while all around him the storm, a war of words and rhetoric, raged.’
TextaQueen (Australian, b. 1975) Creature from the Black Platoon starring Gary Foley 2011 (installation view) 2011 From the series We don’t need another hero Fibre-tipped pen on paper Frame: 119.0 x 135.0cm Sheet: 97.5 x 127.2cm National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased, 2011 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Through a series of fictional movie posters, TextaQueen explores a re-writing of colonial history by subverting roles of power. This work combines film posters to subvert the original leading white film cast, creating a mash-up of Gary Foley as a powerful Blak militia. Foley is a renowned Indigenous activist, known for his involvement in the black Power Movement in Australia, which saw the formation of the Aboriginal Legal Service and Medical Service Redfern in the 1970s to counter the problem of police harassment. Here, TextQueen poses Foley as an outlaw of his post-apocalypse, representing him as a survivor while simultaneously creating a platform for the Indigenous experiences of colonisation and racism to be acknowledged and recognised.
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Gary Foley (b. 1950) Indigenous activist and historian, has written extensively on Indigenous political movements and maintains the Koori History Website, an intensive history archive and education resource. Of Gumbainggir descent, at seventeen Foley moved from his native Grafton to Sydney. There, inspired by the biography of African-American human rights activist Malcolm X, he was instrumental in establishing Sydney’s Aboriginal Legal Service and Aboriginal Medical Service, and in 1972 he came to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. The first Indigenous Director of the Aboriginal Arts Board, he was Senior Curator for Southeastern Australia at Museum Victoria from 2001 to 2005. Since 2005 Foley has lectured and undertaken postgraduate research at the University of Melbourne.
TextaQueen’s (b. 1975) portrait of Gary Foley is from a series featuring ‘people of colour as outlaws of their post-apocalypse, drawn as if posters for fictional movies. As an artist of colour … I’ve sought out peers from various sociocultural and racial backgrounds to propose characters, costumes, and fictional surrounds to represent themselves as survivors of their Armageddon.’ Gary Foley launched the exhibition of the series in Melbourne.
Guido Maestri (Australian, b. 1974) Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (installation view) 2009 Oil on linen National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of the artist 2011 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Born blind, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (1970-2017), was a talented musician with an extraordinary voice. Gurrumul was a self-taught instrumentalist, playing guitar, piano, drunks and yidaki. Growing up on the remote island of Gallwin’ku (Elcho Island), Gurrumul was taught all Yolngu culture in song, dance, art and ceremony. His gentle songs draw reference to these teachings of sacred animals, the sea and seasons, ancestors and reverence for the land. Guido Maestri’s portrait of the musician was created after the artist saw Gurrumul perform in Sydney on New Year’s Eve 2008. Using just one colour and applied by building upon layers of thin oil paint, this portrait plays homage ad respect to one of Australia’s most influential musicians.
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Guido Maestri (Australian, b. 1974) Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu 2009 Oil on linen National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Gift of the artist 2011 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
Ricky Maynard (Australian / Big River/Ben Lomond, b. 1953) Arthur, Wik elder 2000 From the series Returning to places that name us Gelatin silver photograph 96.1 × 121.3cm irreg. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Milton and Penny Harris, 2007
Ricky Maynard (Australian / Big River/Ben Lomond, b. 1953) Wik Elder, Gladys Tybingoomba 2000 From the series Returning to places that name us Gelatin silver photograph 95.5 × 123.0cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Milton and Penny Harris, 2007
These intimate portraits of Wik Elders from the community of Aurukun, Far North Queensland, were inspired by the hard-fought battle for custodianship and recognition of the Wik people’s connection to traditional land and waterways. In this image, Maynard documents cultural leader and activist Gladys Tybingoompa, who is remembered today as a prolific figure in the Wik vs Queensland Case and a trailblazer for Indigenous land rights across Australia.
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Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing at left, Peter Corlett’s The connoisseur II (1984); at second left, Howard Arkley’s Nick Cave (1999, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Anne Zahalka is best known for her photographs that address issues such as racial stereotyping, gender and difference. Using images largely drawn from art historical sources to create elaborately constructed sets, Zahalka’s work raises questions about identity, place and nationhood. The daughter of European immigrants displaced during the war, themes of belonging and national identity are intrinsic to Zahalka’s practice, allowing her to comment on the changing role migration and multiculturalism have had in Australia throughout history. The surfers challenge stereotypical representations of Australian beach-goers, presenting them against a painted backdrop of surf and sand.
One of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Tracey Moffatt grew up in Brisbane and moved to Sydney after studying at the Queensland College of Art. She worked in photography, video and filmmaking, helped establish the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, and was part of the group of creatives engaged in reshaping the representation of First Nations peoples in the visual and performing arts. When Moffatt photographed him in 1985, Yolngu man David Gulpilil AM (1953-2021) had already appeared in several major film and television productions, including Walkabout (1971), Storm Boy (1976), The Last Wave (1977) and The Timeless Land (1980). This portrait of him was shown in NADOC ’86, which Wiradjuri / Kamilaroi artist Michael Riley described as the first exhibition where Aboriginal artists ‘were dictating … how they wanted to show images of their own people.’ Moffatt’s image of Gulpilil lazing at Bondi Beach might seem benignly tongue-in-cheek, but in fact makes an incisive reference to colonialism and the dispossession on which Australia’s supposedly egalitarian, laid-back lifestyle is based.
This work and Moffatt’s portrait of Nunukul and Yugambeh dancer Russell Page (1968-2002) were the first two photographs acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.
Installation view of the exhibition WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture at NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne showing photographs from Brenda L. Croft’s A man bout town series (2004, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brenda L. Croft (Australian / Gurindji/Mutpurra, b. 1965) A hostile landscape (installation view) 2003, printed 2004 From A man about town series 2004 84.0 × 124.8cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds arranged by Loti Smorgon for Contemporary Australian Photography, 2004 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Brenda Croft stumbled upon the two photographs A hostile landscape and A man about town in 1997, while sorting the material possessions of her late father. As Croft has written, ‘I carried these images around in my mind for the next seven years, returning to them often and wondering about the city and countryscapes, the period in which they were set and the anonymous people in them’. The two photographs show Croft’s father as a solitary figure in the urban landscape. These depictions contrast with typical representations of the ‘businessman’ within society, which portray a white, middle-class man. These photographs also work to reposition prevailing imagery of Aboriginal Australians living purely in remote areas, as opposed to city environments.
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Brenda L. Croft (Australian / Gurindji/Mutpurra, b. 1965) A man about town 2003, printed 2004 From A man about town series 2004 84.0 × 124.8cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds arranged by Loti Smorgon for Contemporary Australian Photography, 2004
Edward Schafer & Co., Melbourne (retailer) Belt buckle c. 1900 15 ct gold, garnets, enamel (a-b) 6.2 x 8.3 x 1.8cm (overall) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne The Altmann Collection of Australian Silver Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by John and Jan Altmann, Founder Benefactors, 1986
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) The Battalion 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Familiar yet strange: Frank Hurley’s First World War photographs
Most texts about the war photographs of Frank Hurley taken on the Western Front that I have read, focus on his use of multiple negatives to construct fantastical images of reportage, ‘Photographic Impression Pictures’ – combination prints – “pictures made to produce a realistic impression of certain events by the combined use of a number of negatives.” Hurley argued that it was impossible to capture the essence of what he saw in a single negative. He observed in the Australasian Photo-Review in 1919:
“None but those who have endeavoured can realise the insurmountable difficulties of portraying a modern battle by the camera. To include the event on a single negative, I have tried and tried, but the results are hopeless … Now, if negatives are taken of all the separate incidents in the action and combined, some idea may then be gained of what a modern battle looks like.”1
“Hurley desperately wanted to convey this horror through his photographs. He took many shots of the apocalyptic battlefields but was not content. While bleak, the stillness and shock of these images failed to communicate the cacophony of war. How was he to visually capture the ‘blinding sheet of flame; and the […] screaming shriek of thousands of shells’?”2
Hurley clashed with the official historian, Captain Charles Bean, about truth and photography. Bean was not convinced on the use of multiple negatives and referred to the images as ‘fakes’ but, on threat of resignation, Hurley stood his ground “and was not prepared to compromise for his art nor to fail in his duty to portray the horrors that he witnessed.”
These images formed a very small part of the work that Hurley produced in World War I and none are reproduced in this posting.
Personally I am more interested in Hurley’s “straight” photographs and in observing the minutiae within each image. By doing this we can began to invert Hurley’s idea of capturing the whole event on the battlefield on a combined “macro” multi-negative. What Hurley was actually doing in his ordinary photographs was making possible such a complete record through the accumulation of familiar yet strange “micro” observations on a single negative – creating “atmospheres” of existence that document incidents in the action, which formally work together to picture the whole.
For example in the photograph 48th Battalion awaiting orders to “Hop” in the Big Drive (18th July – 6th November 1917, below), Hurley uses a “near far” perspective, focusing the viewer’s eye along the perspective of the trench to the lone tree, building and standing figure vanishing point in the distance: but in the detail we can observe a man smoking a pipe, two men sewing and, to the right, what looks like a Very Pistol (or flare gun) – heavily used in both world wars – casually lying on a sandbag. The slight blur of the soldiers Brodie Mark I helmet at left indicates the length of the exposure, the physical length of that exposures existence. By observing the minutiae in this image the viewer can enter the space of the image and be fully present with these soldiers.
Other photographs offer more intriguing details that contribute to make the whole “picture” of the battlefield. Showing the cacophony and detritus of war, Australians Waiting to “go over” Passchendaele (18th July – 6th November 1917, below) also shows in the misty background the silhouette of one of those new fangled tanks that were making an appearance on the battlefield, probably knocked out or broken down as they usually were. In the photograph incorrectly titled by Lawsons, ‘Australians Waiting to “Go Over”‘ – its correct title being Members of the 13th Australian Field Ambulance at Passchendaele(1917, below) – we can observe a man holding a gas mask in his left hand; canisters of water and other belongings hanging from metal rods banged into the mud of the face of the trench; a big wooden stretcher standing vertically in the trench; and two of the men wearing an armband brassard with the words SB on them, indicating these men were stretcher bearers. Again, in the minutiae of elements, of detail, Hurley creates direct access to an “atmosphere” of the battlefield in all its dourness, mud and hollow-eyed soldiers staring grimly at the camera.
In the photograph Crew of 2 Gun, Royal Marine Artillery loading ‘Granny’, a 15 inch Howitzer (heavy artillery gun), near the Menin Road (4 October 1917, below), Hurley captures the balletic dance required to load a monster, death dealing gun… the heavy shells manoeuvred over to the gun with a chain and pulley rigged up beside the gun pit. Reminiscent of the group portraits of Rembrandt with their “dramatic use of light and shadow (tenebrism) and the perception of motion in what would have traditionally been a static military group portrait,”3 Hurley’s photograph features three acolytes with their heads bowed at right whilst in the centre three seemingly kneeling figures raise their eyes as if in a devotional Renaissance painting to observe Christ being raised, pulled by chains onto the cross which is suspended above them.
In Hurley’s observations of the world – quick, fleeting glances of destruction, not long fixed stares – we look, recognise and feel his need to recognise his objective… before we need to verbalise our objective, ‘clear-sighted’, unbiased ‘views’ of the subject matter. In Australian wounded on the Menin Road, near Birr Cross Road on September 20th, 1917 (September 20th, 1917, below), Hurley’s glass plate has cracked much like the world he was photographing. Clutching a blanket, a man on a stretcher in the foreground turns to look at the camera(man) while next to him a sergeant put his hand to his head. To his left another man is covered with a blanket so that we can only see his face from the nose upwards but we can observe he is staring towards the camera. Behind these grounded men is a maelstrom of movement picturing the violent turmoil of war – abandoned stretchers to the right; an upended lorry perched precariously at an angle; and walking wounded trudging past the seemingly endless line of injured and dead lying on the side of a muddy road in a decimated landscape. This photograph is but a tiny grain of sand on the head of a pin, here and then gone, for soon after Major George Heydon (the man in the sling in the centre of the photograph) had passed this point “a shell landed at that same spot killing many of the men on the stretchers.”4 Life recorded and then snuffed out, both in less than a second.
Hurley need not have worried about capturing the macro, the whole of any event, for this is an impossible task with any still camera. By it’s very nature the camera excludes whatever is outside its direct line of sight, its point of view… so it is always exclusory. But in freezing the micro/cosmos within any photograph what Hurley captures are intriguing, fleeting “atmospheres” where the contexts and conditions for creation have brought together disparate elements to create a visual whole, in this case a dance of death.
In my mind, Hurley’s war photographs are much like the later English photographer Bill Brandt’s landscape photographs. Despite the difference in subject matter, my feeling is that both Brandt and Hurley were trying to display a sublime aesthetic. Whereas Hurley wanted to capture the intensity of the battlefield and its death and despair in one intimate, sublime image – here using sublime in the archaic sense of wanting to elevate something to a high degree of moral or spiritual purity or excellence – Brandt wanted to capture the archaic sublime beauty of the landscape. Brandt attempted to do this by introducing “an atmosphere that connects with the viewer in order to provoke an emotional response from contemplation of the work. In this sense it would seem that Brandt did not merely aim to represent a place but to capture its very essence in a single image…”5 The very thing that Hurley stated he wanted to do, to give some idea of what a modern battle looks and feels like in a single negative. Brandt stated, “Thus it was I found atmosphere to be the spell that charged the commonplace with beauty. … I only know it is a combination of elements … which reveals the subject as familiar and yet strange.”6
To photograph these minutiae is not simply to document but to (e)strange through a heightened sense of atmosphere. A combination of elements … which reveals the subject as familiar and yet strange: Isn’t that what Hurley’s war photographs are?
Hurley’s photographs contain a familiar yet strange “atmosphere” at once both objective but truly immersive and subjective (we can “picture” ourselves there) – in which the different elements that make the landscape (nature, light, viewpoint, weather conditions, subject, context) converge in an aesthetic canon rooted in a cultural tradition – in this case, war and war photography.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Word count: 1,450
Footnotes
1/ Australasian Photo-Review, 15 Feb, 1919, p. 164
3/ Anonymous. “The Night Watch,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 28/07/2022
4/ Anonymous. “AWM E00711,” on the Australian War Memorial website Nd [Online] Cited 27/03/2022
5/ Anonymous. “Bill Brandt” text for the exhibition of the same name at the Fundación Mapfre, Madrid quoted on the Art Blart website 22nd August 2021 [Online] Cited 28/07/2022
6/ Ibid.,
These photographs appeared on the Lawsons Auctioneers, Sydney website and are published here under fair use conditions for the purpose of education and research. I have added pertinent information with each photograph where possible. Each photograph has been lightly digitally cleaned. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“What an awful scene of desolation! Everything has been swept away: only stumps of trees stick up here & there […] It’s the most awful & appalling sight I have ever seen. The exaggerated machinations of hell are here typified. Everywhere the ground is littered with bits of guns, bayonets, shells & men. Way down in one of these mine craters was an awful sight. There lay three hideous, almost skeleton decomposed fragments of corpses of German gunners. Oh the frightfulness of it all. To think that these fragments were once sweethearts, may be, husbands or loved sons, & this was the end. Almost back again to their native element but terrible. Until my dying day I shall never forget this haunting glimpse down into the mine crater on hill 60.”
Frank Hurley diary entry, 23rd August, 1917
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
John McCrae
James Francis “Frank” Hurley was 30 years old when he joined the Australian Imperial Force as an honorary captain and official photographer.
Before arriving on the Western Front in August 1917 to document the Third Battle of Ypres, Hurley had been no stranger to photographing under risky conditions. Less than one year earlier, he had returned to civilisation after two years stranded on the pack ice of Antarctica with Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance, a desperate struggle for survival during which he managed to produce a stunning set of images.
Hurley’s commitment to capturing an image, to ‘getting there without a fuss’, as Bean described it, underplays the many difficulties he faced in the field. His daily encounters with death, destruction and the ubiquitous mud of Flanders can only have hampered his photography. Hurley was – perhaps unknowingly – echoing Bean’s impetus to establish a national collection and, in turn, a memorial to Australians at war when he wrote:
“My enthusiasm and keenness, however, to record the hideous things men have to endure urges me on. No monetary considerations, or very few others in fact, would induce any man to flounder in mud to his knees to try and take pictures.”
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) 48th Battalion awaiting orders to “Hop” in the Big Drive (recto) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) 48th Battalion awaiting orders to “Hop” in the Big Drive (verso) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Australians Waiting to “go over” Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Notice the silhouette of the tank in the background of the photograph, and at centre right a .303inch Vickers Machine Gun mounted on a tripod (see below)
.303inch Vickers Machine Gun between 1914 and 1918 Courtesy of York Museums Trust Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
Standard Vickers machine gun with tripod mount and associated ammunition belt, ammunition box plus petrol can (as a condenser can) with hose. The Vickers Gun was the standard British machine gun from 1912. It was heavy and mounted on a tripod, requiring a team of six men to transport it to and operate it on the battlefield. Although difficult to use on advancing troops, machine guns were used to deadly effect from defensive positions.
The caption from Lawsons auction house is incorrect. These are not front line troops waiting to “go over” but stretcher bearers as evidenced by the armband on the two men on the left hand side of the photograph and their attendant stretcher vertically propped up against the trench.
“While the soldiers were readying themselves at the front of a trench, awaiting the order to go over the top, the unarmed bearers were at the back with their big wooden stretchers, trying, says Mayhew, to be as invisible as possible because the fighting men often considered them unlucky.”
In a more recent Australian publication Diaries of a Stretcher-Bearer 1916-1918 the Great War experience of Edward Charles Munro is retold. Munro served as an AAMC stretcher-bearer on the Western Front (Edward C. Munro, Donald Munro (ed.), Diaries of a stretcher-bearer: 1916-1918, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, 2010). Munro, awarded the Military Medal for his actions during the Battle of Bullecourt in May 1917, candidly related his involvement and experience in the 5th Australian Field Ambulance. The text gives the reader a clear understanding of the work and wartime experience of an Australian stretcher-bearer on the Western Front and is remarkable for its honesty and detail. The work is unusual as it portrayed the reality of life on the Western Front in a manner few others have done. For example, the author graphically described the technical aspects of the stretcher-bearers’ work in evacuating the wounded and frankly related his personal fears and those of his AAMC stretcher-bearer squad while working in harsh conditions and whilst under fire.
Liana Markovich. “‘No time for tears for the dying’: stretcher-bearers on the Western Front, 1914-1918.” Doctor of Philosophy thesis, University of New South Wales, November 2015, p. 20.
Unknown maker Armband brassard: Stretcher Bearer, Australian Army – Lance Corporal A Kennedy, 52 Battalion, AIF c. 1916 Brass, Linen, White metal, Wool Australian War Memorial Collection
Alexander Kennedy, born in Glebe, Sydney, was a 20 year old baker working in Brisbane, when he enlisted in the AIF on 27 April 1915. After training he was assigned as a private to the Headquarters of 26 Battalion, with the service number 570.
The battalion sailed for Egypt on 29 June, aboard the troopship HMAT A60 Aenas, and then on to Gallipoli, where they landed on 12 September, undertaking defensive roles on the peninsula. Kennedy suffered what was diagnosed as an epileptic fit on 18 October. After assessment at 16 (British) Casualty Clearing Station, he returned to his unit the following day, but immediately suffered more fits. As a result, he was evacuated to the hospital ship, Soudan, and taken to Malta for treatment. Kennedy returned to duty in Egypt in March 1916 and transferred to D Company, 52 Battalion the following month, as a battalion stretcher bearer.
On 6 June 1916, he sailed with his battalion, aboard the Iverniai, to France for service on the Western Front. On 18 August Kennedy was promoted to lance corporal. In its first action in France, at Mouquet Farm on 3 September, fifty per cent of the men in 52 Battalion became casualties. Kennedy was one of them, receiving gunshot wounds to the shoulder, chest and left thigh, and fractured toes. Shortly before he was wounded he took part in an action in which a German machine gun crew were killed, for which he was subsequently awarded the Military Medal.
Kennedy was evacuated to a casualty clearing station on 5 September and then on to 18 (British) General Hospital at Camiers. There, his condition fluctuated, improving by 2 October, dangerously ill two weeks later, and then improving on 24 October. It is unclear form his records whether one or both of his legs was amputated, but an amputation took place on 16 November. A decision was made to try to transfer him to England by easy stages and he was moved about 4 miles to the St John’s Brigade Hospital near Etaples at the end of November. However, infection set in and he died there of septicemia at 12.15 a.m. on 2 December.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Passchendaele Stunt Duckwalk track (recto) 29th October 1917 Gelatin silver print
Australian troops walk along a duckboard track through the remains of Chateau Wood, Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), 29 October 1917. The word duckboard was created during the early 20th century to describe the boards or slats of wood laid down to provide safe footing for the soldiers of World War I across wet or muddy ground in trenches or camps.
“One dares not venture off the duckboard or he will surely become bogged, or sink in the quicksand-like slime of rain-filled shell craters. Add to this frightful walking a harassing shellfire and soaking to the skin, and you curse the day that you were induced to put foot on this polluted damned ground.”
~ Frank Hurley Diary October 11, 1917
WWI, 30 Oct 1917; A general view of the battlefield at Hannebeek in the Ypres sector. In the foreground are the duckboard and corduroy tracks leading to Westhoek and Anzac Ridge, and beyond it several Australian artillerymen (right) can be seen making their way to their dugouts in the wood.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Passchendaele Stunt Duckwalk track (verso) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) The mud Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Australian artillery, Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Australian gun crew next to what looks like a Vickers BL 8-inch howitzer (Mark VII or VIII) (see below)
British-designed BL 8 inch Mk 7 howitzer, manufactured in USA as Model 1917 and supplied to the Finnish army. Displayed in Hämeenlinna Artillery Museum. The stampings on the breech state: 8 IN. HOWITZER MODEL OF 1917 (VICKERS) MIDVALE NO 188 1918 VICKERS MARK VI Photo taken on June 18, 2006 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Hellfire corner, Menin Road (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Hurley’s most famous images, his view of Hellfire Corner on the Menin Road, “the most dangerous place on the Western Front”, taken during the 3rd battle of Ypres in 1917. Notice the attempt to screen the galloping horses and artillery from German observation and then shelling by flimsy pieces of material at the left hand side of the image.
“It [the Menin Road] is notorious and being enfiladed by the enemy’s fire is decidedly the hottest ground on the whole front. The way is strewn with dead horses, the effect of last night’s shelling and battered men’s helmets that tell of the fate of the drivers.”
~ Frank Hurley, diary, 14 September 1917, MS883, National Library of Australia
Hellfire Corner on the Menin Road, in the Ypres Sector. This well named locality was continually under observation and notorious for its danger. At night this road was crammed with traffic, limbers, guns, pack animals, motor lorries and troops. Several motor lorries received direct hits at different times and were totally destroyed. The dead bodies of horses, mules and men were often to be seen lying where the last shell had got them. The neighbourhood was piled with the wreckage of all kinds of transport. A ‘sticky’ spot that was always taken at the trot. Left to right is Ypres Wood on Railway Ridge in background, hessian camouflage on the corner, Hooge, track to Gordon House veers to the right with Leinster Farm in the distance.
The crossroads on the Menin Road outside Ypres, 27 September 1917. This spot was known as ‘Hellfire Corner’ and from the heights a few kilometres away German artillery observers could see the constant traffic passing along the Menin Road to the front lines. A British transport driver described Hellfire Corner: ‘… when I got to Hellfire Corner it was chaos. A salvo of shells had landed in among the convoy. The lorries were scattered all over the place and even those that hadn’t been directly hit had been run off the roadway … the road was littered with bodies and debris and shell-holes all over the place. (Driver LG Burton, Army Service Corps, quoted in Lyn Macdonald, They Called it Passchendaele, London, 1979, p. 92. Image: E01889)
Hellfire Corner was a junction in the Ypres Salient in the First World War. The main supplies for the British Army in this sector passed along the road from Ypres to Menin – the famous Menin Road. A section of the road was where the Sint-Jan-Zillebeke road and the Ypres-Roulers (Roeselare) railway (line 64) crossed the road. The German Army positions overlooked this spot and their guns were registered upon it so that movement through this junction was perilous, making it the most dangerous place in the sector.
3rd Battle Ypres 1917 WW1 Footage Hell Fire Corner Menin Road Then And Now
Then and Now look at Hellfire Corner on Menin Road. Australian Divisions participated in the battles of Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcapelle and the First Battle of Passchendaele. In eight weeks of fighting Australian forces incurred 38,000 casualties.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Crew of 2 Gun, Royal Marine Artillery loading ‘Granny’, a 15 inch Howitzer (heavy artillery gun), near the Menin Road 4 October 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title: Australian howitzer, Passchendaele (no text on back of print)
Crew of 2 Gun, Royal Marine Artillery loading ‘Granny’, a 15 inch Howitzer (heavy artillery gun), near the Menin Road, in the Ypres sector, one of the monsters which, in the fighting of 4 October 1917, greatly assisted the advance by pounding the enemy’s reserve areas and demolishing the concrete fortresses. The heavy shells are manoeuvred over to the gun with a chain and pulley rigged up beside the gun pit. Identified front right supporting a shell is Gunner 1113 A.C. Holder.
The Battle of Menin Road was an offensive operation, part of the Third Battle of Ypres [also known as the Battle of Passchendaele] on the Western Front, undertaken by the British Second Army in an attempt to take sections of the curving ridge, east of Ypres, which the Menin Road crossed. This action saw the first involvement of Australian units (1st and 2nd Divisions AIF) in the Third Battle of Ypres. The attack was successful along its entire front, though the advancing troops had to overcome formidable entrenched German defensive positions which included mutually supporting concrete pill-box strongpoints and also resist fierce German counter-attacks. A feature of this battle was the intensity of the opening British artillery support. The two AIF Divisions sustained 5,013 casualties in the action.
Heavy artillery was designed to pulverise enemy defensive positions. By and large German defences were constructed very well indeed, and the onus was on the Allies to attack them to retake ground occupied by the Germans in 1914. German defences often comprised concrete blockhouses and deep underground concrete dugouts which were impervious to Field Artillery.
Big guns were a prime target for opposing artillerymen who would seek to apply counter battery fire to enemy gun positions. Locating them accurately was a story in itself. In the end it was the British who triumphed thanks largely to the work of Adelaide-born (later Professor and 1915 Nobel Prize winner) Captain Lawrence Bragg, serving in the Royal Artillery. He and his team developed a surprisingly accurate technique based on sound ranging that gave the Allies a decisive advantage being able to locate enemy heavy guns with remarkable accuracy. It was a decisive factor in the Allied victory on 8th August 1918 at the Battle of Amiens.
Gunners have four defensive measures; distance from the enemy, concealment, protection in the form of dugouts and bunkers, and mobility. As far as range was concerned, soldiers have a saying; “if the enemy is in range so are you”. At least with heavy guns, they are generally beyond the range of Field Artillery. Concealment? When one of these guns went off, the entire neighbourhood knew it; at night the muzzle flash was prodigious, so notions of concealment were therefore moot. Once firing began the best protection is to be part of a massed barrage. Mobility is a misnomer in the case of most heavy artillery; it is certainly relative. The 9.2 inch Howitzers were not mobile – they could not easily be redeployed without time and lifting equipment. Protection? Defensive earthworks would not sustain a direct hit by enemy heavy artillery. Nor could they prevent enemy infantry attacking if they ever managed to get close enough (which they did during the Battle of Cambrai in 1917). In short, being a gunner was not without risk.
The Australian Heavy Batteries served on the Western Front largely detached from the rest of the AIF. They spent relatively little time on the Somme. Most of their service was rendered further north around Arras and Vimy in France and into Flanders, as part of British Corps Artillery. The Heavy Batteries were manned at the outset with soldiers from the permanent force Garrison Artillery, later augmented by reinforcements from the militia.
Steve Larkins. “36th Heavy Artillery Group,” on the Virtual War Memorial website November 2014 [Online] Cited 25/03/2022
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Australian wounded on the Menin Road, near Birr Cross Road on September 20th, 1917 September 20th, 1917 Gelatin silver print
National Library of Australia title: Australian wounded on the Menin Road, near Birr Cross Road on September 20th, 1917 Australian War Memorial title: A scene on the Menin Road near Hooge, Belgium, Frank Hurley, 20 September 1917 Lawsons title: The Wounded Ypres (no text on back of print)
Notice the broken glass of the negative plate, the man being led at left possibly blinded in a gas attack, and the piles of stretchers at right.
“The Menin Road is a wondrous sight: with stretcher bearers packed on either side awaiting transport and the centre crowded with walking wounded and prisoners… A large number of casualties were coming in when we left … Those that came in and were not overly seriously wounded expressed their pleasure of having escaped the horror of another battle, and it is patent that all will thoroughly loathe this frightful prolongation of massacre.”
~ Hurley Diary entry 20 September 1917
“It was wondrously quiet, only an occasional shell was fired – the aftermath of the storm, and it sounded for all the world like the occasional boom of a roller on a peaceful beach, with the swish of the water corresponding to the scream of the shell.”
~ Hurley Diary entry 21 September 1917
A scene on the Menin Road near Hooge, 20 September 1917. The wounded are waiting for clearance to the advanced dressing station further back down the Menin Road towards Ypres. The soldier with his arm in a sling in the centre of the photograph is Major George Heydon, Regimental Medical Officer, 8th Battalion AIF, with members of the 1st Field Ambulance AIF. Shortly after Major Heydon passed this point a shell landed at that same spot killing many of the men on the stretchers. (AWM E00711)
In his photograph of the wounded on the Menin Road (above), Hurley shows a seemingly endless line of injured and dead lying on the side of a muddy road in a decimated landscape. A lone figure appears to be providing aid while a stream of stretcher-bearers, soldiers and German prisoners passes by. Hurley’s photograph conveys the scale of the landscape and the terrible human toll. The awfulness of the scene is confirmed in his diary entry from that day: ‘The Menin Road is a wondrous sight: with stretcher bearers packed on either side awaiting transport and the centre crowded with walking wounded and prisoners’. He also commented:
‘A large number of casualties were coming in when we left … Those that came in and were not overly seriously wounded expressed their pleasure of having escaped the horror of another battle, and it is patent that all will thoroughly loathe this frightful prolongation of massacre.’
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Shell hole near Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Destruction Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
By the time Australian Frank Hurley arrived on the Western Front to assume ‘the grim duties of France’ in 1917,1 he had a well-established reputation as a photographer, adventurer and raconteur. His photographs and films along with his thrillingly described exploits in Antarctica on expeditions with Sir Douglas Mawson (1911-1913) and Sir Ernest Shackleton (1914-1916) had captured the public imagination. Hurley’s skills as a photographer, his controversial and occasionally shocking imagery and his ability to put on a ‘good show’ continued to ensure that his work was seen by mass audiences in London, Sydney and Melbourne in the years immediately following the First World War. A popular success with the general public, the Exhibition of Enlargements Official War Photographs opened in Melbourne in 1921 and offered audiences the opportunity to purchase his photographs and those of other official war photographers. Copies of four photographs by Hurley believed to be from this exhibition were presented to the National Gallery of Victoria in 2003.2
The outbreak of war in Europe coincided with the departure of Shackleton and his crew, including Hurley, on the Imperial Trans-Antarctica expedition. For the crew of the Endurance – largely comprising men from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand – the knowledge of the war in Europe must have weighed heavily. The Shackleton expedition met with disaster before it reached Antarctica. From January 1915 until August 1916 the party was stranded and had no news of the outside world. Aware of the outbreak of war, the shipwrecked crew often speculated on the outcome of the conflict, unaware that it was far from over. In July 1916 Hurley’s crewmate Thomas Orde Lee wrote in his diary: ‘I think we are all a little ashamed of having run away from it. Most though, think it must be over by now’.3 At the time of their rescue, all were shocked to learn that, after two years, the war was not over but, in fact, had escalated. The impact of this news was described by Shackleton who wrote that, upon being rescued, they felt ‘like men arisen from the dead to a world gone mad’.4
Within ten weeks of his rescue, Hurley travelled to London. In August 1917 he was appointed an official photographer and cinematographer with the Australian War Records Section (AWRS). Formed in May of that year, the AWRS, under the direction of Charles Bean, was charged to collect Australian war relics and records, including photographs. Photo-historian Shaune Lakin notes that, for Bean, ‘the photograph formed part of a broader national archive comprising written accounts, relics, and other pictorial records that together would tell the story and commemorate the history of Australians at war’.5 In this capacity Hurley was quickly deployed to Europe, arriving in France on 21 August 1917. He was under the direction of Bean, with whom he had a difficult relationship on occasions; the two are reputed to have disagreed about the role of photography. A notable point of conflict between them was Hurley’s commitment to using multiple negatives to create some of his photographs of battlefield scenes. For Hurley, singular photographs often failed to convey the scale, drama and activity of battle, and he described such images as looking more like a ‘rehearsal in a paddock’.6 In contrast, Bean’s view was that photographs needed to be an unmanipulated documentary record of the events in which Australian forces were engaged. But despite their differences, Bean clearly had respect for Hurley’s commitment to obtaining the images he wanted, and wrote: ‘[Hurley] is a splendid, capable photo-grapher. I was worrying that he might miss the best pictures but he always got there, without fuss’.7
After the sublime wilderness of Antarctica, wartime London presented a bleak picture to Hurley, but it was nothing compared to the horrors of the Western Front. His diaries convey the destruction he encountered. On his first day in Flanders, Hurley wrote: ‘What an awful scene of desolation! Everything has been swept away, – only stumps of trees stick up here or there and the whole field has the appearance of having been recently ploughed’.8 Hurley (diary entry, 23 August 1917).
His photographs convey even more vividly the visceral horror of the battlefield.
Susan van Wyk, Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria (in 2012).
1/ Frank Hurley, ‘My diary, official war photographer, Commonwealth Military Forces, from 21 August 1917 to 31 August 1918’, in Papers of Frank Hurley, Manuscripts Collection, MS 833, National Library of Australia, Canberra.
2/ It is believed that the four NGV photographs may have come from this exhibition because the images’ sizes match the smallest print size offered for sale in the 1921 exhibition.
3/ Thomas Orde Lee (diary entry, 19 July 1916), quoted in Alisdair McGregor, Frank Hurley: A Photographer’s Life, Viking, Melbourne, 2004, p. 136.
4/ Ernest Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917, Konecky & Konecky, New York, 1998, p. 231.
5/ Shaune Lakin, Contact: Photographs from the Australian War Memorial Collection, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 2006, p. xi.
6/ Frank Hurley, ‘War photography’, Australasian Photo-Review, 15 February 1919, p. 164, quoted in Helen Ennis, Man with a Camera: Frank Hurley Overseas, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p. 3.
7/ Charles Bean (diary entry, vol. 132), quoted in David Millar, Snowdrift to Shellfire: Captain James Francis Hurley 1885-1962, David Ell, Sydney, 1984, p. 61.
8/ Hurley (diary entry, 23 August 1917).
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Captured German trenches strewn with dead after the battle of 20 September 1917 Sept 20, 1917 Gelatin silver print
Terrible effects of our Artillery. Boche dead may be seen lying in the foreground. Sept 20 1917. 4th Division Australian War Memorial title: Captured German trenches strewn with dead after the battle of 20 September 1917 Lawsons title: “Dead” Passchendaele (no text on back of print)
Battle of Passchendaele (31 July – 10 November 1917) also known as the Third Battle of Ypres
The Third Battle of Ypres (German: Dritte Flandernschlacht; French: Troisième Bataille des Flandres; Dutch: Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (/ˈpæʃəndeɪl/), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the Allies against the German Empire. The battle took place on the Western Front, from July to November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders, as part of a strategy decided by the Allies at conferences in November 1916 and May 1917. Passchendaele lies on the last ridge east of Ypres, 5 mi (8.0 km) from Roulers (now Roeselare) a junction of the Bruges (Brugge) to Kortrijk railway. The station at Roulers was on the main supply route of the German 4th Army. Once Passchendaele Ridge had been captured, the Allied advance was to continue to a line from Thourout (now Torhout) to Couckelaere (Koekelare).
Further operations and a British supporting attack along the Belgian coast from Nieuport (Nieuwpoort), combined with an amphibious landing (Operation Hush), were to have reached Bruges and then the Dutch frontier. Although a general withdrawal had seemed inevitable in early October, the Germans were able to avoid one due to the resistance of the 4th Army, unusually wet weather in August, the beginning of the autumn rains in October and the diversion of British and French resources to Italy. The campaign ended in November, when the Canadian Corps captured Passchendaele, apart from local attacks in December and early in the new year. The Battle of the Lys (Fourth Battle of Ypres) and the Fifth Battle of Ypres of 1918, were fought before the Allies occupied the Belgian coast and reached the Dutch frontier.
A campaign in Flanders was controversial in 1917 and has remained so. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, opposed the offensive, as did General Ferdinand Foch, the Chief of Staff of the French Army. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), did not receive approval for the Flanders operation from the War Cabinet until 25 July. Matters of dispute by the participants, writers and historians since 1917 include the wisdom of pursuing an offensive strategy in the wake of the Nivelle Offensive, rather than waiting for the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in France.
The choice of Flanders, its climate, the selection of General Hubert Gough and the Fifth Army to conduct the offensive, debates over the nature of the opening attack and between advocates of shallow and deeper objectives, remain controversial. The time between the Battle of Messines (7-14 June) and the first Allied attack (the Battle of Pilckem Ridge, 31 July), the extent to which the internal troubles of the French armies influenced the British, the effect of the exceptional weather, the decision to continue the offensive in October and the human costs of the campaign are also debated.
Text from the Wikipedia website – fuller information on the battle is available from this website
On 6th November 1917, after three months of fierce fighting, British and Canadian forces finally took control of the tiny village of Passchendaele in the West Flanders region of Belgium, so ending one of the bloodiest battles of World War I. With approximately a third of a million British and Allied soldiers either killed or wounded, the Battle of Passchendaele (officially the third battle of Ypres), symbolises the true horror of industrialised trench warfare.
General Sir Douglas Haig, the British Commander in Chief in France, had been convinced to launch his forces at the German submarine bases along the Belgian coast in an attempt to reduce the massive shipping losses then being suffered by the Royal Navy. General Haig also believed that the German army was close to collapse and that a major offensive … “just one more push”, could hasten the end the war.
Thus the offensive at Passchendaele was launched on the 18th July 1917 with a bombardment of the German lines involving 3,000 guns. In the 10 days that followed, it is estimated that over 4 1/4 million shells were fired. Many of these would have been filled by the brave Lasses of Barnbow.
The actual infantry assault followed at 03.50 on 31st July, but far from collapsing, the German Fourth Army fought well and restricted the main British advance to relatively small gains.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Destruction Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Destruction Passchendaele 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
A group of gelatin silver prints in identical format, each 145 x 200mm and each unmounted. Reverse of each image shows Frank Hurley’s negative number in pencil, and ten with an additional contemporary manuscript caption in ink, (clearly written by an eyewitness) as follows: St Quentin Canal; Passchendaele Stunt. Duck walk track; 48th Battallion awaiting orders to “Hop” in the Big Drive; Big 15″ gun emplacement – Germans destroyed same when compelled to evacuate; A row of Howitzers of 105th Battery behind a cut bank near Bray; 4th Division Sports Races. Note the Book Makers; Armoured Cars; The 27th & 28th Battns. having a rest & meal behind the banks before “going in” at Mt. St. Quentin Sept 1 1918; Dead Fritz Machine Gunner & Gun 8 August ’18; One of the biggest guns captured in the War. Captured by Australians, 15″ destroyed before Fritz evacuated. …
A substantial archive of photographs by Australia’s pre-eminent war photographer, Frank Hurley (1885-1962). Among them are some of Hurley’s most famous images, including his view of Hell Fire Corner on the Menin Road, “the most dangerous place on the Western Front” and the ruined Cathedral of Ypres, seen from the Cloth Hall, both taken during the 3rd battle of Ypres in 1917.
From mid 1917 to early September 1918 the Australian photographer and adventurer Frank Hurley, who had already achieved fame for his Antarctic photographs taken on Douglas Mawson’s expedition, served on the Western Front as an official war photographer in the AIF, with the honorary rank of captain. His dramatic images vividly capture the carnage and atmosphere in perhaps the most brutalising theatre of war in the history of human conflict. Hurley’s photographs featured in the exhibition Australian War Pictures and Photographs, staged in London in 1918.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Camped out near Ypres (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Ruins Ypres (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
I’m afraid that I’m becoming callous to many of the extraordinary sights and sounds that take place around me, and things which astounded me when I landed, now seem quite commonplace.
It is a weird, awful and terrible sight; yet somehow wildly beautiful. For my part, Ypres as it now is, has a curious fascination and aesthetically is far more interesting than the Ypres that was.
~ Excerpt from Frank Hurley’s diary
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Ypres (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Australian Field Gun Ypres 1917 (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Australian artillery gunners hard at work behind their 18 pounder field gun.
QF 18-pounder gun
The Ordnance QF 18-pounder, or simply 18-pounder gun, was the standard British Empire field gun of the First World War-era. It formed the backbone of the Royal Field Artillery during the war, and was produced in large numbers. It was used by British Forces in all the main theatres, and by British troops in Russia in 1919. Its calibre (84 mm) and shell weight were greater than those of the equivalent field guns in French (75 mm) and German (77 mm) service. It was generally horse drawn until mechanisation in the 1930s.
The first versions were introduced in 1904. Later versions remained in service with British forces until early 1942. During the interwar period, the 18-pounder was developed into the early versions of the equally famous Ordnance QF 25-pounder, which would form the basis of the British artillery forces during and after the Second World War in much the same fashion as the 18-pounder had during the First.
Text from the Wikipedia website – for more information about the field gun please see the website
The Gun
The Quick Firing (QF) 18 Pounder was the principle Field Gun of the British Army in World War One. The gun saw service in every theatre of the Great War. Its calibre of 84mm and shell weight made it more brutal and destructive than the French 75mm and German 77mm. Its ammunition had the shell combined with the cartridge thus giving it the description of ‘quick firing’.
The gun and its ammunition limber were towed by a team of six light draught horses. A driver was allocated to each two horse team and rode the left horse of each pair. The two wheeled ammunition limber was hooked up to the horses and the trail of the gun was hooked to the limber. Further to this, each gun had two additional ammunition limbers towed by their own team. The photograph below illustrates the standard horse drawn configuration.
The gun detachments, led by the detachment sergeant on his own horse, rode into action either on the horses or on the limber. During the early stages of the war, an ammunition limber was positioned on the left of the gun, but as the war progressed and larger quantities of ammunition were being used, stockpiles of ammunition were dumped in pits next to the guns.
The Australian History
The 18 pounder gun was introduced into Australian service in 1906 and continued to be used until 1945. It was the standard field gun in service until 1940 when it began to be replaced by the 25 pounder gun. When World War 1 commenced there were 116 18-pounder guns in Australia and 76 of these were sent to Gallipoli and France during the war. In addition further guns were purchased to replace damaged guns and also to supply the increasing number of gun batteries in the AIF. It is estimated some 500 guns were obtained in all. 116 were brought back to Australia. Today only seven of this early model remain of which three are updated with pneumatic tyres and three are Museum items.
Anonymous text. “The 18 Pounder Project,” on the Royal Australian Artillery Historical Company website Nd [Online] Cited 26/03/2022
The RAAHC 18 Pounder, before restoration
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Shell hole, Ypres (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) The ruined Cathedral of Ypres, seen from the Cloth Hall, taken during the 3rd battle of Ypres in 1917 (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
To drive the Boche from Ypres, it was necessary to practically raze the town; and now that we hold it we are shelled in return, but shelling now makes little difference, for the fine buildings and churches are scarce left stone on stone.
Roaming amongst the domestic ruins made me sad. Here and there were fragments of toys: what a source of happiness they once were.
The strafed trees were coming back to life and budding, and there beside a great shell crater blossomed a single rose. How out of place it seemed amidst all this ravage. I took compassion on it and plucked it – The last rose of Ypres.
~ Frank Hurley Diary September 3, 1917
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Evening by the Cloth Hall, Ypres (Third Battle of Ypres / Battle of Passchendaele) 18th July – 6th November 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title: After the battle at Ypres (no text on verso of print)
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) “Anzac” tank in the mud 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title, no text on back of print
The ‘Anzac’ blockhouse on which Lieutenant Arthur Hull, 18th Battalion AIF, placed the Australian flag on 20 September 1917. When the battalion attacked this position the German garrison was attempting to evacuate the blockhouse, dragging their two machine-guns with them. The Germans were overpowered and captured. (AWM E02321)
A pillbox known as Anzac Strong Post, captured by Australian troops in the attack of the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions, on 20 September 1917, and on which they hoisted an Australian flag. To this position there subsequently came an enemy messenger dog with messages to a German officer, telling of the Australian attack and instructing him to hold out at all costs. The dog was killed by shellfire later in the day, and the flag was destroyed, for the pillbox suffered many direct hits from the enemy’s high explosive shells. This photograph was taken a week later. Note the ANZAC sign and the rifles leaning against the pill box.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) One of the biggest guns captured in the War. Captured by Australians, 15″ destroyed before Fritz evacuated (recto) 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) One of the biggest guns captured in the War. Captured by Australians, 15″ destroyed before Fritz evacuated (verso) 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Big 15″ Gun Emplacement – Germans destroyed same when compelled to Evacuate. Photo shows the muzzle of this particular Pea Shooter (recto) 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Probably the reverse angle of the same gun in the photograph above
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Big 15″ Gun Emplacement – Germans destroyed same when compelled to Evacuate. Photo shows the muzzle of this particular Pea Shooter (verso) 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Armoured cars held up for a time on the main Harbonnieres Road, by fallen trees 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title: Armoured cars (text on back of print)
“An armoured car, carrying a French flag, moving up the main Amiens Road from Warfusee Abancourt during the advance of the 15th Australian Infantry Brigade. The two soldiers on the right are unidentified.”
This appears to be an Austin 1918 pattern car, probably belonging to the 17th (Armoured Car) Battalion of the Tank Corps. This unit was in action in France from March of 1918. The flag is not a French Tricolor, but rather a two-colour signal flag – probably red and white.
For more information on the Austin Armoured Car please see the Wikipedia website
The last, and probably most familiar vehicle in the Austin line up, the Austin 3rd Series (Improved)/4th Series Armoured Car, yet again closely followed upon it’s immediate precursor, the Austin 3rd Series car. And like all its predecessors, including the “older” Austin 1st Series, and Austin 2nd Series Armoured Cars, it too was built for use by Russian forces. However, due to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, most sources state that none of the 4th Series vehicles were used by the Russians*. The approximately 70 completed and subsequently built cars were acquired by the British Army and used fairly successfully by them, most notably by the 17th Battalion Tank Corps in 1918.
The 4th Series cars are fairly similar to the 3rd Series vehicles, except for a very significant change, the fitting of a strengthened suspension, which included dual rear wheels. The new suspension would aid the cars in improving their mobility, although never to a point of them being considered especially agile. In addition, some cars used in the later stage of the war / post-war were mounted with solid disc wheels. Finally, the 4th Series vehicles were also armed with British weapons instead of the Maxim machine guns favoured by the Russians. Sources state that both .303 Vickers and .303 Hotchkiss machine guns were mounted at various times.
Anonymous text. “Austin 3rd (Improved)/4th Series Armored Car,” on the War Wheels website Nd [Online] Cited 27/03/2022
Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882) Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter July 1863
Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882) Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter (detail) July 1863
Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882) [Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Dead Confederate sharpshooter in “The devil’s den”] A Sharpshooter’s Last Sleep, Gettysburg, July 1863 July 1863
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Dead Fritz Machine Gunner and Gun 8 August 18 (recto) 8 August 1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Dead Fritz Machine Gunner and Gun 8 August 18 (verso) 8 August 1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) The 108th Howitzer Battery in action at Bray using 4.5 inch Mk I Howitzers. The troops of the 3rd Australian Division whom the Battery was supporting were then engaged beyond Suzanne (recto) 26th August 1918 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title: A row of Howitzers of the 105th Battery behind a cut bank rear Bray (text on back of print)
The 108th Howitzer Battery in action at Bray using 4.5 inch Mk I Howitzers. The troops of the 3rd Australian Division whom the Battery was supporting were then engaged beyond Suzanne. Identified, left to right: 21492 Corporal J. F. Yates MM (partially obscured by the gun); 21437 Bombardier John Thomas Wharton MM (shovelling); 37417 Gunner (Gnr) Charles Edward Harnett (back to camera); 24557 Gnr C. F. H. Ipsen (looking up); 23094 Gnr John Southwell (extreme right foreground); 32887 Gnr Charles Edward Dun (in the background between Harnett and Ipsen); 23073 Gnr A. McDonald (directly behind Ipsen); 32962 Gnr Stockley (behind McDonald).
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) A row of Howitzers of the 105th Battery behind a cut bank rear Bray (verso) 26th August 1918 Gelatin silver print
QF 4.5-inch howitzer
The Ordnance QF 4.5-inch howitzer was the standard British Empire field (or ‘light’) howitzer of the First World War era. It replaced the BL 5-inch howitzer and equipped some 25% of the field artillery. It entered service in 1910 and remained in service through the interwar period and was last used in the field by British forces in early 1942. It was generally horse drawn until mechanisation in the 1930s.
The QF 4.5-inch (110 mm) howitzer was used by British and Commonwealth forces in most theatres, by Russia and by British troops in Russia in 1919. Its calibre (114 mm) and hence shell weight were greater than those of the equivalent German field howitzer (105 mm); France did not have an equivalent. In the Second World War it equipped some units of the BEF and British, Australian, New Zealand and South African batteries in East Africa and the Middle and Far East.
Text from the Wikipedia website – for more information on the gun please see the website
British Q.F. 4.5 inch howitzer Mk II
British Q.F. 4.5 inch howitzer Mk II
British Q.F. 4.5 inch howitzer Mk II. A breech-loading artillery piece fitted with a sliding breech block, axial recoil system, splinter-proof shield, and steel box carriage. The gun is fitted with two wooden spoked ‘Wheels 2nd Class ‘C’ No 45′, and is equipped with drag ropes, spare shovels, rammer, and leather sight and tool boxes. …
History / Summary
The QF [Quick Fire] 4.5 inch howitzer was initially brought into service in 1909. The Mark II was introduced in 1917, rectifying a breechblock design defect in the earlier Mark I. The gun was capable of firing a 16 kilogram shell to a range of almost 7 kilometres, however it was its capacity to fire at elevations of up to 45 degrees that made the weapon so effective. The high elevation allowed the gun to lob shells almost vertically into areas protected by traditional fortifications. The heavier 4.5 inch high explosive shell was found to be far more effective than the 18 pounder in damaging enemy parapets and trenches and thus found increasing use for this purpose.
Over 3,300 4.5 inch howitzers were manufactured during the First World War. The Mark II design remained in service into the Second World War when they were finally replaced by the QF 25-Pounder.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) 4th Division Sports Races. Note the Book Makers (recto) 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) 4th Division Sports Races. Note the Book Makers (verso) 1917-1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) The 27th and 28th Btn’s having a rest and meal behind the banks before “going in” at Mt St Quentin Sept 1, 1918 (recto) September 1, 1918 Gelatin silver print
The offensive was planned by General John Monash; Monash planned a high-risk frontal assault which required the Australian 2nd Division to cross a series of marshes to attack the heights. This plan failed when the assaulting troops could not cross the marshes. After this initial setback, Monash manoeuvred his divisions in the only free manoeuvre battle of any consequence undertaken by the Australians on the Western Front.
Looking back after the event, Monash accounted for the success by the wonderful gallantry of the men, the rapidity with which the plan was carried out, and the sheer daring of the attempt. In his Australian Victories in France, Monash pays tribute to the commander of the 2nd Division, Major-General Charles Rosenthal, who was in charge of the operation. But Monash and his staff were responsible for the conception of the project and the working out of the plans.
The Allied victory at the Battle of Mont Saint Quentin dealt a strong blow to five German divisions, including the elite 2nd Guards Division. As the position overlooked much of the terrain east of Mont St. Quentin, it guaranteed that the Germans would not be able to stop the allies west of the Hindenburg Line (the same position from which the Germans had launched their offensive in the spring). A total of 2,600 prisoners were taken at a cost of slightly over 3,000 casualties.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) The 27th and 28th Btn’s having a rest and meal behind the banks before “going in” at Mt St Quentin Sept 1, 1918 (verso) September 1, 1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) St Quentin Canal 1918 Gelatin silver print
The Battle of St. Quentin Canal
The Battle of St. Quentin Canal was a pivotal battle of World War I that began on 29 September 1918 and involved British, Australian and American forces operating as part of the British Fourth Army under the overall command of General Sir Henry Rawlinson. Further north, part of the British Third Army also supported the attack. South of the Fourth Army’s 19 km (12 mi) front, the French First Army launched a coordinated attack on a 9.5 km (6 mi) front. The objective was to break through one of the most heavily defended stretches of the German Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line), which in this sector used the St Quentin Canal as part of its defences. The assault achieved its objectives (though not according to the planned timetable), resulting in the first full breach of the Hindenburg Line, in the face of heavy German resistance. In concert with other attacks of the Grand Offensive along the length of the line, Allied success convinced the German high command that there was little hope of an ultimate German victory.
Text from the Wikipedia website – for more information on the battle please see the website
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) A tank put out of action when crossing a deep communication trench running from a dugout near the St Quentin Canal 25 September 1918 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title: No 18 Tank (no text on back of print)
This is a British Mark IV tank (female)
A tank put out of action when crossing a deep communication trench running from a dugout near the St Quentin Canal to the main Hindenburg Line. Land mines, scattered about the Hindenburg trenches and the specially directed anti-tank gun fire caused heavy tank casualties. Notice the crew entry doors beneath the side sponsons.
The Mark IV (pronounced Mark four) was a British tank of the First World War. Introduced in 1917, it benefited from significant developments of the Mark I tank (the intervening designs being small batches used for training). The main improvements were in armour, the re-siting of the fuel tank and ease of transport. A total of 1,220 Mk IV were built: 420 “Males”, 595 “Females” and 205 Tank Tenders (unarmed vehicles used to carry supplies), which made it the most numerous British tank of the war. The Mark IV was first used in mid 1917 at the Battle of Messines Ridge. It remained in British service until the end of the war, and a small number served briefly with other combatants afterwards.
The “Male” tank was a category of tank prevalent in World War I. As opposed to the five machine guns of the “Female” version of the Mark I tank, the male version of the Mark I had a QF 6 pounder 6 cwt Hotchkiss and three machine guns.
Production
The Mark IV was built by six manufacturers: Metropolitan (the majority builder), Fosters of Lincoln, Armstrong-Whitworth, Coventry Ordnance Works, William Beardmore & Company and Mirrlees, Watson & Co., with the main production being in 1917. The first order was placed for 1,000 tanks with Metropolitan in August 1916. It was then cancelled, reinstated and then modified between August and December 1916. The other manufacturers, contracted for no more than 100 tanks each, were largely immune to the conflict between Stern and the War Office.
Service
The Mark IV was first used in large numbers on 7 June 1917, during the British assault on Messines Ridge. Crossing dry but heavily cratered terrain, many of the 60-plus Mark IVs lagged behind the infantry, but several made important contributions to the battle. By comparison, at the Third Battle of Ypres (also known as Passchendaele) from 31 July, where the preliminary 24-day long barrage had destroyed all drainage and heavy rain had soaked the field, the tanks found it heavy going and contributed little; those that sank into the swampy ground were immobilised and became easy targets for enemy artillery.
Nearly 460 Mark IV tanks were used during the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, showing that a large concentration of tanks could quickly overcome even the most sophisticated trench systems.
In the aftermath of the German spring offensive on the Western Front, the first tank-to-tank battle was between Mk IV tanks and German A7Vs in the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918.
About 40 captured Mark IVs were employed by the Germans as Beutepanzerwagen (the German word Beute means “loot” or “booty”) with a crew of 12. These formed four tank companies from December 1917. Some of these had their six pounders replaced by a German equivalent.
Peter Trimming 1917 British Mark IV tank (female) on display in Ashford, Kent, England 19 March 2013 Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962)? Members of the 38th Battalion in Dog Trench near Guillemont Farm 29 September 1918 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title: Diggers taking a break (no text on back of print)
The Australian War Memorial website notes that this photograph is by George Hubert Wilkins.
A group from the 38th Battalion, supporting the 27th US Division in the attack on the Hindenburg Line, pause after being held up by heavy enemy machine gun fire, 29 September 1918.
Members of the 38th Battalion in Dog Trench near Guillemont Farm, in which they were held by machine gun fire during the attack on the Hindenburg Line, near Bony. Identified, left to right: 5918 Private (Pte) Binion; 967 Sergeant A. E. Pegler MM; 3020 Corporal H. Amiet MM; Captain C. H. Peters MC; unidentified soldier (almost completely obscured by Buckland); 763 Company Sergeant Major (CSM) R. J. Buckland MM (smoking a pipe); 6217 Pte G. Bain.
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Members of the 38th Battalion in Dog Trench near Guillemont Farm (detail) 29 September 1918 Gelatin silver print
Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962) Water filled trench, Passchendaele 1917 Gelatin silver print
Lawsons title: Rest after battle (no text on back of print)
A communication trench previously used by the Australian troops at Westhoek Ridge, in the Ypres section, during the attack of the 2nd Division further forward, near Passchendaele Ridge. Two unidentified members of the 2nd Division are seen watching the shellfire (not in view).
“Sometimes theory leads to an over determination. Something is gained but at a price. Finding images that evoke a sound can only be saved by paying the higher price of remembering how images look when their sound is removed.”
~ Ian Lobb
From my knowledge of photography, I have added further images that I can hear … but not in the exhibition that I know of. You may like to recall other photographs that you could include in the exhibition.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Though photographs are silent, photographers have long conjured sound in their images. Whether depicting crowded urban spaces, musicians performing, people engaged in conversations, or even more abstract depictions of sound, the pictures in this exhibition show photography’s power to communicate beyond the visual. The images date from the 19th century to the recent past, and in each, the audible plays as much of a role as the visual. As you look at these photographs, you are invited to imagine what you might “hear” as well.
Photographs may be silent, but photographers have long conjured sound in their images.
Whether depicting crowded urban spaces, musicians performing, or people engaged in conversation, the pictures in this exhibition prove photography’s power to communicate beyond the visual.
Drawn from Getty’s permanent collection, In Focus: Sound, on view June 28 through September 2, 2022, unites two sensory perceptions – sight and sound – in photographs that record the visual while also imitating the audible.
“Photography and sound have more in common than one might expect,” says Karen Hellman, curator of the exhibition. “Photographs can evoke a sensory perception that they cannot actually depict. Looking at photographs while thinking about sound could provide a new way of viewing and appreciating photography.”
The 19th century saw a keen scientific and philosophical interest in reproducing ephemeral phenomena. This led to the development of the photograph as well as the phonograph. This interlinked history perhaps explains photography’s connection to sound and why photographers, even subconsciously, have endeavoured to picture it. In each image in this exhibition, which date from the 19th century to the recent past, the audible plays as much of a role as the visual.
This exhibition includes works by known and lesser-known makers from the 19th century to the recent past, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Walker Evans, Man Ray, Graciela Iturbide, Marco Breuer, Naoya Hatakeyama, and Christian Marclay.
In Focus: Sound will be on view June 28 through September 2, 2022, at the Getty Center.
“Bowery old-timers claim her voice has had no match for power and ferocity since Maggie Cline used to stun with “Knock ‘Em Down McCloskey”.”
The uncredited text, referring to this photograph of the bar singer known as “Tillie,” accompanied a group of Lisette Model’s photographs made at Sammy’s Bar that were reproduced in the September 1994 Harper’s Bazaar magazine. Taken from below and at a slight diagonal angle, the image captures the vitality and vibrancy of the performer belting it out on the stage at Sammy’s, a local favourite in the Bowery district of New York, also visited by photographers Weegee and Diane Arbus. The angle from which the photograph was made also emphasises the gleaming microphone, which seem to rise up to meet the challenge of projecting Tillie’s already powerful voice.
Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023) Studio 54, New York City May 1977 Silver gelatin print
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Songs of the Sky 1924 Gelatin silver print
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) Songs of the Sky 1924 Gelatin silver print
Eva Besnyö (Dutch, 1910-2003) Boy With Cello, Balaton, Hungary 1931 Gelatin silver print 42.5 x 39.2cm (16.7 x 15.4 in)
Arnold Newman (American, 1918-2006) Igor Stravinsky 1945 Gelatin silver contact sheet
Santu Mofokeng (South African, b. 1956) Opening Song, Hand Clapping and Bells 1986 From the series Train Church Gelatin silver print Image: 19 x 28.5cm
Platt D Babbitt (American, 1822-1879) Niagara Falls from the American side c. 1855 Whole plate daguerreotype
Platt D Babbitt (American, 1822-1879) [Scene at Niagara Falls] c. 1855 Daguerreotype
Platt D Babbitt (American, 1822-1879) Niagara Falls c. 1860 Daguerreotype
Henri Huet (French, 1927-1971)/AP ‘Life’ magazine photographer Larry Burrows (far left) struggles through elephant grass and the rotor wash of an American evacuation helicopter as he helps GIs carry a wounded soldier on a stretcher from the jungle to the chopper in Mimot, Cambodia 4 May 1970 Gelatin silver print
Henri Huet (French, 1927-1971) The body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is raised up to an evacuation helicopter, Vietnam 1966 Gelatin silver print
James Barnor (Ghanian, b. 1929) E. K. Nyame, the legendary Ghanaian musician, photographed for a record cover, Accra c. 1975 Gelatin silver print
Roger Scott (Australian, b. 1944) Ghost train 1972 Gelatin silver print
Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) The House of Horrors 1961 Gelatin silver print
Robert H. Jackson (American, b. 1934) FATAL BULLET HITS OSWALD. Jack Ruby fires bullet point blank into the body of Lee Harvey Oswald at Dallas Police Station. Oswald grimaces in agony November 24, 1963
Robert H. Jackson (American, b. 1934) Jack Ruby (52) shoots Lee Harvey Oswald (24) 24 November 1963
Originally published in the Dallas Times Herald, November 25, 1963. Cropped from the source image to the portion that was published in 1963. Winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Photography.
Unknown photographer Survivors of the atomic bomb attack of Nagasaki walk through the destruction as fire rages in the background Aug. 9 1945 1945
John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016) Open Air Shower, Bronte Beach 1964 Gelatin silver print
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Man Stepping from Cable Car, San Francisco 1956 Gelatin silver print
Kaho Yu (Australian) Untitled from the series Infinitesimal Residual Vibration of An Unknown Sound 2009-2011
Kaho Yu (Australian) Untitled from the series Infinitesimal Residual Vibration of An Unknown Sound 2009-2011
The photographs in this series were taken during a period when I was feeling existentially bored. Instead of distracting myself with activities and accumulating new sensations, I decided to “look” at boredom, to study, and perhaps to understand it. The most natural strategy was to observe the immediate environments where my daily activities take place – train stations, cubicles, copy machines room, etc. I carried a medium format camera on a tripod and spent the odd hours wandering alone through those familiar spaces.
My “study” did not lead me to any revelation or answer. Instead, I found myself spending a lot of time waiting in a long silence, between the opening and the closing of the camera shutter.
Charles Babbage, a scientist in 1837, postulated that every voice and sound, once imparted on the air particles, does not dissipate but remains in the diffused movements of all the particles in the atmosphere. Thus, there might one day come a person equipped with the right mathematical knowledge of these motions who will be able to capture the infinitesimal vibrations and to trace back to their ultimate source.
Taking a long exposure, letting the light slowly accumulate an image on the celluloid surface, to me, is not unlike a sound seeker searching in the air particles, for the tiny residual movements that have been conveyed through the history of mankind, from the beginning of time.
Kaho Yu artist statement
… i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces
… i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces brings together a collection of early photographs related to music, a group of 78rpm recordings, and short excerpts from various literary sources that are contemporary with the sound and images. It is a somewhat intuitive gathering, culled from artist Steve Roden’s collection of thousands of vernacular photographs related to music, sound, and listening. The subjects range from the PT Barnum-esque Professor McRea – “Ontario’s Musical Wonder” (pictured with his complex sculptural one man band contraption) – to anonymous African-American guitar players and images of early phonographs. The images range from professional portraits to ethereal, accidental, double exposures – and include a range of photographic print processes, such as tintypes, ambrotypes, cdvs, cabinet cards, real photo postcards, albumen prints, and turn-of-the-century snapshots.
The two CDs display a variety of recordings, including one-off amateur recordings, regular commercial releases, and early sound effects records. there is no narrative structure to the book, but the collision of literary quotes (Hamsun, Lagarkvist, Wordsworth, Nabokov, etc.). Recordings and images conspire towards a consistent mood that is anchored by the book’s title, which binds such disparate things as an early recording of an American cowboy ballad, a poem by a Swedish Nobel laureate, a recording of crickets created artificially, and an image of an itinerant anonymous woman sitting in a field, playing a guitar. The book also contains an essay by Roden.
Text from the Dust to Digital website Nd [Online] Cited 23/07/2022. Published by Dust-to-Digital, 2011. The book is out of stock but available on Abe.com website.
… i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces book cover (2011)
The J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive Los Angeles, California 90049
1. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man with cut-out pedestal] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Rendering the past and the presence, shaping history and memory
These fascinating glass plate negatives from Mongolia have been saved for prosperity by the Endangered Archives Programme which “seeks to preserve cultural heritage and make it available to as wide an audience as possible… [The programme] primarily funds digitisation projects to record and preserve the content of archives. Our projects create digital material in a format that facilitates long-term preservation, and at least two copies of these are stored: a primary copy that remains at an appropriate repository in the country of origin, and a secondary copy held at the British Library… The EAP website provides access to these digital collections for research, education and enjoyment. We do not however distribute high resolution, print quality versions of images, referring requests for these back to the original holders of the archive. We also seek to ensure that the values of the people and communities from which the archives have come are respected and that they are consulted in any significant re-use of the digital material.”1
While the outcomes of the project are noble and valuable, in effect, these photographs will remain buried in the archive on the British Library website unless someone is specifically undertaking focused research on the history of Mongolian photography. I tried to contact the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia to use the images but got no reply. Thus, I use the images under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research in order that a wider range of people around the world will actually get to see and appreciate them.
I have digitally cleaned all of the images to remove scratches and dust spots to present them to the best of their advantage. I wanted to know what size the glass plate negatives are but not even this information is included on the British Library website. No information on the image makers is available … but they were probably photographers making a living travelling from town to town taking portraits of local families, carrying their painted canvas backdrops applied to collapsible boards with them.
Images 1-18
The most interesting group of images in this posting are from one session which I have grouped in numbers 1-18 below. I have only a small idea in which order these photographs were taken. The time on the alarm clock is indistinguishable in some of the photographs and in others jumps from 12.55pm to 2.55pm to 4.35pm to 4.45pm. If we assume that the alarm clock was working during the portrait session (it could have been broken and manually changed to different positions), then this would indicate that the photoshoot took place over the course of one afternoon. What we do know is that these photographs were all taken in one location in one sitting and are of one extended family or village group wearing their finest clothes, posed in a portable, constructed studio setting.
In image number 1 (above) a man stands in front of a painted canvas backdrop of an effusive, rococo-style scene with window, acanthus decorated columns, heavy curtains decorated with tassels and profuse carved wood work. We can see the edge of the backdrop boards to the right of the man and also observe the piece of wire or rope which is holding them up at top right. The “set” or mise-en-scène (the stage of a theatrical production or the setting or surroundings of an event) is inside a house (not a traditional portable, round tent covered with skins or felt which in Mongolia is called a ger), for at right we can see wallpaper on the wall of the house. There are bare wooden floorboards covered in a patterned carpet with circular motifs and to the right is a bentwood chair. The man stands behind a prop – a probably wooden, cut-out decorated column – looking off camera with an air of authority. He is the only person in the twelve images that is so positioned (behind a column). He is probably a leader of the village and / or head of the household.
In image 2 a man sits on a chair on the same carpet with his hands on his knees staring straight into the camera lens. In his right hand is a set of prayer beads possibly made from mala seeds. The bentwood chair has been replaced to the right hand side with a more sturdy looking chair. In image 3 two men sit on chairs on the same carpet with a table between them, staring directly at the camera. Both men have their hands on their knees and one holds some prayer beads. They are probably father and son. On the table are what I think are prized possessions of the family and / or village: two decorated vases and what would have been a rare and valuable object in 1910s-1920s Mongolia, an alarm clock with bell. The vases, alarm clock and later, teapot, cups and saucers – the cups with handles, a very Western influence as tea in Mongolia was usually drunk in cups without handles2 – are a recurring presence in these photographs, perhaps signifying the status of the family being photographed.
Image number 4 shows a standing man and a women, possibly husband and wife, staring directly at the camera. The same two vases and clock are present on the table between them, but this time the table has been covered in an elaborately decorated tablecloth. Notice how the length of women’s sleeves completely cover her hands by some distance. The same carpet is present on the floor as it is in image number 5. In this fifth image the photographer has moved the couple, again probably husband and wife, along the backdrop so that the painted column appears directly between them above the more prominently displayed table, covered with the same tablecloth. Now there is only one vase displayed, directly behind the same alarm clock. Again, note the length of both male and female sleeves on their costumes, completely covering their hands by a long way.3 The relocation of the couple has cropped the window out of frame to the right, while the bentwood chair now makes a reappearance.
In image number 6 the photographer turns the camera horizontally and pulls back from the subjects to capture a family group, possibly a mother at second left accompanied by her two sons and daughter. All participants stand front on to the camera and stare directly into the camera lens but it is interesting to note the body language of the group: the men stand rigid and stiff, one with his hand on his hip, while the mother sways to her right and the daughter leans to her left, both unsure of the process of being photographed and the final outcome of the photograph. The same carpet is on the floor and two bentwood chairs are now to the right.
In the vertical image number 7 the photographer has moved forward to produce a more tightly cropped photograph, placing the two men directly in front of the table obscuring it and the vase (which can just be seen behind the men) from view. He (for undoubtedly at this time the photographer would have been a man) has also replaced the large carpet with a small carpet with diagonal decoration as its border, isolating the men so that they seem to float above the bare wooden floorboards. The man at right stares off camera to somewhere behind and to the left of the camera, while the man at left stares with disdain and a sense of defiance directly at the camera.
In image number 8 the photographer retains the closer perspective but moves nearer again, titling the camera down to observe the seated man (notice how the window at top right has been cropped from the previous image). Here the photographer balances the composition left to right using the prominent position of table, vases and alarm clock to offset the form of the seated man who stares straight at the camera. The carpet is the same as in the seventh image with its diagonal border, but this time you can see the profuse inner geometric pattern of dark and light shapes. In the family group which is image 9, the photographer has turned the camera horizontally so as to fit in the subjects of his composition, retaining the carpet with the diagonal edge decoration and light and dark inner shapes from the previous image. The not happy child holds her mother’s hand, the woman in the traditional noble headdress of the married Khalkha upper class women, a special hairstyle designed to mimic cow’s horns or, in another version, the wings of a mythical bird. “The basis of [the headdress] is a small silver cap with filigree, to which numerous silver, coral or turquoise ornaments are attached. The combed back hair is divided into two parts and formed into the “horns” with the help of several silver or bamboo pins. The lower part of the strands is braided in plaits. Rich women allow themselves to further decorate this part of the hair: the plaits are put into embroidered brocade covers with rows of coral and silver bands. For special events or for travelling a pointed hat (malagay) which looks like a crown is worn over the small cap. The hat is usually made of velvet and has colourful ribbons attached at the back. The top is sometimes decorated with a big coral or other stone.”4
In image number 10 the photographer has moved the group of men, possibly a seated father (or grandfather?) and his standing sons, much further down the painted backdrop completely cropping out the painted window. On the floor is the original carpet in image 1. All men stare directly at the camera with the seated father slightly in front of his sons. In image 11, the original carpet has been replaced by the second carpet which was seen in the ninth image, the one with the diagonal border. The background is in roughly the same position as can be seen when you compare the column behind the left hand figure in both photographs and the camera is at the same height… but the background must have been physically moved, because the roof support in image 10 is now much more to the left in image 11. In the latter image, the covered table, vases and alarm clock take pride of place, front and centre, with the three men standing to the side and behind the table. Two stare directly at the camera, whilst the other at right stands obliquely to the picture plane and stares off camera to the left. Such positioning of the figures suggests that the photographer had a knowledge of the poses of classical group portraiture and portrait photography in particular. Further, as we can observe in these photographs, “the portrait functioned as an extension of the ceremonies and rituals of daily life. Self-representation was now a major aspect of social life, because it could pave the way to obtaining a place of honor.”5 These photographs also function as a place where the intimacy and narrative of family life were exposed to the public eye, where private becomes public, and in the mise-en-scène of the stage-set the actors were posed to create a theatrical, representative view of how they wanted to see themselves – and how others should see them. This is a scene constructed explicitly for the portrait to … render present, to re-present the presence of the people themselves. And in the posing, directed by the photographer, the subjects assume the shape of a desired representation.
Image 12 is the only photograph in the group of twelve images taken indoors that features a woman on her own. Dressed in all her finery and wearing her traditional headdress the seated woman is posed frontally and stares straight at the camera, her hand lightly resting on her inner thighs. Behind her the column of the painted backdrop that was seen behind the man at left in the eleventh image is now directly behind her head and more of the backdrop has been recorded at her right: flowers, a lush garden with stairs and bannister railing, and a heavy brocade curtain with numerous tassels. The camera has again moved closer to the subject for the edge of the diagonally decorated carpet now appears at the bottom of the image with no floorboards being visible, whilst the top of the image has been framed just at the top of the painted backdrop. The revelatio of the pulled back curtain reveals a wished for, Western, utopian landscape, a paradise reached by the woman in all her finery on her magic carpet.
And the carpet truly does fly!
In image 13 the carpet has been moved down a set of steps onto the bare earth in front of a house with the table, and a different tablecloth, for company. The mise-en-scène is now a simple backdrop of a piece of white fabric which has been pinned by the photographer to the railing of the house – prescient of the work of photographer Richard Avedon and his series In the American West with similar frontal stance and direct gaze of the sitter (see below), although this anonymous photographer never closes in on the subject to fully isolate the subject against the white ground as happens in much conceptual, contemporary portrait photography. What the photographer does do over the remaining images (14-18) is move the camera forward and backward in order to frame his subject(s), changing the camera’s orientation for larger groups.
In image 14 the photographer has moved forward so as to more tightly crop the image: there is no earth and less of the window behind is visible; the same alarm clock as in previous images has made a reappearance. Image 15 is even more tightly cropped, with no carpet and even less window being visible… the alarm clock has been lost and now the sitter is positioned to the left of the table as opposed to image 14 when they were to the right. In image 16 (observe the bare table) and 17, the photographer has moved the camera around another side of the building: note the mud-caked wooden logs, part of the structure of the bottom of the house, the lack of railing and strong sun causing shadows to fall on the wall behind. In previous images (13-15) there is no shadow for the sitters were not in direct sunlight. In the final image, image 18, the photographer has moved the camera again to another wall of the house, this time to a backdrop of a cracked, bare earth wall with the carpet and table placed on the barren ground. In all of these portrait photographs the subject stares impassively at the camera.
In whatever “order” these photographs were taken, through analysis we can begin to see, and feel, and imagine, the choreographic dance that the photographer would have had to go through to capture the likeness of his sitters. We can imagine the cacophony of sound, the instructions to set up backdrops, to move the camera, to arrange the people (after they had dressed in their finest clothes) and extras (such as the table, tablecloth, alarm clock, vases and carpets) for each photograph – for the photographer to capture the person in perfect stillness, order out of the disorder. This dis/order is doubled by the storage of these photographs in an archive, that of the Endangered Archives Programme, where everything is supposedly kept in order but where, “Archives contain elements of truth and error, order and disorder and are infinitely fascinating. As both collections of records and repositories of data, archives are able to shape history and memory depending on how, when and by whom the materials are accessed. Their vastness allows for multiple readings to be unravelled over time.”6
And that is my hope for these images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century. That other people approach the material from different perspectives, different points of view, whether they be artistic, ethnographic, fashion, or Indigenous for example – that they also critique the ideas and systems of archives in order to understand why these images are in an archive, how they can be more freely distributed and studied, and what is their ongoing relevance to the history and culture of contemporary Mongolia. As with the posed photographs of Edward Curtis and his portrayal of The North American Indian, these photographs may “show us today some things that we may no longer have access to and give us a window into eyes of real human beings who were in the process of losing the lives they had known for centuries.”7
Time moves on, cultures change (today Mongolians wear Western clothes and only don traditional clothes for festivals and special events; in the winter they wear a Russian-style fur hat and padded jacket), technology and development take over… but these photographs still give us an important window into the soul of a people.
2/ Mongolian tea called suutei tsai is served with nearly every meal. The tea is served in small bowls as opposed to cups. The tea is made with green tea, milk, water and salt.
3/ “Both men and women wear “dels” (caftan-like, ankle-length padded silk robes lined with sheepskin for the winter and tied around the waist with a sashlike belt) in the winter and a “terlig” (thinly-lined coat similar to a del) in the summer… Dels are designed for horseback riding, keeping riders warm while not constraining them. They have high collars that can be buttoned or unbuttoned. The left side buttons close over the right side. The edges of the coat and sleeves are sometimes trimmed with velvet of another beautiful fabric. Sometimes a long sash or leather belt adorned with silver or copper ornaments is tied around the waist. Under theirs dels, Mongolians generally wear baggy trousers and a shirt… Men and women wear “Mongol gutal” (embroidered leather knee boots with thick soles and upturned toes). There are several explanations as to why the boots are made in this way. Some say they give riders confidence that they won’t slip from the stirrups. Other says that Buddhism is the reason: the upturned toes are said to be less likely to kill insects than conventional footwear. In the winter felt is placed in them for extra warmth… Headgear is often an indicator of where someone is from. Mongolia men sometimes don “loovus” (pointed hats) on feast days or weddings or other important occasions. These have traditionally been made of wolf or fox skin and are said offer good protection in the cold and wind. Other types of men’s hat include the “janjin malgai” and “toortsog”… Men used to wear their hair pulled back in a braid. Women wore theirs in two braids covered with velvet. The braids were worn in front of the shoulders and silver and coral ornaments were woven into them. Young girls wore multi braids joined at the temple with red thread… In the old days upper class women wore elaborate headdresses and sculpted the hair in bizarre horn-like designs with hardened mutton fat and tied their hair with jewellery pieces made of silver, turquoise and coral… During festivals, even some nomads wore their hair in massive headdresses, decorated with silver and coral, or tied their hair with large bows. A family’s wealth was often measured by precious stones and metals in a woman’s hair.” Text from various sources quoted in “Mongolian clothes: Beauty and Hygiene in Mongolia,” on the Facts and Details website, last updated April 2016 [Online] Cited 17/07/2022. For more information on traditional Mongolian dress please see this website
7/ Executive Director Shannon Keller O’Loughlin (Choctaw) of the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA). Email to the author, 1 June 2018 [Online] Cited 17/07/2022
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images are used under “fair use” conditions for the purpose of education and research and remain the copyright of the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia.
Digital copies of glass plate negatives preserved in the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia [1910s-1950s]
“This collection consists of digital copies of the glass plate negative collections at the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recordings, Mongolia. The photographs date from the 1910s to the 1950s, and cover a range of subjects, including art and culture, former Mongolian leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan, festivities, foreign relations, industry, the military, nature, people, religion, science and education, transport, and the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar.”
2. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
3. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
The time on the alarm clock is indistinguishable.
4. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman and man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
The time on the alarm clock is 4.45pm.
5. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man and woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
The time on the alarm clock is 4.45pm.
6. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian men and two Mongolian women] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Independence and revolution 1900-1925
Mongolia at the start of the 20th century was agrarian, and its people were highly stratified socially and economically. There were two classes of vassals: the khamjlaga, who under Manchu law were serfs for life of the local nobility and civil administrators; and the shavi, the vassals of the monastery estates. Trade in essentials like tea, rice, and tobacco was in the hands of Chinese companies, which willingly extended credit at high interest rates. The currency consisted of units of livestock, as well as tea bricks, small silver ingots, and some foreign coins. When the officials and nobility got into debt, they would increase their taxes in kind on the population. As a result, many Mongols were impoverished and occasionally rebellious, despite the risk of terrible punishment at the hands of the Qing authorities, who had built fortified administrative centres and garrison towns like Khovd and Uliastai to control Mongolia’s regions.
By 1911, when the Chinese Revolution broke out, unrest was widespread in Mongolia. In December the Manchu amban was ordered to leave, the Javzandamba was proclaimed the Bogd Khan (“Holy King”), and he declared the independence of Mongolia-Inner Mongolia and Tannu Tuva (Tyva), as well as Outer Mongolia. Also at that time, the Bogd Khan’s capital, Ikh Khüree (“Great Monastery”), was renamed Niislel Khüree (“Capital Monastery”). The Qing emperor abdicated in 1912, and the Republic of China was proclaimed. Also that year Russia signed a treaty with the Bogd Khan’s government that recognised Mongolia, although the interpretation of this recognition between the two parties differed: Mongolia considered itself independent of China, while Russia characterised Mongolia as being “autonomous.” The Russian position was further underlined in 1913, when Russia and China issued a declaration stating that Mongolia was still under Chinese suzerainty. Mongolia objected, but this status was reinforced by a joint Russian-Chinese-Mongolian treaty in 1915, in which the Bogd Khan’s government was obliged to accept autonomy under Chinese suzerainty. As a result, the Bogd Khan was unable to unite Inner with Outer Mongolia, nor was he able to prevent Russia from colonising Tuva.
Soviet power was established in St. Petersburg following the Russian Revolution of 1917, and it gradually was extended eastward across Russia. In August 1919 the Soviet Russian government recognised Mongolian autonomy, but within a few months Chinese troops had occupied Niislel Khüree and deposed the Bogd Khan. During that turbulent period, Mongolian nationalists Dansrangiin Dogsom, Dogsomyn Bodoo, and others formed underground resistance groups and established contact with Russian Bolsheviks. In June 1920 a group of these revolutionaries formed the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), and two months later several MPP members, including Soliin Danzan and Dambdyn Chagdarjav, were sent to Moscow to seek help from the Comintern (Third International) and to meet Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Two other revolutionaries, Damdiny Sükhbaatar and Khorloogiin Choibalsan, who had stayed in Siberia in the city of Irkutsk, made their way to the small town of Troitskosavsk on the border with Mongolia to organize the resistance. Meanwhile, tsarist cavalry units under the command of Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (known as the “Mad Baron”) entered Mongolia from eastern Siberia, advanced on Niislel Khüree, drove out the Chinese occupation forces, and in February 1921 restored the Bogd Khan to the throne under the baron’s control.
The rule of the Mad Baron was cruel and bloody but relatively brief. In March 1921 the Mongolian revolutionaries gathered in Troitskosavsk and held the first MPP congress, where they adopted a program of action and appointed a provisional cabinet. A Mongolian revolutionary force was assembled under Sükhbaatar’s command that, along with Soviet army units, advanced southward into Mongolia and in July 1921 captured Niislel Khüree. A “people’s government” of Mongolia was appointed, with Bodoo as prime minister, and July 11 subsequently was celebrated as the anniversary of its establishment (now the first day of the naadam sports festival). The Bogd Khan was reinstated as a constitutional monarch with limited powers. The baron was captured in August, handed over to the Soviet authorities, and executed. In November Danzan and Sükhbaatar were sent to Moscow to meet Lenin, and the first Mongolian-Soviet treaty was concluded.
A power struggle ensued between nationalists and communists. In 1922 Bodoo and Chagdarjav were accused of”counterrevolutionary activities” and executed, and the situation was exacerbated by the death of Sükhbaatar in February 1923 and of the Bogd Khan in May 1924. The third congress of the MPP was convened in August 1924, during which Danzan was accused of “bourgeois tendencies” and executed. At the congress, calls were made for Mongolia to develop a close friendship with the Soviet Union, to purge the country of”oppressor class elements,” and to adopt a Leninist “noncapitalist path of development.” In addition, either at the 1924 congress or early in 1925, the party was renamed the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP). A national assembly, the Great Khural, convened on November 8-26 and adopted Mongolia’s first constitution, renaming the country the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR). The capital, Niislel Khüree, also was renamed Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator), meaning “Red Hero.”
7. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian men] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
8. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
The time on the alarm clock is 12.55pm.
9. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian men, two Mongolian women and a child] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
The Mongolian family
Mongols have always been concerned with protecting their ancestral heritage and still practice exogamy, believing it wrong to marry within the clan. Families once kept family tree charts, with names recorded within a series of concentric generational rings. However, family trees, aristocratic titles and clan names (oyag) were banned in 1925, labeled by the socialist regime as aspects of “feudalism.” In the Law on Culture, adopted in April 1996, the legislature decided to revert to the earlier practice of keeping family trees and using clan names, and regulations for this were issued in January 1997. Clan names are now recorded on identity cards and other official documents but otherwise are little used. Thus, Mongolian citizens have three names: a clan name; a patronymic (etsgiin ner), which is based on the father’s given name; and a given name (ner).
10. Unknown photographer Untitled [Three Mongolian men] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
11. Unknown photographer Untitled [Three Mongolian men] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Note the table with prominent fabric embroidery(?) pattern
Lady Clementina Hawarden (Viscountess, British 1822-1865)
Lady Clementina Hawarden, a noted amateur photographer of the 1860s, frequently photographed her children. Here, her second-eldest daughter Clementina Maude poses next to a mirror, in which a bulky camera is reflected. The camera seems to stand in for the photographer, making this a mother-daughter portrait of sorts.
This photograph gives a good idea of Lady Hawarden’s studio and the way she used it. It was situated on the second floor of her house at 5 Princes Gardens in the South Kensington area of London. Here her daughter Clementina poses beside a mirror. A movable screen has been placed behind it, across the opening into the next room. A side table at the left balances a desk at the right. The figure of the young girl is partially balanced and echoed by the camera reflected in the mirror and the embroidery resting on the table beside it.
Hawarden appears to have worked with seven different cameras. The one seen in the mirror is the largest. Possibly there is a slight suggestion of a hand in the act of removing and/or replacing the lens cap to begin and end the exposure.
12. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
13. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman and table] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
14. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman and table] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
The time on the alarm clock is 4.35pm.
15. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman and table] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Richard Avedon at work
Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004) Sandra Bennett, twelve year old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23, 1980 1980 Gelatin silver print
16. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman and table] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
17. Unknown photographer Untitled [Three Mongolian women and two Mongolian men] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
The time on the alarm clock is indistinguishable.
18. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian women and table] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Notice the length of the sleeves which completely cover the hands by some distance.
Mongolia at the start of the 20th century was agrarian, and its people were highly stratified socially and economically. There were two classes of vassals: the khamjlaga, who under Manchu law were serfs for life of the local nobility and civil administrators; and the shavi, the vassals of the monastery estates. Trade in essentials like tea, rice, and tobacco was in the hands of Chinese companies, which willingly extended credit at high interest rates. The currency consisted of units of livestock, as well as tea bricks, small silver ingots, and some foreign coins. When the officials and nobility got into debt, the would increase their taxes in kind on the population. As a result, many Mongols were impoverished and occasionally rebellious, despite the risk of terrible punishment at the hands of the Qing authorities, who had built fortified administrative centres and garrison towns like Khovd and Uliastai to control Mongolia’s regions.
By 1911, when the Chinese Revolution broke out, unrest was widespread in Mongolia. In December the Manchu amban was ordered to leave, the Javzandamba was proclaimed the Bogd Khan (“Holy King”), and he declared the independence of Mongolia – Inner Mongolia and Tannu Tuva (Tyva), as well as Outer Mongolia. Also at that time, the Bogd Khan’s capital, Ikh Khüree (“Great Monastery”), was renamed Niislel Khüree (“Capital Monastery”). The Qing emperor abdicated in 1912, and the Republic of China was proclaimed.
Also that year Russia signed a treaty with the Bogd Khan’s government that recognized Mongolia, although the interpretation of this recognition between the two parties differed: Mongolia considered itself independent of China, while Russia characterized Mongolia as being “autonomous.” The Russian position was further underlined in 1913, when Russia and China issued a declaration stating that Mongolia was still under Chinese suzerainty. Mongolia objected, but this status was reinforced by a joint Russian-Chinese-Mongolian treaty in 1915, in which the Bogd Khan’s government was obliged to accept autonomy under Chinese suzerainty. As a result, the Bogd Khan was unable to unite Inner with Outer Mongolia, nor was he able to prevent Russia from colonizing Tuva.
Soviet power was established in St. Petersburg following the Russian Revolution of 1917, and it gradually was extended eastward across Russia. In August 1919 the Soviet Russian government recognized Mongolian autonomy, but within a few months Chinese troops had occupied Niislel Khüree and deposed the Bogd Khan. During that turbulent period, Mongolian nationalists Dansrangiin Dogsom, Dogsomyn Bodoo, and others formed underground resistance groups and established contact with Russian Bolsheviks.
In June 1920 a group of these revolutionaries formed the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), and two months later several MPP members, including Soliin Danzan and Dambdyn Chagdarjav, were sent to Moscow to seek help from the Comintern (Third International) and to meet Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Two other revolutionaries, Damdiny Sükhbaatar and Khorloogiin Choibalsan, who had stayed in Siberia in the city of Irkutsk, made their way to the small town of Troitskosavsk on the border with Mongolia to organize the resistance. Meanwhile, tsarist cavalry units under the command of Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (known as the “Mad Baron”) entered Mongolia from eastern Siberia, advanced on Niislel Khüree, drove out the Chinese occupation forces, and in February 1921 restored the Bogd Khan to the throne under the baron’s control.
The rule of the Mad Baron was cruel and bloody but relatively brief. In March 1921 the Mongolian revolutionaries gathered in Troitskosavsk and held the first MPP congress, where they adopted a program of action and appointed a provisional cabinet. A Mongolian revolutionary force was assembled under Sükhbaatar’s command that, along with Soviet army units, advanced southward into Mongolia and in July 1921 captured Niislel Khüree. A “people’s government” of Mongolia was appointed, with Bodoo as prime minister, and July 11 subsequently was celebrated as the anniversary of its establishment (now the first day of the naadam sports festival). The Bogd Khan was reinstated as a constitutional monarch with limited powers. The baron was captured in August, handed over to the Soviet authorities, and executed. In November Danzan and Sükhbaatar were sent to Moscow to meet Lenin, and the first Mongolian-Soviet treaty was concluded.
Julia Chandler (ed.,). Colonial and Postcolonial East and Southeast Asia. Britannica Educational Publishing, 2017, pp. 104-109.
19. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Notice the long time exposure of the camera, indicated by the blur of the man’s dress at lower left.
20. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
21. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian men with two vases] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Again, not the length of the sleeves which completely cover the hands.
22. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man with two vases and clock] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
23. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman with clock] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
24. Unknown photographer Untitled [Four Mongolian men] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
25. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian men] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Not the same painted backdrop as image 24.
26. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian men with two clocks] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Preservation through digitisation of rare photographic negatives from Mongolia (EAP264)
Aims and objectives
The Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording in Mongolia houses over 160,000 photo negatives, including 10,552 glass plate negatives. This project aims to digitise all these glass plate negatives, the majority of which contain images taken between 1921 and 1945 and have never been printed. The collection covers a wide range of topics such as the army and military, public health, animal husbandry, archaeological finds, nature, prominent Mongolian people, people who were politically repressed during the 1930s, historical documents, construction works, industrial development, Mongolia’s contribution to the victory of WWII, culture, religion and politics.
The collection is housed in the Archives building, which has no adequate and controlled preservation environment and lacks humidity and air control. The glass plates are kept in paper envelopes on shelves where they are exposed to physical mishandling and deterioration in image quality. Only 3,000 have been catalogued. Since no digital images are available to researchers and the general public, these glass plates are in danger of being exposed to frequent printing which represents a threat to the physical condition of the originals themselves. Once degraded in quality or destroyed due to frequent printing and mishandling, this unique pre-industrialised history of Mongolia will be lost for ever.
As the originals will eventually be too fragile for frequent handling, the only way of preserving and providing access to users of this valuable collection is through digitisation. The remaining 7,000 glass plates will also be catalogued. Training schemes will be developed to preserve and further restore archival photographs and the introduction of this digital archive will inspire the Archives, the MSV Foundation and other individuals to carry out further projects to help preserve and digitise the remaining archival holdings.
Outcomes
Research and a visual inspection have been carried out on over 7,000 uncatalogued “orphan” glass negative plates and a bulk of them have been cleaned from dirt, dust and paints.
A total of 10,089 glass negative plates have been digitised. Uncatalogued digitised images have been sorted out either into existing or new collections of the Archives thus enriching its catalogued photographic contents.
Some Archives’ staff have received professional training in digitising technology as well as in digital archives handling. The successful implementation of the project serves to testify that cooperation between the Archives and other national cultural bodies, including MSV Foundation, is vital for the future in preserving and restoring the Archives’ stocks.
This has been the first ever major project funded by foreign institutions and a great challenge for the MSV Foundation. It is considered that the project has been a great success which will certainly add to the good reputation of the Foundation locally.
Thanks to the project, the MSV Foundation will be able to bring more and more historic film and photographic enthusiasts closer together in safeguarding the nation’s cinematographic and photographic heritage.
The original glass negative plates are still housed in the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording. Digital copies have been deposited with the Archives, MSV Foundation and the British Library.
27. Unknown photographer Prince Navaantseren of Tsetsen Khanate – one of the four Khanates of the Khalha (Outer Mongolia excluding three Durvut banners) Mongolia 1910s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
28. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Note the same carpet as image 27… taken at the same photo session
Michael J Drew (Australian, 1873-1943) Group taking tea in a garden
James Fox Barnard (Australian, 1874-1945) [Tea on the verandah] c. 1900
29. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Note the same carpet as image 27… taken at the same photo session
30. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man with two teacups and saucers] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
31. Unknown photographer Untitled [Two Mongolian women] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
32. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
33. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
34. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
35. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Note the same carpet as image 34… taken at the same photo session
36. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Note the same carpet as image 34… taken at the same photo session
37. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian man] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
38. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman with clock and flowers] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
39. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman with two children] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
40. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
41. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman and child] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
42. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
43. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
44. Unknown photographer Untitled [Mongolian woman] 1910s-1920s Glass plate negative The original material is held by the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Mongolia From Images of noblemen and noblewomen of early 20th century [1910s-1920s], British Library, Endangered Archives Programme EAP264/1/8/2 https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP264-1-8-2
Suresh Punjabi (Indian, b. 1957) Untitled (Portrait of a young tea seller) Suhag Studio, Nagda, Madhya Pradesh 1987
Curators: Ludger Derenthal, Head of the Photography Collection of the Kunstbibliothek, and Ralph Goertz, IKS – Institut für Kun-stdokumentation
A special exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the IKS – Institut für Kunstdokumentation
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Liverpool IIA 1968 Gelatin silver print 35.5 x 35.5cm
Twist of life
I am always fascinated by the journey that artists travel with their practice: where, when and why they started (what was their jumping off point, or point of departure): what were their concerns when they first started making art, what was the path they took, and how did they are arrive at their mature style.
With its blend of old and new – historical photographs by other artists that relate to the German artist Candida Höfer’s mature practice, and photographs from zoological gardens and hitherto little-known series from Höfer’s early work (such as photographs from her Liverpool series) that are archaeological evidence on the path to her current photographs – this intelligently curated and beautifully displayed exhibition investigates the narrative trajectory of discovery that any artist worth their salt takes during the development of their practice.
In Höfer’s art, her earliest photographs are classic black and white socio-documentary, urban landscape images that seek to map out the relationship between human and city, the topographical lay of the land if you like. For example, Höfer’s intensely personal views of Liverpool are full of fractures and half-seen occurrences in the urban landscape, observed with swift assurance by an inquiring mind, caught on the run. A woman peers in the window of a shop (Liverpool IIA, 1968 above), people queue to board a bus (Liverpool VII, 1968 below), men chat in a dingy bar (Liverpool VI, 1968 below), and a man is caught mid-stride legging it across the road while others what not so patiently at a bus stop (Liverpool XXII, 1968 below). Moving closer to the same bus stop (the same buildings in the background), Höfer captures a man standing looking for his bus in the middle of the street oblivious of the photographer (Liverpool III, 1968 below). This documentation of a fractured society continues in her series Türken in Deutschland (Turks in Germany)(1972-1979).
“Images of Turks at work or leisure in the parks, homes, markets, shops, and bars of 1970s West German cities populate Candida Höfer’s large, multiformat series entitled Türken in Deutschland (Turks in Germany, 1972-79). Höfer’s interactions with minority subjects in these images – by turns genial, jarring, and solemn – illuminate the complicated social and cultural milieu of 1970s West Germany… in Türken in Deutschland, Höfer explores the presence of Turkish migrants in 1970s Germany and how that presence was alternately erased and revealed in relationships with the dominant German culture…
Höfer’s Türken in Deutschland defies neat categorization: the images do not gawk at squalid living conditions or exotic cultural practices, or even feature dramatic expressions of emotion that might make particular images appear to symbolize larger issues. Instead, they express the frankness and intimacy of family snapshots, as well as an interest in new aesthetic mediums of the postwar avant-garde.”1
While both bodies of work predate Höfer’s “participation in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s groundbreaking photography course at the Kunstakademie”2, Türken inDeutschland by four years, there are already hints of her later mature style in photographs such as Kino Weidengasse Köln I (1977, below) with its cool frontality and observational, emotional reticence. But what Höfer’s early work possesses – and what I like so much and what has been lost in her mature practice – is that subtle, ironic, twist of life, twist of the knife (point of view) in which the artist focuses on the story and experiences of people living their life in the city.
Höfer is justly famous for her impartial, immaculate and still, large-scale interior views of architectural buildings – the artist frequently focusing “on places that preserve and order knowledge and culture… interested in how humans influence architecture through their culture,” working with light and space to capture the atmosphere and aura of a space through a “consistently calm and questioning archival gaze” – but what happened to the people in these people-less places, what happened to the sideways glance at life that initially inspired the artist, that propelled her forward into the world, that now no longer exists in the cold void of the building. Do I feel the aura of the space as the artist wishes, or do I miss the rupture, the wound, the punctum of dis/order that is the essence of fragmented memory, the essentialness of pattern/randomness.
2/ “In fact, Bernd Becher invited Höfer to join his course after seeing the Türken in Deutschland slide show at the spring 1976 student exhibition at the Kunstakademie. The common desire of scholars to see this project as a slavish pursuit of the Bechers’ methods is clear in Astrid Ihle’s writings. Ihle describes black-and-white prints from the Türken in Deutschland series as primarily occupied with photographing “the order of things” – that is, with the “detached, cool view of an ethnologist” that defines the Bechers’ photographic “objectivity.” Ihle thus bends history to make a cohesive set of pictures taken in 1974, 1975, and 1976 examples of a method Höfer would encounter after starting the Bechers’ first photography course in fall 1976. Ihle, “Photography as Contemporary Document: Comments on the Conceptions of the Documentary in Germany after 1945,” in Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures, ed. Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann, exh. cat. (New York: Abrams, 2009), 186-205.”
Many thankx to the Museum für Fotografie for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Liverpool XXII 1968 Gelatin silver print 35.5 x 35.5cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Liverpool III 1968 Gelatin silver print 35.5 x 35.5cm
Candida Höfer explores built spaces in her photography. Her world-famous interiors focus on libraries, museums, restaurants, theatres, and other public spaces, allowing us to experience architecture in a new way. In comparison with photographic interiors from the Kunst-bibliothek’s Photography Collection, which is over 150 years old, a dialogue develops between applied photography and artistic work.
With approximately 90 works, the exhibition at Berlin’s Museum für Fotografie opens up a broad cross-section of Candida Höfer’s photographs from 1980 to the immediate present. The long tradition of her architectural photographs, however, also extends deep into the classical canon of this field of work. In dialogue with pendants and counter-images from the Kunstbibliothek’s Photography Collection, Höfer’s particular approach to her pictorial motifs is revealed in a particularly impressive way.
Communicative function of constructed spaces
Spaces with communicative functions are paradoxically shown without the people frequenting them: Candida Höfer demonstrates the qualities or deficiencies of the spaces that enable human exchange in terms of the architecture itself, in terms of the atmosphere she specifically captures in each case, in terms of the perspective and the framing she chooses. She does not focus on the thematic groups serially; the respective locations determine the image format as well as the size of the prints. Yet the compilation of the groups offers a variety of possibilities for comparison that impressively confirm the photographer’s longstanding and sustained interest in the specific locations.
Images in dialogue
Some thematic groups exemplify the visually stimulating dialogue of the images: Facades, windows and doors open and close the view into or out of rooms. The dialogue between the pictures unfolds in a particularly attractive way in the photographs of Berlin’s Museumsinsel. While the razor-sharp, large-format contact prints by the Königlich Preußische Messbildanstalt still show the monumental staircase with Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s frescoes, Ryuji Miyamoto in 2000 captures the transitory state of the still ruinous building before the start of interior construction, and Candida Höfer in 2009 shows its completion.
Candida Höfer (b. 1944) has devoted herself ever more and more intensively to architectural photography since her studies with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy towards the end of the 1970s. She has concentrated on this important genre without, however, acting on behalf of architects and art historians as photographers of earlier generations did. She sees her work as artistic photography, and photographing interiors was self-determinedly chosen by her as her main field of activity. She herself set the framework for it: “I photograph in public and semi-public spaces from different eras. This are spaces that are accessible to everyone, places of encounter, communication, knowledge, relaxation, recreation. They are spas, hotels, waiting rooms, museums, libraries, universities, banks, churches and, since a few years, zoological gardens.”
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Liverpool VI 1968 Gelatin silver print 35.5 x 35.5cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Liverpool VII 1968 Gelatin silver print 35.5 x 35.5cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Liverpool VIII 1968 Gelatin silver print 35.5 x 35.5cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Liverpool XXVII 1968 Gelatin silver print 35.5 x 35.5cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Weidengasse Köln 1975 From the Türken in Deutschland (Turks in Germany) series (1972-1979) Gelatin silver print 36.7 x 42.6cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Weidengasse Köln IV 1978 From the Türken in Deutschland (Turks in Germany) series (1972-1979) Gelatin silver print 36.2 x 44.1cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Kino Weidengasse Köln I 1977 From the Türken in Deutschland (Turks in Germany) series (1972-1979) Gelatin silver print 43.2 x 36.9cm
Installation view of the exhibition Image and Space. Candida Höfer in Dialogue with the Photography Collection of the Kunstbibliothek at the Museum für Fotografie, Berlin showing at left, Architectural Record Shoe shop, Milwaukee (c. 1910, below); showing at centre back, Candida Höfer’s Bolschoi Teatr Moskwa II (2017, below); at third right, Reiner Leist’s September 24, 1996 (1996, below); and at second right, Florence Henri’s Parisian Window (1929, below)
Architectural Record Shoe shop, Milwaukee c. 1910 Gelatin silver paper 18.3 x 22.8 cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library New Haven CT I 2002 Colour paper 155 x 189cm
Above all Candida Höfer is famous for her large-scale interior views of libraries devoid of people… The artist frequently focuses on places that preserve and order knowledge and culture. Apart from libraries she also worked on museums or operas. She is interested in how humans influence architecture through their culture. Her photos are always determined by a cool sobriety. This is what they have in common with the photographs of the Bechers. However, Höfer always works with the light and the space present in each situation. She strives to capture the atmosphere and aura of a space.
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Museum A. Koenig Bonn IV 1985 Colour paper 63 x 81cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Institut für Versicherungsrecht der Universität zu Köln I Institute for Insurance Law at the University of Cologne I 1989 Colour paper 63 x 81cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Zoologischer Garten Paris II 1997 Colour paper 48 x 60cm
Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) Zoologischer Garten Hannover IV 1997 Colour paper 50 x 60cm
Candida Höfer explores built spaces in her photography. Her world-famous interiors focus on libraries, museums, restaurants, theatres, and other public spaces, allowing us to experience architecture in a new way. In comparison with photographic interiors from the Kunst-bibliothek’s Photography Collection, which is over 150 years old, a dialogue develops between applied photography and artistic work. The total of around 200 works – which also include photographs from zoological gardens and hitherto little-known series from Höfer’s early work, as well as their rarely or never before shown counterparts from the Photography Collection – invite visitors to take a new look at Höfer’s work and the Photography Collection, but also at the medium of photography itself.
Candida Höfer (b. 1944) has devoted herself ever more and more intensively to architectural photography since her studies with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy towards the end of the 1970s. She has concentrated on this important genre without, however, acting on be-half of architects and art historians as photographers of earlier generations did. She sees her work as artistic photography, and photographing interiors was self-determinedly chosen by her as her main field of activity. She herself set the framework for it: “I photograph in public and semi-public spaces from different eras. This are spaces that are accessible to everyone, places of encounter, communication, knowledge, relaxation, recreation. They are spas, hotels, waiting rooms, museums, libraries, universities, banks, churches and, since a few years, zoological gardens.”
This list does not claim to be exhaustive; it refers above all to the communicative functions of the spaces, which, however, are paradoxically shown without the people frequenting them: Candida Höfer demonstrates the qualities or deficiencies of the spaces that enable human exchange in terms of the architecture itself, in terms of the atmosphere she specifically captures in each case, in terms of the perspective and the framing she chooses. She does not focus on the thematic groups serially; the respective locations determine the image format as well as the size of the prints. Yet the compilation of the groups offers a variety of possibilities for comparison that impressively confirm the photographer’s longstanding and sustained interest in the specific locations.
With approximately 90 works, the exhibition at Berlin’s Museum für Fotografie opens up a broad cross-section of Candida Höfer’s photographs from 1980 to the immediate present. The long tradition of her architectural photographs, however, also extends deep into the classical canon of this field of work. In dialogue with pendants and counter-images from the Kunstbibliothek’s Photography Collection, Höfer’s particular approach to her pictorial motifs is revealed in a particularly impressive way.
For the Photography Collection, architectural photographs formed the basis of its collecting activities. Designed as an exemplary collection, it was intended to convey to a broad public the special structural qualities of cur-rent and historical architecture as precisely and vividly as possible in photographic images in large quantities. The names of the photographers are not known in most cases of the many tens of thousands of prints in the collection. However, inventories and image comparisons have made it possible to identify groups of works by important representatives of the field, such as Eugène Atget, Frank Cousins, Samuel Bourne, Fratelli Alinari, Max Krajewsky, Emil Leitner, Felix Alexander Oppenheim, Albert Renger-Patzsch and Karl Hugo Schmölz. In recent years, archives of the Schinkel and Stüler photographer Hillert Ibbeken, the Munich architectural photographer Sigrid Neubert and the Stuttgart industrial photographer Ludwig Windstosser have been added. The Museum für Fotografie dedicated comprehensive retrospectives to the latter two.
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey 1974 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
I have always loved the work of George Tice. I have one of his photographs in my collection. I think his work is very underrated.
Tice’s consumate control of the construction of the image plane never gets in the way of the elemental, eternal, and magical aspects of the photograph.
Photographers such as Tice, and Atget, have an innate ability to place the camera in such as position as to reveal the subject matter in a new light. More intuitive, more sensitive to other ways of seeing, these great photographers look at the world from a different point of view.
In this posting, the hovering spaceship that is Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey (1974, above) is a superb example of this … almost hallucinatory feeling in the image. Other mesmerising photographs include the Cubist Houses and Water Towers, Moorestown, New Jersey (1973, below) and Industrial Landscape, Kearny, New Jersey (1973, below) with its acknowledgment of Alfred Stieglitz’s The Hand of Man (1902, below). Notice how Tice lowers the level of his camera when compared to Stieglitz’s photograph, thus raising the horizon line, so we now follow the bare, ascending train tracks to the massed stacks of the barren industrial landscape instead of looking down on the scene as in The Hand of Man. Here is a master of previsualisation at work.
Other photographs have already been seen in postings on Art Blart, but it is always a pleasure to look at George Tice’s work – especially his dusk and night time photographs such as New International Cinema, New Brunswick, New Jersey (1974, below), Steve’s Diner, Route 130, North Brunswick, New Jersey (1974, below) and Ideal Diner, Perth Amboy, New Jersey (1980, below). There are hints of the intimacies of Walker Evans and the clinical observations of Bernd and Hiller Becker in Tice’s work, but somehow he always makes images which possess his own signature, his own creative writing.
Following on from last week’s posting where I was banging on about the “spiritual” in contemporary photography (and by “spiritual” I mean an energy and feeling for subject matter captured in the negative and then revealed in the image), the photographs I have presented by Tice in this posting are a perfect example of this alternate perspective. As he observes, “The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.”
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photograph in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.”
George Tice
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Houses and Water Towers, Moorestown, New Jersey 1973 Gelatin silver print 11 x 14 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Industrial Landscape, Kearny, New Jersey 1973 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) The Hand of Man 1902 Photogravure 24.1 × 31.8cm (9 1/2 × 12 1/2 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
A locomotive engine steams toward the camera on its barely visible tracks, wearing a billowing black cloud of smoke like a plumed hat. The criss-crossing lines of tracks beside it snake off toward the horizon, and the telephone poles at the left appear to be making the same march. Alfred Stieglitz’s composition is a treatise on the importance of the machine in the modern Industrial Age. The title of the photograph, The Hand of Man, sets up a comparison between the machine that is depicted and the human artistic impulse that created the image. Stieglitz reproduced this photograph in the January 1903 issue of Camera Work, a journal that he both founded and edited. In the early 1930s he returned to the image and printed additional photographs.
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Railroad Bridge, High Bridge, New Jersey 1974 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Rooftops, 21st and King Street, Paterson, New Jersey 1969 Vintage gelatin silver print 16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Tenement Rooftops, Hoboken, New Jersey 1974 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Pulaski Skyway, Jersey City, New Jersey 1974 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Drawbridge, Morgan, New Jersey 1973 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
The gallery’s current exhibition is a tribute to the lifework of George Tice, including many vintage prints of both famous and lesser-known images. Signed copies of his new book, Lifework, 1953-2013, are also available.
Tice is drawn to vestiges of American culture on the verge of extinction – from people in rural or small-town communities to suburban buildings and neighbourhoods that are often in decline. Although he has photographed throughout the Northwestern United States, he is best known for pictures of his native New Jersey, and the impeccable quality of his black-and-white prints.
Tice was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey – the state in which his ancestors had settled generations earlier. At fourteen, he joined a camera club. A turning point in his self-training happened two years later when a professional photographer critiquing club members’ work praised his picture of an alleyway. Tice briefly studied commercial photography at Newark Vocational and Technical High School; he then joined the Navy. A published image he made of an explosion aboard an American ship caught the eye of photographer Edward Steichen, who purchased it for The Museum of Modern Art. For about a decade, Tice worked as a portrait photographer and helped establish a gallery. That success enabled him to concentrate on personal projects.
In the 1960s, Tice shifted from smaller camera formats to larger ones, which enabled him to craft carefully toned and detailed prints. He portrayed traditional Amish and Shaker communities, as well as the hard lives of fishermen in Maine. In the 1970s, Tice began exploring his home state. Those photographs formed the beginnings of his Urban Landscapes series, which he worked on until the year 2000.
Text from the Joseph Bellows Gallery website
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Strand Theater, Keyport, New Jersey 1973 Gelatin silver print 16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) New International Cinema, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1974 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Ideal Diner, Perth Amboy, New Jersey 1980 Gelatin silver print 11 x 14 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Steve’s Diner, Route 130, North Brunswick, New Jersey 1974 Vintage gelatin silver print 16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Palace Funhouse, Ashbury Park, New Jersey 1995 Gelatin silver print 16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Lexington Avenue, Passaic, New Jersey 1973 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Goldy Pharmacy, Mount Holly, New Jersey 1974 vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Gar’s Bakery and Leisure Laundry, Newark, New Jersey 1974 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Dari O’ Lite, Wood Avenue, Linden, New Jersey 1973 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Jimmy’s Bar and Grill, Newark, New Jersey 1973 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Hudson’s Fish Market, Atlantic City, New Jersey 1973 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Houses, Ocean Grove, New Jersey 1974 Vintage gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938) Dorn’s Photoshop, Red Bank, New Jersey 1999 Gelatin silver print 16 x 20 inches
Joseph Bellows Gallery 7661 Girrard Avenue La Jolla, California Phone: 858 456 5620
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment
Featuring photographs by Eugène Atget, Lawrence Beck, Laurenz Berges, Karl Blossfeldt, Ursula Böhmer, Christian Borchert, Natascha Borowsky, Paul Dobe, Hans Eijkelboom, Folkwang-Auriga Verlag, Bernhard Fuchs, Candida Höfer, Fred Koch, August Kotzsch, Andreas Mader, Francesco Neri, Simone Nieweg, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Andrea Robbins/Max Becher, Judith Joy Ross, Martin Rosswog, August Sander, Oliver Sieber, Antanas Sutkus, Jerry L. Thompson, and Albrecht Tübke.
It’s always a pleasure to be able to publish images by such photographic luminaries as August Sander and Karl Blossfeldt, although I feel the link between portrait, landscape and botanical photography is rather more complicated than the organisers of the exhibition would acknowledge in their press release … or, perhaps, we could rephrase that, of a different order of association than simply a result of human economics, culture and habitation over time as they state.
For me there is an essentialness about a human standing on the soil of earth, the energy of the tree of life spreading up through our limbs as we ground ourself in the earth – committing our body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust – whilst acknowledging the eternal energy of the cosmos. This has everything to do with understanding the time of the cosmos and the time of the earth (and our time on it), perceived as a connection to the earth as a living organism – Gaia, the Mother Earth – and very little to do with economics, culture or habitation. As Minor White would argue when photographing the landscape in meditation, he would hope for a release of energy in revelatio, in revelation, in the captured negative, over time. Again, very little to do with economics, culture or habitation.
Because of the concentration on his portrait photography, notably work from his major project People of the Twentieth Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts), the landscape photographs of August Sander are often overlooked and therefore underrated. Whilst in Cologne in 2019 I even went so far as to buy a rare book on Sander’s landscapes that’s how much I like them. The light in Sander’s landscape photographs with their expansive skies and panoramic vistas – paired with his intimate woodlands, snowscapes and photographs of ancient trees – have a magical energy embedded in them which crystallises life on earth. In this posting there is only one landscape but you can check out more online. There are also three magnificent portraits of Sander’s that I have never seen before: Newspaper publisher [Karl Richter] (1924, below); Blacksmith (c. 1930, below); and Fairground Woman (c. 1930, below).
I believe that one way that traditional photography can approach a new terrain of becoming, in order to lend photographic visions current and future pertinence, is a rebalancing of the scales between conceptual and what I would call “spiritual” photography. A factual documentary approach accompanied by a defined concept should not preclude access to the spiritual or the sublime in traditional photography, or an acknowledgement of other ways of seeing and feeling the world. A transcendent liminality can inhabit images, one in which we cross the threshold into a transitional state between one world and the next, where can photographs proffer a ‘releasement toward things’ which, as Heidegger observes, grant us the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way. As I have continued to argue on Art Blart for the last 15 years, the essentialness or reality of photography is that the photograph is never truly here and is always located elsewhere – in our feelings, in our hearts, in our memories and in the time and energy of the cosmos that surrounds us. A photograph is as much a true vibration of energy as it is a concept or a document, if not more so.
“To try to see more and better is not a matter of whim or curiosity or self-indulgence. To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything that makes up the universe, by reason of the mysterious gift of existence.” ~ Teilhard de Chardin, “Seeing” 1947
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition Photographic Concepts and Treasures – Works from the Collection Part 1 – Portraiture, Landscape, Botany at Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne showing at left, the work of August Sander including Three Generations of the Family (1912, above) and Farming Couple, Westerwald (1912, above)
Installation view of the exhibition Photographic Concepts and Treasures – Works from the Collection Part 1 – Portraiture, Landscape, Botany at Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne showing at left, the work of August Sander (above); and at centre, the work of Andrea Robbins and Max Becher (below)
In 2022, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur celebrates the 25th year of its exhibition program in Cologne’s Mediapark, launched in 1997 under the forward-looking title “Comparative Concepts.” This anniversary offers an occasion to present many works from the collection in two exhibitions, each with its own focus, enabling Die Photographische Sammlung to provide visitors with a broad overview of its holdings.
With over 380 exhibits, the current presentation focuses on the central themes of “Portraiture, Landscape, Botany” as illustrated by the work of 25 historical and contemporary artistic photographers. A second exhibition to follow from September 2 will spotlight the related areas of “Urban Life, Architecture, Industry.” Viewers will discover a variety of links between the two presentations.
The portrait genre will be examined first, based on the work of August Sander, whose archive has provided vital inspiration for the institution’s collection and program concept. With his iconic series “Citizens of the Twentieth Century,” represented in the current show by over 50 original prints, Sander took the photographic portrait in a new and innovative direction as a method of factual documentary. Compiled in the first half of the last century and consisting of hundreds of images, this work still has a singular standing to this day as an enormously multifaceted oeuvre following a predefined concept that was implemented step by step starting in the mid-1920s. The series reflects fundamental new challenges in dealing with the medium, as well as aspects of the individual and group portrait – considerations that are a core component of Die Photographische Sammlung.
The portraits in the collection for example inquire into the relationship between the individual and society, exploring questions of identity and of social, family, and professional circumstances and relationships, and thereby providing a glimpse of various life stages and living conditions. The influence of the ever-changing impulses, possibilities, and synergies over time is very much in evidence here. This connection is particularly vivid in documentary projects that are pursued over longer periods. They show how individuals are continuously shaped by the respective cultural environment. This circumstance is reflected not only in the image they have of their own lives but also in how they respond to their life realities.
Accordingly, the subject areas of landscape and botany are connected with the portrait on many levels. Like portraiture, landscape as both a human habitat and economic and cultural realm reflects temporal phenomena. Botanical studies that are rendered like portraits may come to life as naturalistic individuals or in other cases allude to the world of aesthetics and sculpture.
By offering an opportunity to compare and contrast various photo series, the exhibition compellingly underscores how the unifying criterion of a factual documentary approach accompanied by a defined concept has always been a leitmotif for the activities of Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur. A concentration on this specific current in photography is what defines the collection’s distinctive profile. Rather than representing a cross-section of the history of photography, the aim is to emphasise photographic visions that creatively guide traditional approaches onto new terrain in order to lend them current and future pertinence.
Press release from Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur
Installation view of the exhibition Photographic Concepts and Treasures – Works from the Collection Part 1 – Portraiture, Landscape, Botany at Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne showing at right, the work of Simone Nieweg (below)
The gardens shown in Nieweg’s photographs is of a type known in German as Grabeland – literally “land for digging.” Unlike typical allotment gardens, such plots are not available for long-term lease or ownership but are instead zoned for interim use on a year-by-year basis until they become building land or are put to some other use. The plantings are also prescribed to reflect this provisional state; no perennials, bushes, shrubs, or trees are allowed. Since Grabeland is impermanent terrain, entirely subject to utility and optimisation, one rarely finds here any of the decorative elements that populate allotment gardens. There are no garden furnishings, grills, or sun umbrellas – indeed there is nothing that would indicate the presence of leisure. What we see instead are the instruments of work, tools used to prepare the soil and cultivate the plants.
What Nieweg finds especially interesting about Grabeland are the forms and structures to which such conditions give rise. She has been working on this project since the mid-1980s, shortly after beginning her studies with Bernd Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Gardens, fields, landscapes, and more recently, views into forests are among the subjects that Nieweg has consistently explored in series taken over extended periods. She prefers using a large-format camera and elaborating her motifs in colour.
Text from the Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln website. No longer available online
Installation view of the exhibition Photographic Concepts and Treasures – Works from the Collection Part 1 – Portraiture, Landscape, Botany at Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne showing at left, the work of Karl Blossfeldt (below); and at right, work published by Folkwang-Auriga Verlag (below)
In the series “Die Tage Das Leben (Days. Life)”, begun in 1988, I photograph my friends again and again. I watch them finding themselves and each other and separating and having children; how they are alone and with others; how they get older and take each other’s hands so they don’t get lost along the way. I think of them full of tenderness. ~ Andreas Mader
Oliver Sieber studied photography in Bielefeld and Düssseldorf. Since 1999 he has worked with Katja Stuke on Frau Böhm, a photo project in the form of a magazine.
Sieber’s work usually takes the form of series and he is fascinated by the subject of identity and the phenomenon of young people and their subcultures. This led to the series SkinsModsTeds, B-Boyz B-Girlz, 11Girlfriends and Boy meets Girl. In 2006 he spent time in Japan for an artist in residence programme, where he made the series J_Subs as well as character thieves, for which he photographed young people dressed up as their favourite manga characters. Over the past few years exhibitions of his work have been held at, among others, the Photographers Gallery London, the Photographische Sammlung SK / Stiftung Kultur in Cologne, the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen, the Photo Espana Festival in Madrid, Yours gallery in Krakow and Fotomuseum Winterthur. Sieber has published a number of books. The latest two are based on his work character thieves and imaginary club.
Dr Christoph Schaden. “Oliver Sieber,” on the PhMuseum website Nd [Online] Cited 22/06/2022. No longer available online
Tübke’s photographs examine the representation of the human being and the role of the individual in society, in search for its identity while oscillating between adaptation and demarcation. Among his most famous projects are the portrait series Dalliendorf from 1996 and Citizens from 2001.
In photography, Tübke’s field is the human image. These are mainly full – length portraits in which the colour is greatly reduced. Tübke is concerned with the representation of individuality and uniqueness of people. The people portrayed almost always look into the camera. Through the concentration of the gaze as well as through the sensitively observed posture of the person portrayed, Tübke succeeds in creating images of very strong intensity with a documentary approach.
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Castelo canal with a view of the Church of San Geremia 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
I bought this album of 30 hand-coloured albumen prints by Fratelli Gajo together with numerous other black and white albumen prints at auction. Unfortunately the album had no cover but to save it for prosperity I had it rebound in leather at one of the only bookbinders left in Melbourne: White’s Law Bindery. They did a superb job.
I cannot find out anything about the Venetian photographer Fratelli Gajo except the address of his business. No dates, no bibliographic information.
What I do know is that these hand-coloured photographs are rare and exceptionally beautiful. They add an early chapter to the story of hand-coloured photography, which stretches from daguerreotypes, albumen prints, and silver gelatin prints to hand-coloured digital photographs with an equally varied subject matter – aerial photographs, landscapes, portraits, bodies, social documentary photographs and architectural renderings to name but a few.
The photographs in the posting are in the order they appear in the album. I have interleaved the albumen photographs with historical and contemporary images giving us a vista of Venice through time. Enjoy.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 153 Rivo delle Maravege 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [The Doges’ Palace and the Piazzetta] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 89 Venezia – Palazzo Ferry, Grand Hotel 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Wolfgang Moroder Palazzo Ferro Fini in Venice. Facade on Grand Canal 18 April 2016 CC BY-SA 3.0
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 680 Venezia 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [St Mark’s Basilica] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Canale grande verso Rialto 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Canaletto (Italian, 1697-1768) Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi towards the Rialto Between 1720 and 1723 Oil on canvas Height: 144cm (56.6 in) Width: 207cm (81.4 in) Museum of 18th-century Venice Public domain
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [Bridge of Sighs] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia After the painting by A. Paoletti, Venezia 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Antonio Ermolao Paoletti (Venezia, 1834-1912) A Venetian ice cream seller Nd Oil on canvas 50.2 x 74.9cm (19.8 x 29.5 in.)
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [The Courtyard of the Doge’s Palace looking towards the Torricella] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia No. 5 Piazza S. Marco dai Leoni 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 13 Libreria e Loggetto 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 35. Venezia – Porta del P. Ducale detta della Carta 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Jean-Pol Grandmont The Porta della Carta of the Doges Palace on Piazzetta San Marco in Venice 1 June 2013 CC BY-SA 4.0
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 230 [Interior of the Doges Palace] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Torre dell’Orologio, Piazza san Marco, Venice
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 101. Torre del Orologio 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 141. Venezia Chiesa della Salute 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Walter Richard Sickert (British, 1860-1942) Santa Maria della Salute, Venice c. 1901 Oil on canvas 56 x 46cm Royal Academy of Arts
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 65 Monumento Collooni 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Federico Moja (Italian, 1802-1885) Venice, a View of the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, with the Equestrian Monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni and the Scuola Grande di San Marco in the Background 1848 Oil on canvas Unframed: 74.5 by 104.5cm Framed: 89 by 118.5cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia No. 30 Rivo di Canonica 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [Entry to the presbytery of St Mark’s Basilica] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [Bridge of Sighs] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 58. Rio S. Agostino 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Didier Descouens Rio di S. Agostino seen from the S. Agostino Bridge in Venice 11 May 2015 CC BY-SA 4.0
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [Torre del Orologio] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [The Doge’s Palace] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26 cm Support: 27 x 36 cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 87 Venezia – Palazzo Contarini Fasan 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Wolfgang Moroder Palazzo Contarini Fasan in Venice. Facade on Grand Canal 31 July 2010 CC BY-SA 4.0
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Venezia – Palazzo Pisaro 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 100. Venezia – Palazzo Rezzonico 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Didier Descouens Ca ‘Rezzonico, Venice facade of Giorgio Massari on the Grand Canal 7 May 2012 CC BY-SA 4.0
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [Statue of King Vittorio Emanuel II by the sculptor Ettore Ferrari 1887] c. 1887 Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Didier Descouens The main gate at the Venetian Arsenal 9 May 2012 CC BY-SA 4.0
The so-called “Solid ground entrance” of the Arsenale in Venice was built between 1692 and 1694 on a project by Alessandro Tremignon. Eight standing figures on pedestals on the ground: At the front row: from left to right: La Giustizia by Giovanni Antonio Comino, Marte by Giovanni Antonio Comino, Nettuno by Giovanni Antonio Comino, Bellona by Francesco Cabianca At the the second and the third rows: L’Abbondanza by Francesco Cabianca (last row on the right), La Vigilanza by Francesco Cabianca (second row on the right), Two more Allegorical statues by Giovanni Antonio Comino, (second and third row on the left)
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 157 33 Arsenale 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Keystone View Company (American, Manufacturers and Publishers) The Rialto Bridge, Venice 1929 Stereograph print on card mount Mount: 9 x 18cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled [Rialto Bridge] 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 211. Bis- Venezia – Chiesa S. Marco – Interno (Interior of the San Marco Church) 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia Untitled 1880s Hand-coloured albumen print mounted on cardboard Image: 20 x 26cm Support: 27 x 36cm
This is the second posting on this magnificent exhibition on the work of the American photographer Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976), this time its iteration at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Cunningham, whose broad expanse of work stretches from Pictorialism through avant-garde to Group f/64 modernism, has for too long been underrated in the pantheon of 20th century photographic stars.
In this posting there are 20 or so new images from the exhibition, including contributions from luminaries and friends such as Minor White, Edward Weston, Lisette Model and Dorothea Lange. Of interest is the close framing of the portraits (for example see Sonya Noskowiak 1928, below) and, with these media images, the ability to see the placement and size of the photographic print on the supporting backing card.
I particularly respond to the tonality and texture of the plant photographs and Imogen’s sensitivity to their form and structure.
My favourite photograph in the posting is an image of Cunningham’s I have never seen before – the wonderful late work, Aiko’s Hands (1971, below). The Stieglitz hands, the suspended leaf like Minor White, the message in the water…
There are parts of this image that are a quiet metaphor, but the overall impression is not. It talks directly and immediately to the viewer.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thanks to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See the posting on this exhibition when it was at the Seattle Art Museum.
In a career that spanned seventy years, Imogen Cunningham created a large and diverse body of work – from portraits, to nudes, to florals, and to street photographs. In a field dominated by men, she was one of a handful of women who helped to shape early modernist photography in America. This exhibition seeks to acknowledge her stature as equivalent to that of her male peers and to reevaluate her enormous contribution to twentieth century photographic history.
After her graduation from the University of Washington, Cunningham took a job in the studio of photographer and ethnologist Edward S. Curtis. She learned the platinum printing process there, and received a grant that allowed her to continue her studies in Dresden, Germany. On her return to Seattle, she began making soft-focus platinum prints with an ethereal dreamlike quality. Her work in this period was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art and literature, which called for renewal within the Victorian art establishment through spiritualism and an enhanced connection with nature. An epic tale set in a medieval forest, The Wood Beyond the World (1894) by William Morris, a leading figure in the movement, particularly sparked her imagination.
After Cunningham moved her family to San Francisco in 1917, she turned away from soft-focus images and began to make sharply delineated pictures. She cultivated a garden, growing plants and flowers for a series of botanical studies, all while taking care of her three young sons. In 1929 the prominent photographer Edward Weston recommended that ten of Cunningham’s photographs be included in the seminal exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart, Germany. Although the show did not bring her financial success, it garnered international recognition for her as a leading American modernist photographer.
When asked to describe the requirements for a successful portrait photographer, Cunningham replied, “You must be able to gain an understanding at short notice and at close range of the beauties of character, intellect, and spirit, so you can draw out the best qualities and make them show in the face of the sitter.” She would often engage her sitters in conversation until they relaxed, or ask them to think of the nicest thing they could imagine. She resisted indulging their vanity, however, and “face-lifting” was her word for the type of portrait work that required beautification – in her estimation an obstacle to a good likeness.
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Waiting for Work on Edge of the Pea Field, Holtville, Imperial Valley, California February 1937 Gelatin silver print 20.5 × 19.2 cm (8 1/16 × 7 9/16 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
“HUMAN EROSION [all underlined] / Erosion of the soil has its counterpart in erosion / of our society. / The one wastes natural resources; / the other human resources / Employment is intermittent. Jobs are precarious and / annual income is low. / Waited weeks for the maturity of 1937 winter pea / crop, which froze; then more weeks until maturity / of second crop. / Near Hollville,California / February 1937.”
Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) Woman with Veil, San Francisco 1949 Gelatin silver print 34.9 x 27cm The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
In 1932 Imogen Cunningham, along with Ansel Adams, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston – all San Francisco Bay Area photographers – helped found Group f/64. (They adopted the name from the aperture setting on a large-format camera that would yield the greatest depth of field, making a photograph equally sharp from foreground to background.) The goal of this loosely formed association was to promote a modernist style through sharply focused images created with a West Coast perspective or sense of place. The works presented in this gallery, created by Cunningham’s closest colleagues – all contributors to the Group f/64 legacy – demonstrate how the influence they had on one another defined the future of West Coast photography.
In 1934 Cunningham’s marriage to Roi Partridge ended in divorce. Their three teenage boys, Gryffyd, Rondal, and Padraic, remained in the family home with their mother until they finished high school. Cunningham never remarried, and although she received the house as part of her settlement, the divorce was the beginning of three decades of financial difficulties. Without Partridge, Cunningham had to pick up the pace of her work to stay afloat. She took more commissions, made more portraits, and began teaching portrait photography to students in her home. Despite the added stress, Cunningham sought out ways to challenge herself.
In 1934, while in New York, Cunningham made what she called her first “stolen pictures,” documentary street photographs that she took while trying to hide herself and her camera from view. Her interest in street photography was renewed in 1946 when she met Lisette Model while they were both teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Cunningham’s candid depictions of her subjects have often been described as gentler and more sympathetic than those by many of her contemporaries. Her “stolen pictures” capture people as they are and not how they look when they know they are being photographed.
One of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) enjoyed a career that spanned three-quarters of a century, creating a large and diverse body of work that underscored her vision, versatility, and commitment to the medium.
The first major retrospective in the United States in more than 35 years, Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective brings together her insightful portraits, elegant flower and plant studies, poignant street pictures, and groundbreaking nudes in a visual celebration of Cunningham’s enormous contributions to the history of photography.
“Despite Cunningham’s exceptional achievements as a photographic artist, her work has not received the attention accorded her male counterparts,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Though struggling to meet the demands of family and career, she emerged by the second half of the 1920s as one of the most important and innovative modernist photographers in America, collaborating with leading practitioners, mentoring novices, and actively engaging with contemporary controversies in modern art. This exhibition and publication will provide the spotlight on her contribution to 20th-century photography that she so richly deserves.”
Cunningham was initially self-taught, learning the fundamentals of photography from the instructions that came with her first camera. After graduating from the University of Washington, she established a portrait studio in Seattle and began making soft-focus photographs. Her work in this period was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art and literature. In 1915, Cunningham married and started a family. After she moved her family to San Francisco in 1917, she turned away from soft-focus images and began making a series of sharply delineated botanical studies.
In 1932 Cunningham, along with Ansel Adams, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston – all San Francisco Bay Area photographers – helped found Group f/64. This loosely formed association promoted a modernist style through sharply focused images created with a West Coast perspective and sense of place.
From the mid-1940s forward, Cunningham could often be seen roaming the streets of San Francisco with her Rolleiflex, making environmental portraits of the city’s inhabitants. Her enlightened attitude about her place in the world extended to her relationships with people of different racial backgrounds and sexual orientations, which broke down social barriers while enriching and diversifying her oeuvre. Cunningham’s last major project, a series of portraits of older people, was started at age 92 and published posthumously in the book After Ninety: Imogen Cunningham in 1977. The project reflected her determination to keep active and provided a way to come to grips with being a nonagenarian herself.
Cunningham was a woman of exceptional intelligence and talent, yet competing in a male-dominated profession posed a formidable challenge. She felt disparaged by some of her male colleagues, who occasionally downplayed her talent and influence. As a bulwark against the stress, she joined San Francisco Women Artists, a group organised to promote, support, and expand the representation of women in the arts. Over the years Cunningham served as a resource for female artists such as Laura Andreson, Ruth Asawa, Alma Lavenson, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, Consuelo Kanaga, and Merry Renk, among others, providing advice, moral support, and essential connections throughout the art and business worlds.
“Cunningham continually sought out new opportunities to grow, learn, and change as an artist and a person” says Paul Martineau, curator of photographs at the Getty Museum, and curator of the exhibition. “She readily admitted that she was never fully satisfied with anything and considered self-improvement, in all its forms, her life’s work.”
Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective is organised by the Getty Museum, Los Angeles and curated by Paul Martineau, associate curator of Photographs. Major support from Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation. Accompanying the exhibition is a lavishly illustrated companion book, Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective.
Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum website
Cunningham was a woman of exceptional intelligence and talent, yet competing in a male-dominated profession posed a formidable challenge, particularly after Partridge divorced her in 1934 and she struggled to support herself. To make matters worse, Cunningham felt disparaged by some of her male colleagues, who occasionally downplayed her talent and influence. As a bulwark against the stress, Cunningham joined San Francisco Women Artists, a group organised to promote, support, and expand the role of women in the arts. Over the years Cunningham served as a resource for female artists such as Laura Andresen, Ruth Asawa, Alma Lavenson, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, Consuelo Kanaga, and Merry Renk, among others, providing advice, moral support, and essential connections throughout the art and business worlds.
In 1964 the photographer and editor Minor White devoted an issue of the influential magazine Aperture to Cunningham. In an elegant tribute, he described his own experience of the spell she cast over her subjects as a kind of inner light. The first publication dedicated entirely to Cunningham’s work, this issue of Aperture contained a selection of forty-four images dating from 1912 to 1963, representing her wide range of genres and styles.
Between 1965 and 1973 Cunningham served as a visiting photography instructor at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland; Humboldt State College, Arcata; the San Francisco Art Institute; and San Francisco State College. In 1970 she was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation grant of $5,000 to make prints from her old negatives. This prestigious prize marked a turning point in her long career, an acknowledgment that coincided with a rising interest among museums and enthusiasts in collecting photographs, both historical and contemporary.
When she was ninety-two, Cunningham started a new project, photographing people of advanced age. She estimated that this would take two years to complete, and she planned to publish the photographs in a volume to be called After Ninety. She began to seek out subjects, visiting them in their homes, in hospitals, and in convents. The project provided an outlet for her determination to keep active as well as a way to come to grips with being a nonagenarian herself. Cunningham died on June 24, 1976, and the book was published the following year.
Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) After Ninety 1977 Closed: 31.1 x 23.5 x 1.3cm Private collection
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![Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia. 'Untitled [Statue of King Vittorio Emanuel II by the sculptor Ettore Ferrari 1887]' c. 1887](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/28-untitled.jpg "Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia. 'Untitled [Statue of King Vittorio Emanuel II by the sculptor Ettore Ferrari 1887]' c. 1887")
![Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 'Untitled [Rialto Bridge]' 1880s](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/30-untitled.jpg "Fratelli Gajo – Piazza S.Marco 139 – Venezia 'Untitled [Rialto Bridge]' 1880s")
![Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) '[Dogwood Blossoms, Yosemite National Park]' Negative about 1938; print 1941](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ansel-adams-dogwood-blossoms-yosemite-national-park.jpg "Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) '[Dogwood Blossoms, Yosemite National Park]' Negative about 1938; print 1941")
![Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) '[Sonya Noskowiak]' 1928](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/cunningham-sonya-noskowiak.jpg "Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) '[Sonya Noskowiak]' 1928")
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