This is a disappointing first solo exhibition in Victoria by internationally renowned Australian photojournalist Trent Parke, the main body of the exhibition made up of his “internationally celebrated series, consisting of anonymous portraits taken on the streets of Adelaide.” (Wall text from the exhibition)
Seriously, who writes this stuff?
Sure, Parke is Australia’s only member of the Magnum photo agency but I have been commenting on photography for many years now, and have never heard of this series before, neither locally and definitely not internationally.
From the ironic title, The camera is god, critiquing the all seeing eye of the camera, to the work itself – a large grid of black and white digital prints from film negatives, the images taken when Parke, “fixed his camera on a tripod and set it to take multiple shots (up to 30 shots in eight-second bursts) when the pedestrian lights changed.” Parke then extracted, “individual portraits from these photographs of street traffic, Parke allowed motion-blur and film grain to obscure the identity of his subjects” – the series feels like a university photography course exercise into the study of motion. While the installation works better from a distance, the gridded layout forming a holistic whole of ambiguous individuals, the closer you get the more the integrity of the images naturally falls apart with golf ball sized grain. Unfortunately, not all the grain is from the film negative. Some of it is digital noise, and the combination of film grain and digital pixellation does not sit well with the images. If you are going to shoot analogue film, why then destroy its characteristics by printing digitally, and introducing an entirely different element into the equation?
Photographs of anonymous people in the city have a long presence in the history of photography. They disavow what is known as the ‘civil contract of photography’1 that is, a relation between formally equal parties (the photographer and the sitter), whose equality lies in their shared participation in the act of being photographed, in what Ariella Azoulay terms, the community of ‘the governed’.2 As Daniel Palmer and Jessica Whyte note, “Photography is one of the ways in which we are able to establish a distance from power and observe its actions from a position that is not already marked as one of subjection.”3 In other words, the photographer can photograph from a position of freedom and not of surveillance and control (by state power). Of course, this does not negate the power of the photographer to choose what to photograph, who to make subjective to their whim and control… with or without permission (to photograph).
Early examples in this genre are works by Paul Strand taken between 1915-1917, close-up portraits of anonymous urban subjects. Next we have portraits of anonymous New York subway commuters taken by Walker Evans with a hidden camera between 1938-41 (see below). Other photographers include Harry Callahan and his Chicago series of 1950 and, in Australia, Bill Henson’s Untitled 1980/82 series of crowds, taken with a telephoto lens to flatten the pictorial plane.
Commenting on the work of Walker Evans, the author Max Kozloff observes in his highly recommended book, The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900,
“From around 1938 to 1941 this ‘penitent spy and apologetic voyeur’, as he later styled himself, photographed passengers with a hidden camera, a cable release trailing down his coat sleeve to his itchy hand. This had been a devious, unsavoury thing to do, and he knew it; but the result was spectacular in its disclosure of the miscellaneous, anonymous, quotidian texture of metropolitan life, solemn or comic by turns. It was made up of figures whose collective presence he retroactively implied by experimentally sequencing his pictures, cropped and in grids. Evans did not see what his camera saw, and his subjects were oblivious to his design.”4
Sound familiar? sequencing his pictures, cropped and in grids…
The key here is an annunciation, a spiritual exposition, of the quotidian texture of metropolitan life through the photography of anonymous human beings. Human beings who have not given their permission to be photographed but who are captured anyway in the passions of life, the angst of existence, in a slightly devious way. Let’s get this straight: this series is not about the camera being god, it is about the photographer actively choosing to press the shutter release of the camera, the photographer choosing what to crop out of the image, about the photographer choosing what to print and how to arrange and sequence the work. It is about the photographer as (an absent) god … for he neither looks through the lens of the camera, nor is there at the exhibition. But he is an omnipresent, omni-prescient force, forever surveilling the field of view, dominating the subject and presenting his choice. The photograph is framed by the photographer’s (absent, but controlling) eye. It is about his ego, not the cameras, as to what is represented. Commenting on his own work, Walker Evans observes,
“A distinct point, though, is made in the lifting of these objects from their original settings. The point is that this lifting, is, in the raw, exactly what the photographer is doing with his machine, the camera, anyway, always. The photographer, the artist, “takes” a picture: symbolically he lifts an object or a combination of objects, and in so doing he makes a claim for that object or that composition, and a claim for his act of seeing in the first place. The claim is that he has rendered his object in some way transcendent, and that in each instance his vision has penetrating validity”5
Further, as Annete Kuhn notes, the eye of the camera is neutral, it sees the world as it is:
“Photographs are coded, but usually so as to appear uncoded. The truth / authenticity potential of photography is tied in with the idea that seeing is believing. Photography draws on an ideology of the visible as evidence. The eye of the camera is neutral, it sees the world as it is: we look at a photograph and see a slice of the world. To complete the circuit of recording, visibility and truth set up by the photograph, there has to be someone looking at it …”6 (My italics)
Caroline Blinder suggests that,
“… transcendental ethos is aligned with the camera’s ability to capture the real and the spiritual, the native and the universal simultaneously. Hence, Evans’s images of vernacular America, of regional architecture, objects, signs, and people become representative of a “moment of seeing” in which a secular vision of America is given sacred implications.
“The idea of reinserting a sacred purpose into the photographic project became part of the era’s [1930-40s] attempts to codify photography as a medium with far-reaching metaphoric, aesthetic, and cultural ramifications. In this context, the combination of a self-effacing aspect with a moment of total vision – “I am nothing; I see all” – in itself suggests a constant oscillation between positions behind and in front of a metaphorical camera; positions which, incidentally, also mimic and reflect the role of the critic vis-à-vis the subject of photography.”7
There is no penetrating validity to be seen here, for the series seems to have been codified (in absentia) as a form of post-human conceptualisation, undermining the 1930s attempt to codify the medium with a spiritual dimension. Unlike the photographs of Walker Evans, or Bill Henson, where I am fascinated with the object of the photographers attention (what were they thinking, where were they going, what was their life about?), in this case the object of the artist’s attention – “the transience of street life and the photographer’s own experience of being adrift in the world of light and movement” – does not carry me along for the journey, has not become existential, transcendent. It is not the ghost in the machine of the camera (its ability to capture things that humans cannot see) that is present, but the ghost in the machine of the human that becomes apparent in these images… that of an unresolved idea, a floating bit of code.
Personally, I found the rendered object not worth a second glance. The images did not, and will not, reveal themselves to you over weeks and years. Of much more interest was the single, whole image from which the detail is taken. If I had been surrounded by the light and energy of works such as the only complete image shown (see below) – say 15 of them in a darkened room – then I would have been excited, surprised, challenged and enlightened. Go with he source!
These images remain a promise unfulfilled. They could have been so much more “than the closed-off beings of our own mediations, of our own mirrors, our machines.”8
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Footnotes
1/ Azoulay, Ariella (2008), The Civil Contract of Photography (trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli), New York: Zone Books.
2/ Palmer, Daniel and Whyte, Jessica. “‘No Credible Photographic Interest’: Photography restrictions and surveillance in a time of terror,” in Philosophy of Photography Volume 1 Number 2, Intellect Limited 2010, p. 178.
3/ Ibid., p. 179.
4/ Kozloff, Max. The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900. London: Phaidon Press, 2007, p. 149.
5/ Walker Evans quoted in Thompson, J. L. (ed.,). Walker Evans at Work. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984, p. 229 in Caroline Blinder. “”The Transparent Eyeball”: On Emerson and Walker Evans,” in Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Winnipeg: Dec 2004. Vol. 37, Iss. 4; pg. 149, 15 pgs.
6/ Kuhn, Annette. The Power of the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp. 27-28.
7/ Blinder, Caroline. “”The Transparent Eyeball”: On Emerson and Walker Evans,” in Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Winnipeg: Dec 2004. Vol. 37, Iss. 4; pg. 149, 15 pgs.
“Walker Evans once wrote a friend: “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” Evans’ insistence on staring as the main road to learning included making pictures of subway riders with a hidden camera, but he felt so guilty about being an unobserved observer that he withheld publication for years. This compunction still dogs many photographers but seldom stops them.”
Goldberg, Vicki. “Voyeurism, Exposed,” on the Artnet website [Online] Cited 06/02/2016
MGA provides Victorians with their first opportunity to see a significant exhibition of work by Trent Parke, the internationally renowned Australian photojournalist. Over the past two decades Parke has brought his highly poetic sensibility to traditional documentary photography. Alongside a range of Parke’s work recently purchased for the MGA collection this exhibition features his 2013 series, The camera is god (street portrait series), which puts a metaphysical spin on street photography.
During the late 1990s Trent Parke turned away from his career as a press photographer to concentrate on using the visual language of documentary photography to explore personal interests. Continuing to work in the manner of a photojournalist – venturing into the world with a 35mm film camera hanging from his neck – Parke’s artistic practice is a type of existential journey.
Trent Parke: the camera is god is the first solo exhibition of Parke’s work in Victoria, and provides an opportunity to appreciate the trajectory of his practice over the last 15 years.
At the heart of this exhibition is Parke’s The camera is god (street portrait series) of 2014. This internationally celebrated series consists of anonymous portraits, taken on the streets of Adelaide. To capture these images Parke fixed his camera on a tripod and set it to take multiple shots (up to 30 shots in eight-second bursts) when the pedestrian lights changed. Extracting individual portraits from these photographs of street traffic, Parke allowed motion-blur and film grain to obscure the identity of his subjects. As such, this series is not really about individuals, but about the transience of street life and the photographer’s own experience of being adrift in the world of light and movement.
Wall text from the exhibition
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Subway Passenger, New York 1938 Silver gelatin photograph
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Subway Passenger, New York 1938 Silver gelatin photograph
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Subway Passenger, New York 1938 Silver gelatin photograph
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Subway Passenger, New York 1938 Silver gelatin photograph
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Subway Passenger, New York 1938 Silver gelatin photograph
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Subway Passenger, New York 1938 Silver gelatin photograph
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Chicago 1950 Gelatin silver print 8 1/16 x 12 15/16 in. (20.48 x 32.86cm)
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Chicago 1950 Gelatin silver print 8 3/8 x 12 3/8 in. (21.27 x 31.43cm)
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Chicago 1950 Gelatin silver print 8 3/8 x 12 1/2 in. (21.27 x 31.75cm)
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Chicago 1950 Gelatin silver print 7 7/8 x 12 3/4 in. (20 x 32.39cm)
Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) Untitled 1980/82 Gelatin silver chlorobromide print From a series of 220 57.5 × 53.4cm Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Bill Henson (Australian, b. 1955) Untitled 1980/82 Gelatin silver chlorobromide print From a series of 220 57.5 × 53.4cm Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019) XB Faclon 500 coupe John Goss special 1975 2016 From the series Carmania Digital photograph
Australian vernacular
Hats off to my photographer friend Andrew Follows for a stunning set of Australian automobile photographs.
These photographs, taken during daylight at the BP station before the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne, and at twilight on the opposite side of the freeway at the corresponding BP station after the cars have returned from their drive to Frankston, are superb.
Andrew and I have an intense passion for cars. Only through this true immersion and engagement can you get photographs that are so evocative of subject matter, that are so atmospheric of place, space and the cars themselves. These are some of the best car photographs I have seen in a very long time… a kind of Australian vehicular vernacular.
I have sequenced these photographs for Andrew so that they tell a story, a modernist story of light, form and design, interspersed with vibrations of energy (punctum) such as Buick 1956 or XA Ford Faclon coupe GT 1974 Faze 4. Look at the crack in the concrete of this image as it leads into the car which both crouches down and seems to float in the air. Then just look at the clean presence of XB Faclon 500 coupe John Goss special 1975 or the space and light in the image VE Valiant sedan with red Ford pick up truck. God I love them…
To then finish the sequence with that classic Aussie car, HDT Holden LH Torana L34 1978, captured in such an eloquent image of movement and light. Just sensational.
Andrew, you could make a living taking photographs of car art!
Marcus
** Please make sure you enlarge these images to see them to best advantage. **
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Lake District, England 1994 Silver gelatin print
I finally got around to scanning some more of my black and white archive, this time from a trip to England in 1994. Beautiful, poignant and funny (people wearing their solidarity with people living with HIV/AIDS, with ribbons on their crotch), these images make me laugh and reflect at the same time. To all those that we have lost, we remember them.
Dr MarcusBunyan
I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991-1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.
Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my store web page.
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Lake District, England 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Lake District, England 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Lake District, England 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Lake District, England 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Lake District, England 1994 Silver gelatin print
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Manchester Mardi Gras 1994 Silver gelatin print
Exhibition dates: 25th September – 22nd November, 2015
Judges: The 2015 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize was judged by MGA Senior Curator Stephen Zagala, renowned artist Bill Henson, and Bendigo Art Gallery Director Karen Quinlan
Installation photograph of the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2015 at the Monash Gallery of Art Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Reality, passing
In terms of the professional quality of work, the pristine printing and framing, and the “less is more” nature of the hang, this is the best William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize I have seen at the Monash Gallery of Art. The surprise about the nature of this year’s finalists is the surfeit of landscape work and the weakness of the portrait photographs. Key words when looking at the landscape work are: the sublime, internal terrain, elision, fear, darkness, constructed landscapes, aesthetic hyper reality, unreachable worlds, presence and absence, layering, pigment prints.
There is a heavy sense of un/reality about all of the landscape work, as though there is no such thing as the unmediated, straight landscape photograph any more. Reality passes (passing itself off for something else), and the viewer is left to tease out what is constructed (or not), how many layers (both mental and physical) are involved, and what the possible outcomes might be. In this post-landscape photography even straight digital photographs or analogue photographs of the landscape take on this desiccated view complete with surface flatness and “air” of unreality.
For example, look at Murray Fredericks’ North Stradbroke (2014), Silvi Glattauer’s Altiplano 1 (2015) Anne Algar’s Eruption (2015) and numerous others throughout the exhibition. These places exist in real life yet feel so un/real in these photographs – through scale, through colour, through surface – that you are left wondering what’s it all about. There is certainly no link to traditional notions of the sublime and little connection to the elemental (as in the object as itself). As I have said before about contemporary photography, these photographs are all about the photographers ideas and desires, not about the world itself. The photographs are flat are rather uninteresting with no depth of feeling or ambiguity of meaning. I found it hard to get excited about any of the landscape photographs.
And when photographers do use traditional techniques, such as black and white printing, silver gelatin prints or the analogue / digital combo, the results are similarly underwhelming. It is as if the aesthetic of the digital realm, this aesthetic hyper reality, has taken over how people use analogue photography as well. Robert Ashton’s Opening (2015) (analogue/digital), David Bibby’s Untitled #1 (2014) (black and white digital) and Virginia Cummins’ Gone tender, river’s edge (2015) (silver gelatin print) all evidence this cut-up, layering, obscure non-seeing where the magic of the traditional print has been lost.
Another surprise to me was that the two works that I found most successful in the exhibition were two of the most heavily conceptual. These images were both beautiful and intellectually stimulating. Brook Andrew’s Possessed II (2015) left me wondering about the original slides, marvelling at the technique used to create the image and wanting to see the rest of the series and interrogate further the artist’s background and “the tradition of the psychological in depiction and stories of the Australian alien landscape.” There was ambiguity and feeling here!
The work that I thought should have won was Peta Clancy’s She carries it all like a map on her skin (2014-2015). I have always liked Clancy’s work for there is so much sensitivity to subject matter embedded in her work. Clancy probes the boundaries of the photograph and the skin through punctures made using a fine silver needle to create a lace-like effect or ‘internalised landscape’ which is visible from both the emulsion and non-emulsion sides of the print. She then re-photographs the photograph and punctures the print again, the print becoming a palimpsest of punctures, of wounds, of the journey of life (with the needles link to woman’s work and the lips relation to desire). The installation of the work then emphasises the physicality of the print, Clancy “activating the materiality of the photographic medium by exploring photographs in terms of what the image content depicts as well as three-dimensional objects that exist in space and time.” Such a wonderfully tactile, sensual and conceptual work of negative / positive, presence / absence that kept drawing me back to hidden worlds.
As for the winner, Joseph McGlennon’s Florilegium #1 (2014), according to gallery staff some people love it and some people don’t. I am of the latter camp. The photograph is beautiful and “pretty” in a superficial, constructed way but flat like a piece of Florence Broadhurst wallpaper in another. Basically it’s an illustrated plate from a 19th century colour plate book made out of multiple negatives and digitally rendered. These images are taken in the exotic locations of Madagascar, Tahiti and Singapore and one could apply the critique of “Orientalism” to this piece of work… the proposal of lush landscapes and unreachable worlds as ‘Other’ – the imitation or depiction of aspects in Middle Eastern, South Asian, African and East Asian landscapes and cultures evidenced by a patronising Western attitude towards them. Further, photographs such as Valerie Sparks’ Le vol 1 (2014) imagine this exotic ‘Other’ by pasting taxidermy birds into “hybrid” (in other words, artist made) environments, while work such as Carolyn Young’s Reference grassy woodland: spring (Bookham) (2014) topographically map a uniform, constructed, imagined terrain of becoming that will never exist.
Most of the landscape work could be associated with a de-territorialization and re-territorialization of meaning across locations and through technologies (Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press, 1987), where moments of connectivity and the assemblages that form them, “are the processes by which various configurations of linked components function in an intersection with each other, a process that can be both productive and disruptive. Any such process involves a territorialization; there is a double movement where something accumulates meanings (re-territorialization), but does so co-extensively with a de-territorialization where the same thing is disinvested of meanings.”1 Unfortunately in this exhibition, the intensification of these processes around a particular site through a multiplicity of intersections in these landscape photographs, are mostly dead ends. They lead nowhere of much interest and they fail to speak to me, which is what I want art to do.
What I have picked up from all this viewing is another couple of insights. It’s a sad state of affairs to see “Collection of the artist” on most of these works. Hardly a single one is in a collection. It’s difficult to be a contemporary photographic artist in Australia. You will make no money at it, even if you are represented by commercial gallery for, unlike America, there are simply not the collectors in Australia for the art of contemporary photography. Even as I critique the work, I admire the artist’s for producing it, for I know the cost, courage and dedication needed to keep making work that hardly ever gets purchased.
And secondly, all of these “pigment” prints. A pigment is a colouring matter or substance which when suspended in a liquid vehicle becomes a paint, ink, etc. or whose presence in the tissues or cells of animals or plants colours them. In other words, it is an additive which has no real body of its own. No wonder all of these pigment prints look so flat and have the feeling of a lack of depth. Show me a Stephen Shore original photograph and I will show you more presence than all of these digital prints put together.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Word count: 1,220
1/ Wood, Aylish. “Fresh Kill: Information technologies as sites of resistance,” in Munt, Sally (ed.,). Technospaces: Inside the New Media. London: Continuum, 2001, p. 166.
Installation photographs of the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2015 at the Monash Gallery of Art Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Peta Clancy (Australian, b. 1970) She carries it all like a map on her skin 2014-2015 From the series Punctures Chromgenic prints 55 x 80cm (each) Reproduction courtesy of the artist
The series Punctures which explores skin, mortality and ageing expands on my long-term preoccupation with probing the boundaries of the photograph and the skin. Comprised of images of a woman’s lips punctured with a fine silver needle to create a lace-like effect or ‘internalised landscape’ and visible from both the emulsion and non-emulsion sides of the print. I am interested in activating the materiality of the photographic medium by exploring photographs in terms of what the image content depicts as well as three-dimensional objects that exist in space and time.
Installation photographs of Peta Clancy’s She carries it all like a map on her skin (2014-2015) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
In 2006 the MGA Foundation established the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize to promote excellence in contemporary Australian photography. The annual $25,000 non-acquisitive William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize is an initiative of the MGA Foundation.
MGA Senior Curator, Stephen Zagala was joined by two of Australia’s most notable art world figures, Bill Henson and Karen Quinlan, to select the finalists for this year. The prize is open to any Australian photographer, whether amateur or professional, and all genres of photography are eligible, provided that the work has been produced in the last 12 months. Each year a panel of three judges considers hundreds of entries and curates an exhibition of finalists, before settling on a single winner.
The panel selected the shortlist of 47 works to be exhibited, and will convene again when the exhibition has been installed to choose a winner, which will be announced on Thursday 1 October. Bill Henson said of the selection process: ‘In the end, it really just comes down to how compelling I find a work to be. Matters of subject, issue or agenda have to find a form which is their equal for without that we’re left with something that simply holds no interest for us.’
Finalists: Anne Algar, Brook Andrew, Robert Ashton, Svetlana Bailey, Del Kathryn Barton, Clare Bedford, David Bibby, Devika Bilimoria, Frederico Câmara, Peter Campbell, Danica Chappell, Che Chorley, Peta Clancy, Virginia Cummins, Rebecca Dagnall, Cherine Fahd, David Flanagan, Murray Fredericks, Silvi Glattauer, Wayne Grivell, Molly Harris, Kern Hendricks, Lyndal Irons, Mark Kimber, Courtney Krawec, Michael Krzanich, Cathy Laudenbach, Jon Lewis, David Manley, AHC McDonald, Joseph McGlennon, Rod McNicol, Bill Moseley, Ward Roberts, Daniel Shipp, Valerie Sparks, Rodney Stewart, Rebekah Stuart, Ian Tippett, Justine Varga, John Watson, Kim Westcott, Peter Whyte, Amanda Williams, Rudi Williams, Melissa Williams-Brown and Carolyn Young.
On Thursday 1 October Joseph McGlennon was announced as the $25,000 winner of the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize. Colour Factory Honourable Mentions were awarded to Peter Campbell, Daniel Shipp and Valerie Sparks.
Text from the MGA website
Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970) Possessed II 2015 Gelatin silver print 137 x 127cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist, Tolarno Galleries (Melbourne) and Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris and Brussels)
Possessed is a black-and-white photographic series inspired by a rare collection of late 19th-century glass lantern slides depicting images of landscapes from Tasmania and Victoria. Recreated in a trompe l’oeil visual effect – some aspects of this work are akin to Rorschach imagery practice and reference the tradition of the psychological in depiction and stories of the Australian alien landscape.
Robert Ashton (Australian, b. 1950) Opening 2015 Pigment ink-jet print 60 x 95cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
I have lived close to the scrubby coastal bush for many years and watched it continually transform through fire, drought and habitation. This landscape can be an unsettling place and I am continually drawn to it, trying to describe the beauty and menace. For these images I have used a 4 x 5 field camera to facilitate a slower and more concise way of working. Looking for the place where the literal meets the abstract. Taking only a couple of exposures, committing to the moment. Embracing the limitations of the medium and letting the result be defined by the practice. As a diptych the images form a complimentary pair. Each distinct but instructing the other, to make a series of fractured dioramas.
David Bibby (Australian, b. 1970) Untitled #1 2014 From the series Darkness Pigment ink-jet print 50 x 75cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
Fear of dark places gave our ancient ancestors an evolutionary advantage, by priming brains and bodies for a fight-or-flight response when faced with the threat of danger or the unknown. These primal fears also had a strong influence on our cultures. Our fear of darkness and of forests, as dark places that conceal the unknown, has placed them at the centre of many of our myths, legends and folktales.
Despite, or perhaps because of our fear we seem to have an attraction to the darkness and there is something intrinsically beautiful in many dark images. Maybe the darkness has become a refuge in the modern world for those things we can’t control, including mystery and imagination.
Virginia Cummins Gone tender, river’s edge 2015 From the series Spirit work Gelatin silver print 70 x 70cm reproduction courtesy of the artist
This image was shot in remote South Gippsland, where I grew up. It’s part of the Spirit work series, exploring the positive power of nature and how our immersion in this world can move and change us. This work calls on the old-world landscape tradition of Romanticism and the quest for ‘the sublime’. To acknowledge the strength and transformative qualities of nature seems vital right now, in light of society’s blinkered approach to environmental concerns and our preoccupation with communication through technology.
This series was shot with obscure film cameras from the 1950s and 1960s. I enjoy the meditative qualities of traditional photographic practices and the potential for a bit of magic in these revelations.
Rebecca Dagnall (Australian, b. 1972) Pioneer pool 2015 From the series In the presence of absence – states of being in the Australian landscape Pigment ink-jet print 100 x 150cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
There is certain darkness in the Australian imaginary of the landscape that is tangled in a history that holds both a presence and an absence, a knowledge and yet a denial of past colonial deeds. It is as though this history haunts the landscape, like a ‘ghost’ with unfinished business. My current work is an exploration of how the Australian Gothic informs our response to the Australian landscape. The images respond to myths and stories about the landscape that focus on an understanding of the things that we cannot see.
Svetlana Bailey (German born Russia, b. 1984) Utah 2015 From the series All dreams come true Pigment ink-jet print 114 x 91cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
I work with images or artefacts that I find, such as on walls, billboards or shop window displays. They present an alternative reality, and I photograph them with their surroundings, and flatten these two spaces into one. Often the images I find are a montage, creating a reality that never truly existed. I collect them into a personal global album of images created by strangers in response to a common dream. Perhaps their makers considered place and interpreted its environment and beliefs, or were trying to shape our perception of reality. I wonder if these images exist for us or against us, if they beautify our life or mislead us, and if believing in their deception adds to our satisfaction.
Frederico Cãmara (Brazilian, b. 1971) Sydney Sealife Aquarium, Sydney, Australia 2014 From the series Views of Paradise Pigment ink-jet print 150 x 120cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
Views of Paradise is a research project that aims to create a world atlas of the artificial environments of zoos and aquariums, as an investigation on the relations between the zoo and the concepts of paradise, utopia, dystopia and heterotopia. This project signals the possibility of a meaningful existence for the empty zoo, either as image or an actual site, by shifting the viewer’s gaze from the animal to humans, as principal agents in the destruction of the environment, and our failed attempt at its re-creation.
Currently, the focus of this project is Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia), where it will identify the characteristics that are related to this region’s natural and cultural environments.
Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) North Stradbroke 2014 From the series Origins Pigment ink-jet print 90 x 250cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist, ARC One (Melbourne) and Annandale Galleries (Sydney)
This work is drawn from my current series Origins. In Origins fire has become the central subject, specifically with regards to fire’s place in the social and cultural imagination of Australia. ‘North Stradbroke’ records the scene of a wildfire sparked by lightning, causing holidaymakers to flee their bush campsites under a thunderstorm as it moves up the coast.
Silvi Glattauer (Australian born Argentina, b. 1977) Altiplano 1 2015 From the series Altiplano Pigment ink-jet print 100 x 140cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
A personal narrative of identity that pendulates between Australia and South America. I am drawn to these elusive Altiplanic landscapes as abstract topographical storyboards that read like textural braille. The aesthetic hyper reality that is often associated with classical landscape photography is replaced here with a ‘visual text’.
Anne Algar Eruption 2015 From the series Night sky Pigment ink-jet print 60.0 x 90.0cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
This image reflects my interest in low light landscape and night sky photography. We have scientific knowledge and understanding of the night sky but there is also an emotional element, whereby our human experience of it has no bearing on its material make up. For example many Indigenous Australians refer to the Milky Way as the ’emu’.
For me, there is a certain wonder, excitement and sometimes trepidation when photographing at night. What intrigues me is how objects, vistas and other things, only dimly visible to the human eye in darkness, can be captured in infinite detail by the camera, due to its greater light sensitivity and colour spectrum. It truly does open up another world.
Rebekah Stuart Dreaming in reverse 2 2014 From the series Pictures of elision Pigment ink-jet print 102 x 140cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist
I am a contemporary visual artist who explores an alternative aesthetic to the traditional and romantic landscape. Constructing fragments of nature via digital media I create landscapes that do not exist in reality. The images evolve in a similar fashion to painting, over long duration. I build and refine details for a new whole to emerge, disorientating the observer’s position in a subtle way to reflect on their own internal terrain. The landscapes are a reflection of the horizons carried within – an intimate sublime for a time when wilderness is perhaps uninhabitable.
Valerie Sparks (Australian, b. 1960) Le vol 1 2014 From the series Le vol Pigment ink-jet print 140 x 229cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY + dianne tanzer gallery (Melbourne)
I am interested in hybrid environments as a reflection of migration as an ongoing natural and cultural occurrence. The birds in this work were photographed at the Vienna and La Rochelle Natural History Museums. These extraordinary collections include birds collected on Cook’s voyages to the Pacific, as well as many collected from South East Asia, Indonesia, Brazil and other South and Central American locations as far back as the mid 1700s. The French term le vol translates as flight, flying, theft or burglary. For the birds in this work, life and flight have been stolen and yet reanimated by the taxidermist. Whereas collecting practices have changed dramatically, the work raises questions about early collecting practices as acts of theft.
Carolyn Young Reference grassy woodland: spring (Bookham) 2014 From the series Grassy woodlands Pigment ink-jet print 70 x 84.9cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist and Weswal Gallery (Tamworth)
For a number of years I have been documenting grassy woodlands in NSW and Victoria. Once common, these ecosystems have been reduced to small pockets amongst farmed land, along roadsides, across reserves and in tucked away cemeteries. Responding to ecologists and landholders, I return to the same sites and shoot seasonally. Represented in my photographs are intact (reference) grassy woodlands, and woodlands that have been altered by agriculture. The repetitive still life structure across my photographs highlights the change in plant diversity as land management changes. The images urge viewers to reflect on the past, present and future of these woodlands.
Joseph McGlennon (Australian born Scotland, b. 1957) Florilegium #1 2014 From the series Florilegium Pigment ink-jet print 127 x 100cm Reproduction courtesy of the artist and Michael Reid (Sydney)
A Latin term reconfigured in the Middle Ages; florilegium (to gather flowers), had its early language roots in the gathering together of scholarly church writings, into the one tome. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Botanical Gardens emerged across Europe, privately hoarding exotic world flowers and animals, signalling the rise of the illustrated colour plate book. The growing desire to corral and record the world’s flora and fauna, alongside the growing confidence in science, all fused to produce a notion of the florilegium as a luxurious record of the rare; of important beauties to be viewed in the one vista.
Photographed in Madagascar, Tahiti and Singapore, in ‘Florilegium #1’, I have captured each bird, flower, vine and butterfly and created a florolegium landscape straight from the Age of Enlightenment. There is an enchanting clash of empirical scientific observation coupled with a deep romantically lush and diffused spotlight of compassion for something wild, observed for a brilliant moment before vanishing into the fog of time. This lush landscape dwells in a most complex, beautiful and sadly unreachable world.
$25,000 winner
Monash Gallery of Art 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 Australia Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500
Exhibition dates: 24th July – 27th September, 2015
Curator: Wendy Garden
Hotham Street Ladies (est. Australia 2007) Dark tea (installation view) 2015 Royal icing, butter cream icing, fondant, food dye, found objects Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists Photo: Marcus Bunyan
This is the best thematic group exhibition I have seen in Melbourne and surrounds this year.
Every piece in the exhibition is visually stimulating and intelligently constructed, all works combining to make an engaging exhibition. Nothing is superfluous, every work having something interesting to say, whether it is about the ceremony of tea drinking, colonisation, global warming, Stolen Generations or social mores. Congratulations must go to the curators and artists for their efforts.
Particular favourites where the Hotham Street Ladies Dark Tea (2015, below) made of royal icing, butter cream icing, fondant, food dye, and found objects; the many sculptural objects which form the backbone of the exhibition, especially the work of Sharon West and Penny Byrne; and the wonderful vintage photographs that are displayed in the foyer of the gallery.
Accompanying this exhibition is another excellent exhibition, Ways to draw: A selection from the permanent collection by Betty Churcher, on till 27th September as well. If you want a day out from Melbourne with lunch in Mornington, some seriously good art and a drive along the coast, you could do no better than visit the gallery in the next week. Highly recommended.
Hotham Street Ladies (est. Australia 2007) Dark tea (installation view details) 2015 Royal icing, butter cream icing, fondant, food dye, found objects Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artists Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Charles Blackman (Australian, 1928-2018) Feet beneath the table 1956 Tempera and oil on composition board 106.5 x 121.8cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by Barbara Blackman, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2005
Charles Blackman first encountered Lewis Caroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, through a talking book for the blind which his wife, Barbara was listening to. Her developing blindness resulted in telescopic vision, spatial disorientation and a shrinking visual field. She was also pregnant with their first child and her distorted body image also had parallels with Alice’s experiences. By painting Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party Blackman could express his wife’s feeling of bewilderment and disorientation.
E. Phillips Fox (Australian, 1865-1915) The arbour 1910 Oil on canvas 190.5 x 230.7cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest 1916
Melbourne born E. Phillips Fox, described as ‘one of the greatest of Australia’s Impressionist painters and the most gifted of her colourists’1 went to Paris in 1887 to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts where he encountered the work of the French Impressionists. He remained in Paris for several years but made frequent trips back to Melbourne to visit his family. The Arbour was painted in Paris in Fox’s garden but is based upon observations of family life in his brother’s garden in Malvern. The depiction of an elegant family taking tea al fresco is a study of refined gentility. The Arbour was exhibited at both the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon exhibitions and was regarded by Fox as the finest thing he had done.2 At the time the painting was much admired for its ‘subtle lights ad shadow’3 and his exemplary ‘use of delicate colour and refined harmonies.’4
1/ Courier Mail, 12 May 1949 2/ Sydney Morning Herald, 13 October 1913 3/ Sydney Morning Herald, 13 October 1913 4/ Le Courrier Australien, Sydney, 15 April 1949
Clare Humphries (Australian, b. 1973) Some things were out in the open 2007 Pigment print on Hahnemühle photo rag paper (ed. 3/5) 63 x 62cm Courtesy of the artist
Adam Hill (Blak Douglas) (Australian, b. 1970) Not everyone’s cup of tea 2009 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 150 x 260cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2009
Kendal Murray (Australian, b. 1958) Exceed speed, mislead, concede 2011 Mixed media assemblage 18 x 24 x 14cm Courtesy of the artist and Arthouse Gallery, Sydney
Penny Byrne (Australian, b. 1965) Tea for two in Tuvalu 2011 Vintage porcelain figurine, vintage, Action man accessories, vintage coral, glass fish, epoxy resin, epoxy putty, retouching medium, powder pigments 15 x 19cm Private Collection
Penny Byrne (Australian, b. 1965) Tea for two in Tuvalu (installation view) 2011 Vintage porcelain figurine, vintage, Action man accessories, vintage coral, glass fish, epoxy resin, epoxy putty, retouching medium, powder pigments 15 x 19cm Private Collection Photo: Marcus Bunyan
This piece was inspired by an underwater cabinet meeting held in 2009 by Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed in a campaign to raise awareness for activity on climate change. The thirty minute meeting was held six metres below sea level and was attended by eleven cabinet members calling upon all countries to cut their emissions to halt further temperature rises.
Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu, located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia, experienced a severe drought in 2011. A state of emergency was declared and rationing of fresh-water took place which restricted households on some of the islands to two buckets of fresh water per day. Tuvalu is also especially susceptible to changes in sea level and it is estimated that a sea level rise of 20 to 40 centimetres in the next 100 years could make Tuvalu uninhabitable.
Kate Bergin (Australian, b. 1968) The hunt for a room of one’s own 2012 Oil on canvas on board 75 x 101cm Private Collection
Kate Bergin draws upon Dutch and Flemish seventeenth century tradition of still life painting to comment on our attitudes to animals. Bergin stages the scene on a crumpled white tablecloth upon which a large fox, based on a taxidermy fox she bought on eBay, regally sits centre stage. Meticulously rendered native birds, including a honeyeater, finch and triller, are based on photographs of specimens from the Melbourne Museum Collection. They flit about unperturbed by the introduced predator. Teaspoons, representing the impulse for collecting, entangle the fox and bird. Together with a teapot and cup, precariously placed, they contribute to the overarching sense of impending chaos.
Both afternoon tea and the fox represent English upper class social mores and were introduced into the colonies following British settlement. The fox arrived in 1855, brought in for recreational hunting, and has been a major cause of native bird extinctions. Fox numbers are increasing in some areas further threatening the precarious balance between wild life and introduced species.
Sharon West (Australian, b. 1963) Two Koori Tribesmen receive a gift of afternoon tea from local colonists (installation photo) 2014 Mixed media assemblage 15 x 46 x 30cm Courtesy of the artist Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Heather Shimmen (Australian, b. 1957) Tip me up (installation view) 2005 Linocut on paper and organza (ed. 7/30) 56 x 76cm Courtesy of the artist and Australian Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Trent Jansen (Australian, b. 1981) Briggs family tea service (installation view) 2011 Slip cast porcelain, bull kelp, wallaby pelt, copper and brass George (teapot) 22.5 x 20.5 x 13cm; Woretermoeteyenner (sugar bowl) 16 x 13.5 x 9cm; Dolly (milk jug) 12.5 x 12.5 x 8.5cm; John (teacup) 7 x 8.5 x 8cm; Eliza (teacup) 7.5 x 10.5 x 8cm; Mary (teacup) 10 x 9 x 6.5cm Courtesy of Broached Commissions, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The Briggs family tea service represents the marriage of George Briggs, a free settler, to Woretermoeteyenner of the Pairrebeenne people in Van Diemen’s Land and the four children they had together. Briggs arrived from Bedfordshire in 1791 and learned to speak the language of the local Pairrebeenne people, trading tea, flour and sugar fro kangaroo, wallaby and seal skins. It is understood that he became good friends with the leader of the Pairrebeenne people, Mannalargenna, and by 1810 he partnered his daughter Woretermoeteyenner. Their marriage meant she had to adapt to a way of life that merged her traditional cultural values with the ways of British settlers. The teapot and sugar bowl represent the parents while their first daughter, Doll Mountgarret Briggs is symbolised in the milk jug and the three cups each signify their other children John, Eliza and Mary.
The tea service is a hybrid design bringing together materials common to both cultures. To realise the set Jansen worked with Rod Bamford on the ceramic elements, Oliver Smith for the brass and copper and Vicki West, who uses the traditional methods of her Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestors, worked with the bull kelp components.
eX de Medici (Australian, b. 1959) Blue (Bower-Bauer) (installation view) 1998-2000 Watercolour over black pencil on paper 114.0 x 152.8cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2004 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
eX de Medici (Australian, b. 1959) Blue (Bower-Bauer) (installation view detail) 1998-2000 Watercolour over black pencil on paper 114.0 x 152.8cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 2004 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A turning point in eX de Medici’s career came in 1998 when she saw an exhibition of watercolours by Ferdinand Bauer comprising 2,000 rarely seen images of native flora and fauna made when Bauer was official artist on Matthew Flinder’s historic circumnavigation of Australia in 1801-1803. Previously working with tattoo imagery, Medici found the intricate works so compelling she decided to change course and ‘retrograde’ herself and explore watercolour as a medium.1
Referencing Australia’s Bower bird that adorns its nest with anything blue, Medici entangles the history of vanitas painting with commentary about the desire to seek permanence and affirmation in the accumulation of things. The broken willow pattern platter, upturned jugs and cups, amassed with so many other decorative and functional objects, are juxtaposed with skulls, fruit and flowers – symbols of mortality. A reaction to what she considered John Howard’s regressive politics at the time, the work ‘is a kind of a backhanded discussion about colonising our minds with retroactive ideas’.2
1/ Ted Gott. ‘eX deMedici an epic journey on a Lilliputian scale’ Art and Australia Vol. 40, No. 1, Spring 2002, p. 105 2/ eX deMedici in Paul Flynn. Artist Profile #5, March 2008, pp. 28-35.
Storm in a Teacup reflects upon tea drinking in Australia. Introduced by the British colonials, the afternoon tea party was an attempt to ‘civilise’ the land. Tea drinking became so popular in the colonies that by 1888 the amount of tea consumed per capita exceeded the amount consumed in England. Soon after, billy tea was to become an enduring symbol of the pioneering spirit, immortalised by Henry Lawson’s stories published under the title While the billy boils.
Beginning with elegant paintings of the afternoon tea table from E. Phillips Fox and Arthur Streeton, the exhibition goes on to explore the darker side of tea drinking and the social and environmental impacts of the humble cup of tea. Michael Cook’s Object (table), 2015, provides an alternative history to the narrative of colonialism while Sharon West and Adam Hill both use humour to subvert colonial understandings of the afternoon tea party as an occasion of refined gentility.
The humble cuppa has been around for thousands of years, but this exhibition explores how a popular beverage can impact on us culturally, socially, environmentally and politically. There is more to debate than just the proper way to make a cup of tea. Storm in a teacup explores far-reaching issues brewing from tea, including the imposition of one culture upon another – especially on the colonial frontier; the production of ceramics and the environmental impacts of porcelain and its production; gender stereotypes and socialisation through tea parties. The exhibition also reflects upon tea drinking ceremonies in Asia within a western Orientalist paradigm and tea drinking as an occasion for familial cohesiveness and disconnect.
Text from the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery
Mark James Daniel (Australian, 1867-1949) Verandah, “Harefield” – afternoon tea Feb 1900 Glass negative 8.5 x 11cm (quarter plate) Collection of the State Library of Victoria
Michael J Drew (Australian, 1873-1943) Group taking tea in a garden between 1890 and 1900 Glass negative 12.2 x 16.5cm (half plate) Collection of the State Library of Victoria
Rex Hazlewood (Australian, 1886-1968) [Men drinking billy tea] 1911-1927 Silver gelatin print Collection of the State Library of New South Wales
Anonymous photographer Afternoon tea at “Vivaleigh” 1917 Gelatin silver print 12 x 16cm Collection of the State Library of Victoria
James Fox Barnard (Australian, 1874-1945) Lawn, Arylie, Hobart c. 1900 Glass negative 8.5 x 11cm (quarter plate) Collection of the State Library of Victoria
James Fox Barnard (Australian, 1874-1945) [Tea on the verandah] c. 1900 Glass negative 8.5 x 11cm (quarter plate) Collection of the State Library of Victoria
Installation photograph of the exhibition Storm in a Teacup at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Tea is the medium of many a complex and commonplace rituals. Adopted in a variety of ceremonies and customs across the globe, its unique and symbolic place in our lives is subtle and powerful. Whether a quick cuppa around the kitchen table or a lavish display of refined gentility; from billy tea to Asian tea-drinking ceremonies, tea has played an important role in international trade but more curiously in facilitating social cohesiveness.
Comprising approximately 50 works including painting, photography, sculpture and installation Storm in a Teacup features artists such as Chares Blackman, John Perceval, Emma Minnie Boyd, E. Phillips Fox and contemporary artists Stephen Bowers, Danie Mellor, Penny Byrne, Rosalie Gasgoigne, Matthew Sleeth, eX de Medici, Anne Zahalka, Polixeni Papapetrou and a mad tea party installation by Hotham Street Ladies.
Tea is said to have first been invented in China around 2700 BC, with the earliest records of tea consumption dating to 1000BC. Initially consumed as a medicinal drink, it became widely popular as a common beverage and traded across Asia and Europe during the 16th century. It was King Charles II’s wife Catherine of Portugal who is said to have brought the tea habit to Great Britain. Indeed, the afternoon tea party first became fashionable in the seventeenth century following Queen Catherine de Braganza’s fondness for serving the beverage at Whitehall in London. It wasn’t until the 18th century that it became widely consumed with tea smuggling bringing the tipple to the masses and later influenced the Boston Tea Party.
Tea drinking became a demonstration of social aspirations and grew in popularity giving rise to a subtle orchestration of manners, dress and serving paraphernalia which created new forms of commodity consumption. In the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria afternoon tea parties were a lavish display of settler understandings of refined gentility that were an attempt to signal allegiance to the values of the home country and ground the displaced community in their originating culture. In this respect the afternoon tea party expressed collective understandings of British identity and was a means of domesticating and civilising the alien terrain of the colonies.
Press release from the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery
Clare Humphries (Australian, b. 1973) Family confection II (installation views) 2015 Sugar cubes stained with coffee and tea Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Giuseppe Romeo (Australian, b. 1958) Subjective landscape, ‘Of consequence rather than reason’ (installation views) 2015 Found discarded objects, bitumen, paint 80 x 100 x 60cm Courtesy of the artist Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Guiseppe Rome asks the simple question: ‘What are you going to do with it all?’
Romeo recalls the tea sets his mother and aunts possessed and the ‘good set’ kept for special occasions that were rarely used. In this work a silver platter is the support for a silver cake stand upon which a teapot, creamer, sugar bowl and various serving implements jostle with items required to clean up the mess. The bat, ball and stumps are a reference to playing cricket which ‘became an excuse for a big afternoon tea party in England’. A ribbon of wire holds it all together ‘like a dream from Alice in Wonderland when nothing is as it seems’, while a tinkling melody from a music box is a lullaby that sends us in to a contented sleep.
Romeo coats the sculpture in bitumen then paints it entirely in white. The effect is reminiscent of excavated items from an ancient ruin, as if we are peering upon the remains from a modern day Pompeii – artefacts that have been covered in lava and buried. This work alludes to the ways in which we deceive ourselves and ‘attempt to keep it all together through consumption but ultimately we can’t’.
Samantha Everton (Australian, b. 1971) Camellia 2009 From the series Vintage dolls 2009 Pigment print on rag paper (ed. AP2) 106 x 114cm Courtesy of the artist and Anthea Polson Art, Queensland
Robyn Phelan (Australian, b. 1965) Porcelain wall – ode to an obsession (installation view) 2010-2015 Porcelain, paper, clay, cobalt oxide, timber, pigment, Jingdezhen tissue transfer 240 x 122 x 42cm Courtesy of the artist Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Robyn Phelan (Australian, b. 1965) Porcelain wall – ode to an obsession (installation view detail) 2010-2015 Porcelain, paper, clay, cobalt oxide, timber, pigment, Jingdezhen tissue transfer 240 x 122 x 42cm Courtesy of the artist
Robyn Phelan undertook a residency at the Pottery Workshop and Experimental Sculptural Factory of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province in China in 2008. Jingdezhen is known as the porcelain capital because it has been the centre of China’s ceramic production, beginning in the fourteenth century Yuan Dynasty, where fine porcelain was first exported all over the world.
Deposits of kaolinite, a clay found at Mt Kaolin nearby which can sustain very high firing temperatures produced a superior white porcelain of increased strength and translucency. Items made from kaolinite were fired with cobalt landscape designs and were highly sought after by European collectors. Over the centuries, because of excessive mining, the mountain’s deposits have become depleted. Phelan’s work is a lament to the desecration of the mountain and a reminder of the potential destructiveness of consumer desire.
Penny Byrne (Australian, b. 1965) ‘Let’s forget about global warming’ said Alice ‘and have a cup of tea instead!’ (installation view) 2010 Vintage porcelain figurine, found toys, epoxy resin, epoxy putty, retouching medium, powder pigments 80 x 33cm Williams Sinclair Collection Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Penny Byrne (Australian, b. 1965) ‘Let’s forget about global warming’ said Alice ‘and have a cup of tea instead!’ (installation view detail) 2010 Vintage porcelain figurine, found toys, epoxy resin, epoxy putty, retouching medium, powder pigments 80 x 33cm Williams Sinclair Collection Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Penny Byrne’s reworked porcelain conversation piece was motivated by Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s cry to ‘drill, baby, drill’ during her campaign in 2008. A call for increase off-shore drilling of petroleum, including sites such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Palin claimed ‘that’s what we hear all across the country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into’.1
In Byrne’s piece the patriotic figures gorge themselves, blithely overindulging without care to the wastage. The new Disney production of Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton had just been released and this led Byrne to reflect upon the Mad Hatter’s tea party in which tea was drunk all day because time stood still and was stuck at tea-time.
1/ Transcript: The Vice-Presidential Debate, 2 October 2008. Reprinted in the New York Times, 23 May 2012.
Sharon West (Australian, b. 1963) Joseph Banks’ tea party for a Botany Bay tribesman is ruined by flies and spiders 2014 Digital print on paper (ed. 2/5) 66 x 57cm (sheet) Courtesy of the artist Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sharon West’s recreation of an afternoon tea party is set in the early days of first contact. Joseph Banks was the botanist who sailed with Captain Cook on the Endeavour on the first voyage of discovery which mapped the east coast of Australia between 1768 and 1771. While ashore he made an extensive collection of native flora and fauna which was sent back to natural history museums in England. Banks was also instrumental in the British government’s decision to colonise the New South Wales settlement.
Rosalie Gascoigne (b. New Zealand 1917; arr. Australia 1943; d. Canberra 1999) The tea party (installation view) 1980 Painted wood, celluloid, plastic, enamelled metal, feathers 83 x 35 x 20cm Private collection Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Rosalie Gascoigne (b. New Zealand 1917; arr. Australia 1943; d. Canberra 1999) The tea party (installation view detail) 1980 Painted wood, celluloid, plastic, enamelled metal, feathers 83 x 35 x 20cm Private collection Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Rosalie Gascoigne found the kewpie dolls amongst a large number of discarded things from an abandoned sideshow at the Bungendore dump in the summer of 1976. ‘I thought “Oh, those dollies, they’re having a … very joyful … picnic. They’re … in the paddock, they’ve got all these old things … they’ve sat down on the teapots and waved their wings around.”
For Gascoigne beauty existed in the most humble of objects and the wear and tear from use only added to the appeal. The enamel teapots were also found at various dumps and were a particular focus of her collecting.
‘I had a thing about enamelware because I see it as being elegant. People see the holes in it. I was collecting brown and white at the same time. To me it had a sort of elegance that a Dalmatian dog has, spotty, very elegant’.1
1/ Rosalie Gascoigne, excerpts from her correspondence, email communication with Martin Gascoigne, 13 March 2015
Julie Dowling (Australian, b. 1969) Badimaya people, Western Australia White with one 2003 Synthetic polymer paint and red ochre on canvas 121 x 100cm Collection of Jane Kleimeyer and Anthony Stuart
Julie Dowling’s painting is a poignant reminder of the Stolen Generations and the plight of many young girls, forcibly removed from their families, who were brought up in government institutions and trained to be domestic servant to white families. Girls were targeted because women were considered the ‘uplifters’ or ‘civilisers’ of their communities and as future mothers their education into the values of white society was deemed essential to enable successful assimilation. Girls in service were supposed to receive a wage but often this was retained by their employer and not passed on. Dowling points out it is also a history of Stolen wages.
Michael Cook (Australian, b. 1968) Bidjara people, south-west Queensland Object (table) 2015 Inkjet print on Hahnemühle cotton rag (ed. 2/4 + 2AP) 140 x 99cm Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY + dianne tanzer gallery, Melbourne
Michael Cook’s photographic tableau ‘turns the table’ on racism. By depicting the body of a white woman as a functional object in service to others, Cook considers the dehumanisation and objectification of one race of people by another in the history of slavery.
The double portrait on the back wall is by Johann Zoffany from 1778, and features Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804) who was born into slavery in the West Indies. The daughter of an African mother, her father was an English naval officer who left her to the care of his uncle, Lord William Murray, where she was raised as an equal with Murray’s niece. Murray was instrumental in outlawing slavery in the United Kingdom in 1772. In the painting Zoffany depicts the two women standing together, the niece affectionately reaching out to Belle. Hence Cook’s afternoon tea is also a reminder that prejudice and racial inequality can be surmounted.
Yenny Huber (b. Austria 1980; arr. Australia 2000) Room No. 14 2006 Digital print on aluminium panel (ed. 1/6) 27.2 x 27.2cm Warrnambool Art Gallery, Victoria
Underpinned by the belief that any one person is comprised of diverse, fragmentary and often illusory selves, Yenny Huber explores the various ego states that reside within. This photograph is a self portrait taken in a hotel room, but it is also an impersonation of an identity available to women. Tea-drinking was once described as ‘an infallible sign of an old maid’1 and in this work Huber offers us an image of a good Catholic girl, knees together, elbows in, sitting demurely on the couch sipping tea. It is an image of femininity constrained by the dictates of religion and outdated socially sanctioned ideals of respectable female behaviour.
1/ The Horsham Times, Victoria, 26 April 1898
Anne Zahalka (Australian, b. 1957) Saturday 5.18 pm 1995 1995 (printed 1997) Type C photograph (ed AP) 125 x 162cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Gift of the artist, 2011 Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program
Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery Civic Reserve, Dunns Road, Mornington
Exhibition dates: 17th July – 20th September, 2015
National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition
Curator of Impressions of Paris: Jane Kinsman, National Gallery of Australia’s Senior Curator of International Prints
Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) No title (Brocanteur) c. 1898-1905 Albumen silver photograph 17.8 x 21.9cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1980
Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget is a particularly dry and uninspiring National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition, which was only enlivened for me by the enlightened presence of 20 or so vintage Eugène Atget photographs, specifically added for this showing at the Monash Gallery of Art, the home of Australian photography.
Atget’s photographs have an almost ether/real quality to them in their visual representation and, physically, an ephemeral feel to the quality of the paper – as though the images are about to dissolve into nothing – even as he photographs solid objects such as stairways, doors and door knockers. Observe the photographs Hôtel du Maréchal de Tallard, 78 rue des Archives (c. 1898-1905), A la Grâce de Dieu, 121 rue Montmartre (c. 1900) and Heurtoir, 6 rue du Parc Royal (c. 1901-1914), below, to witness this shimmering phenomenon. It is as if the emulsion of the plate is insufficient to capture the light of life.
In an accompanying exhibition in the smaller gallery, Impressions of Melbourne, photographs by Nicholas Caire, Charles Kerry, Max Dupain, Mark Strizic and Noel Jones investigate the city of Melbourne… but it is the stunning photographs by Atget that make the long drive out to Wheeler’s Hill worth the visit.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) Versailles, Grand Trianon c. 1901-1925 Gold-toned silver chloride photograph 17.6 x 22cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1980
Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) Hôtel du Maréchal de Tallard, 78 rue des Archives c. 1898-1905 Gold-toned silver chloride photograph 22 x 18.1cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1980
Eugène Atget (France 1857-1927) A la Grâce de Dieu, 121 rue Montmartre c. 1900 Printing out paper photograph 22 x 17.7cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1984
Eugène Atget (France, 1857-1927) Heurtoir, 6 rue du Parc Royal c. 1901-1914 Gold-toned silver chloride photograph 21.9 x 17.8cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1980
Monash Gallery of Art is delighted to present its major international exhibition of 2015, Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget featuring over 120 prints, posters and photographs drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget examines the major contribution to French art made by key figures: Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808-1879), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and includes a selection of photographs by Eugène Atget (1857-1927) specially conceived for Monash Gallery of Art.
Newly appointed Gallery Director Kallie Blauhorn states, “I’m thrilled that for my first exhibition at MGA we are able to present a major international show, Impressions of Paris. Residents of Monash and art lovers across Melbourne will experience the extraordinary works by household names, Toulouse Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Honore Daumier and the wonderful photographer Eugène Atget.”
“This is a first for MGA and a true testament to the reputation of the gallery that we can host this important and significant exhibition,” said Blauhorn.
A generation apart, Lautrec, Degas and Daumier were consummate draughtsmen whose innovative compositions and embrace of modern subject matter played a significant role in artistic developments in France over the nineteenth century. Atget, the only specialist photographer among these artists, spent much of his life documenting the streets of Paris as they underwent modernisation. His photographs show us how modern life was expressed in the architectural experience of France, giving us a glimpse of what modernity left behind.
The generation of French artists who followed Daumier in the nineteenth century were inspired by his critical observations, which became an extraordinary reservoir of ideas. Both Degas and then Lautrec were enthusiastic admirers of French caricature, delighting in its animated qualities, stylistic freedoms and contemporary themes. They were particularly enamoured of Daumier’s caricature.
Degas adopted themes of modern French life, the ballet, the race course, the café-concert and the demi-monde and played an important role in the rejection of mythological and historical subjects favoured by the Impressionists. Many of Degas’ ideas on composition and subjects were, in turn, drawn from Daumier. This French satirist was both extraordinarily gifted and prolific, making a name for himself by lampooning the affectations, stupidities and greed of members of the French bourgeois society in caricatures, which Degas avidly collected.
The youngest of the artists, Lautrec, who sadly dies before reaching 37, borrowed themes and compositions from Degas, an artist he much admired and emulated. Images of drinkers at a table, ballet and cabaret scenes and nudes reveal the powerful influence that Degas had on the younger artist, as well as Lautrec’s own considerable originality, particularly as a portrayer of individuals rather than the depiction of types often favoured by Degas.
For the most part, Atget’s pictures of streets, parks, courtyards, buildings and their ornamental motifs record remnants of Old Paris. While there is a nostalgic aspect to these views, for contemporary viewers these pictures were about modern Paris. They recorded and helped make sense of changes to the city as it struggled to cope with modernism. Atget’s views of modern Paris focussed on its intimate places, those spaces of the everyday in which people had always worked, loved and lived.
These four artists captured the spirit of Paris in their prints, posters and photographs. Through the examination of this work, we find clues as to why dramatic changes took place in French art over the nineteenth century. They formed part of other generations of artists who admired Daumier and who adapted the caricaturist’s critical lithographic observations. In this way Daumier’s legacy was a brilliant journalistic record of the modern capital and contributed to an era in France ripe for a new art.
Press release from the MGA website
Eugène Atget: growth and decay in the great city
After an unspectacular career in the theatre, Eugène Atget (1857-1927) began to take photographs of Paris in 1892. By 1897 he had established a successful business photographing the spaces that remained of Old Paris. In all, Atget made over 10,000 images of Paris and its surrounds, each taken with a straightforward approach that laid the basis for much of the documentary photography that followed. Atget’s pictures were immensely popular: he sold thousands of prints, satisfying a strong demand for views of a city undergoing massive social and architectural transformation.
For the most part, Atget’s pictures of streets, parks, courtyards, buildings and their ornamental motifs record remnants of pre-Revolutionary Paris. While there is a nostalgic aspect to these views, for contemporary viewers these pictures were about modern Paris. They recorded and helped make sense of changes to the city as it struggled to cope with modernism. Street traders and other workers are seen selling their wares along old streets and laneways; ancient buildings stand in laneways and courtyards undergoing physical transformation; cafes and shops await bustling crowds. Atget’s views of modern Paris focussed on its intimate places, those spaces of the everyday in which people had always worked, loved and lived.
Impressions of Melbourne
17th July 2015 – 20th September 2015
In response to the photographs by Eugène Atget (1857-1927) included in the National Gallery of Australia’s touring exhibition, Impressions of Paris, this exhibition offers views of Melbourne’s streets, laneways and urban landscape. Drawn from the Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection, this selection traverses a period from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century.
Atget photographed Paris during a time when the French capital was undergoing significant transformation. From the 1850s through to the 1920s, the dark medieval neighbourhoods of the city were demolished to make way for the wide avenues and open public spaces that Paris is known for today. Atget’s ambition was to produce clear and detailed photographs that would document the heritage of Paris before it disappeared. Typically taking his photographs in the early morning when the streets were empty, Atget imbued the city with ghostly nostalgia.
The earliest photographs in Impressions of Melbourne, taken by Nicholas Caire and Charles Kerry in the late nineteenth century, are contemporary to those of Atget. While Atget focused longingly on the past, however, these Australian photographers celebrated the civic accomplishments of modern progress in the colonies. The portrayal of Melbourne as a civilised metropolis, attractive to both immigrants and tourists, persisted through the twentieth century. Max Dupain captured the city as a lively and enterprising place, while Mark Strizic lingered on the shimmering ambience of window shopping and city strolling.
Impressions of Melbourne showcases a range of photographic responses to our urban environment, revealing some of Melbourne’s many moods and highlighting the city as a rich photographic subject. The exhibition includes photographs by Nicholas Caire, Charles Kerry, Max Dupain, Mark Strizic and Noel Jones.
Nicholas Caire
Nicolas Caire was born in Guernsey and arrived in Australia, settling in Adelaide, in 1858. He set up his first photographic studio in Adelaide in 1867. He moved to the Victorian goldmining town of Talbot in 1870 before relocating to Melbourne in 1876. At this time, Melbourne was the largest Australian city.
While Caire is best known for his picturesque landscape photographs of the Victorian countryside, he also produced photographs of major city thoroughfares, public buildings, parks and gardens. These subjects were common amongst photographers in the second half of the nineteenth century, conveying a sense of local pride and achievement. Caire’s photographs were often mounted in albums and accompanied by individual descriptive texts, a format that was popular amongst local and overseas visitors at the time.
Charles Kerry
Charles Kerry grew up in country New South Wales before moving to Sydney at the age of 17 to begin his photographic career. After a failed studio partnership, which left him with a lot of debt, Kerry rebuilt his business and by 1890 found himself running a successful studio that had a monopoly on the popular postcard market. By 1898 Kerry’s studio was the largest in Australia, housed in a three-storey building at 310 George Street, Sydney.
Throughout his career, Kerry photographed a broad range of subjects including social and sporting events, portraits of Indigenous people, city streets as well as the New South Wales countryside. He also spent a year documenting every station homestead in New South Wales. Kerry retired in 1913.
Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) View of Bourke Street, Melbourne 1877-1878 From the series Views of Victoria Albumen print 13.4 x 18.7cm Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987
Original album caption: Bourke Street is the principal business thoroughfare in the great City of Melbourne. It is about a mile in length, extending from the Parliament House to the Spencer Street Railway Station. On the left hand side of the picture is the Post Office, and at the extreme end of the street can be seen the Parliament House.
Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) The Government Domain of Victoria 1877-1878 From the series The public buildings of Melbourne and suburbs Albumen print Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987
Original album caption: The Governor’s Residence is on an eminence near the Botanical Gardens, and occupies one of the best positions around the City of Melbourne. Looking westward from the front of the Domain, a splendid view is obtained of Hobson’s Bay, with the townships of St Kilda, Emerald Hill, Sandridge, and Williamstown on the coast. On the north side can be seen the City of Melbourne, with its busy suburban towns – Hotham, Carlton and Fitzroy. From the rear of the building towards the east, in the distance, the retired towns of Richmond, Hawthorn, and Toorak can be distinguished. The building, as seen in the illustration, was completed in the year 1876. Sir G F Bowen, GCMG, being the Resident Governor at the time.
Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) The Royal Mint, Melbourne 1877-1878 From the series The public buildings of Melbourne and suburbs Albumen print Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987
Original album caption: The Royal Mint of Victoria is situated in the north-easterly part of William Street, West Melbourne. This Government Building is not thrown open to the public for visitation at any time; but an inspection by visitors can be effected on an order from a Member of the Ministry, conditionally that there be no fewer than eight persons at each visitation; one of the number being required to become responsible for the conduct of the party.
Nicholas Caire (born United Kingdom 1837; arrived Australia 1858; died 1918) The Post Office, Melbourne 1877-1878 From the series The public buildings of Melbourne and suburbs Albumen print Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987
Original album caption: This imposing structure is erected at the junction of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, which may be considered perhaps the most central position in Melbourne. It is provided with a very long corridor for the posting and delivery of letters, & c. The Telegraph Department, as also the Post Office Savings Bank and Money Order Office, are all conducted in connection with the General Post office, Melbourne, of which the Hon. R Ramsay, MLA, is at present Postmaster-General.
Charles Kerry (Australia, 1858-1928) Collins Street, looking south c. 1890 Albumen print 14.5 x 17.5cm Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1984
Max Dupain (Australia, 1911-1992) Melbourne with rain 1946 Gelatin silver print Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection acquired 1987
Max Dupain
Max Dupain began his photographic career in 1930 as an apprentice in the studio of Cecil Bostock. In 1934 he established his own studio in Sydney and continued to produce a broad range of commercial work over the course of his life. Dupain was strongly influenced by modernist photographic principles and is renowned for his architectural photography as well as his iconic images of Australian beach culture.
While he primarily worked in Sydney, the photographs exhibited here are among several he took of otherAustralian cities. They highlight his interest in documenting city life as well as his use of light, shadow and aerial perspective. They were taken during the post war period; in the year that Dupain was commissioned by the Department of Information to photograph Australia’s way of life as part of a campaign to increase migration to Australia. This period marked a shift in Dupain’s practice, away from advertising and fashion toward social documentary.
Mark Strizic (born Germany 1928; arrived Australia 1950; died 2012) Near 101 Collins Street, Jan 1963 1963 Gelatin silver print 36 x 53.5cm Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection Donated by the Bowness Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2008 Reproduction courtesy of the artist
Mark Strizic (born Germany 1928; arrived Australia 1950; died 2012) Collins Street at McPherson’s building – 1, 1967 1967 Gelatin silver print 53.8 x 36cm Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection Donated by the Bowness Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2008 Reproduction courtesy of the artist
Mark Strizic
Mark Strizic was born in Berlin and migrated to Melbourne from Zagreb, Croatia in 1950. Strizic had no formal training in photography, but began taking photographs of Melbourne in the 1950s. He abandoned his studies in physics to become a full-time photographer in 1957, taking up subsequent commissions in architectural, industrial, interior design and portrait photography.
Among Strizic’s most widely recognised images are those he created of Melbourne between 1955 and 1970. Strizic documented the streets of Melbourne, showing many sides of the city, from derelict back alleyways to the grand arcades and buildings of Melbourne’s ‘Paris end’. Strizic’s photographs were produced during a period of dramatic change, a time when Melbourne’s Victorian-era buildings were being replaced by modern architectural developments. The images not only serve to document this change but also provide significant and important records of Melbourne pre-modernisation.
Monash Gallery of Art 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 Australia Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Brisbane Botanic Gardens, near the Edward Street entrance 1895 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
This is more like it… what a find!
There are some fascinating punctum (which denote the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within the image), contained among this recently discovered treasure trove of photographs by Alfred Elliott.
At first, what looks like a real dog is actually a toy sitting in front of Alfred Goldsbrough Elliott, Stanley Terrace, Taringa (1908). And then you notice the hard-nosed stare of the little girl in Dorothy Elliott (1911). She is not a happy camper. Then the scruffy, bare-footed urchin in ‘Welcome to Brisbane’ arch, Queen Street (1895). Or the unhappy woman staring directly into the camera in Grand Arch, Queen Street, visit of the Duke of York (1901), as though her thoughts are being transmitted to us from beyond the grave. And finally, to the two young, blurred children running in front of a white picket fence in Windmill, Wickham Terrace (1895), the smaller of the children noticing the photographer and camera and looking towards both. Just a joy!
And don’t forget, all of these early photographs were taken with a large plate camera (the photographs after 1921 were taken with a film camera and have a totally different feel to them). For an artist to obtain the street photographs and portraits out in the field with this type of camera is superb. Just look at the image Members of the QLD League of Wheelmen, Wellington Point (1897). You can tell the personality of every individual in this image through the clarity, not just of the image but of the thought of the photographer, before he exposed his plate. It is so Australian in its iconography, it could come from nowhere else in the world. This photograph deserves to be up there with one of the seminal images of Australian photography.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thanks to the Museum of Brisbane for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The view from here: The photographic world of Alfred Elliott 1890-1940
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Brisbane, from the Windmill 1895 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Aborigines fishing in the Maroochy River 1890 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Central Railway Station, from Edward Street 1922 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) ‘Citizens’ Welcome’ arch, Queen Street 1927 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) ‘Citizens’ Welcome’ arch, Queen Street (detail) 1927 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Museum of Brisbane’s latest exhibition offers an amazing visual portrait of a lost city – Brisbane at the turn of the 20th century – through a rare collection of photographs, all shot by a single resident and left forgotten under an inner-city house for decades. The view from here: The photographic world of Alfred Elliott 1890-1940 showcases the life’s work of the avid Brisbane-based photographer, offering a fascinating chronicle of the places he visited, major events he witnessed and intimate glimpses into his family life.
The historic collection of glass-plate and film negatives remained stored in cigar boxes under a house in Red Hill until they were uncovered in 1983 and acquired by Museum of Brisbane. For the past 30 years ‘The Elliott Collection’ was thought to comprise 285 glass plate negatives, until a neglected cigar box with more than 400 film negatives was uncovered at the Museum’s storage facility last year. This significant discovery has allowed the Museum to further piece together fragments of the passionate amateur photographer’s past. The collection provides a window into both his life and the life of a quickly changing city.
Elliott’s work also captures significant moments in Brisbane’s history, including the Duke and Duchess of York’s visit in 1901 and the farewell of the troops aboard SS Cornwall from Pinkenba in 1899. Museum of Brisbane Director Peter Denham said the collection was an exceptional record of one man’s perspective of Brisbane at a very exciting time.
“These unseen photographs offer a unique view of Brisbane at a significant turning point – the city’s population was booming, grand civic structures were erected and huge social change was occurring,” Mr Denham said. “The interactive elements of The view from here offer visitors the chance to get up close with buildings from our past, as well as investigate the photographic technology from the turn of last century.”
“With the discovery of hundreds of new photos, we have learned a lot about Elliott and his family and were even able to locate his much-loved home in Taringa. It is part of our mission as the city’s museum to uncover new stories and we are thrilled to share these findings with visitors. The exhibition wonderfully captures how much our city has changed and I think it will encourage people to reflect on their own perceptions of Brisbane.” The view from here will run until 30 August 2015.
Press release from the Museum of Brisbane website
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Dorothy Elliott, Amy Lock, Mrs Lock and Elizabeth Ellen Elliott Nd City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Elizabeth Ellen Elliott w the Dillon sisters Mary, Clare, Margo Nd City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Government House, George Street 1908 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Maroochy 1890 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Maroochy (detail) 1890 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Members of the QLD League of Wheelmen, Wellington Point 1897 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
The first shipment of tricycles arrived in Brisbane in 1870 and the first race is reported to have been between a cyclist and a Cobb and Co coach from Brisbane to Sandgate. No official timing was recorded.
The initial Brisbane Bicycle Club meeting was held in 1881 at the Belle Vue Hotel. High wheel bicycles including the Penny Farthing were the only bikes available and novelty Penny Farthing races were held in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens where more riders fell off than stayed on. By 1886 Brisbane had 200 bicycles and 50 of these were used for racing…
The first Queensland championship was held at the Breakfast Creek Sports Ground in 1891 and was won by Lou Isles. Isles also rode long distance, riding from Brisbane to Sydney in 1891 a 700 mile trek which he completed in 7 days. Imported bicycles cost £30 although local bicycles could be bought for two pound ten. Successful Queensland riders of the day included Ben Goodsen, Billy Dowd and Percy Davies.
In 1895 a record of 1 hour 2 minutes and 10 seconds was set by George Stombaco for a 34 kilometre race over rough dirt roads from Brisbane and Cleveland. That same year, The League of Queensland Wheelmen held a Christmas Carnival with over 8000 attendees. Brisbane wasn’t the only town with a club as Maryborough, Townsville, Ipswich and Rockhampton also had successful clubs.
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Treasury Building, William Street 1895 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Victoria Bridge, decorated for the Duke of York 1901 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Victoria Bridge, decorated for the Duke of York (detail) 1901 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
The images chronicle a broad range of Elliott’s life – from private moments with friends on family trips and picnics at the Glasshouse Mountains to key moments in Brisbane’s history such as the construction of Central Railway Station in 1899 and the visit from the Duke and Duchess of York in 1901. Images were captured in locations including Mt Coot-tha, the city’s Botanic Gardens, Tweeds Heads just south of the border and the Moreton Bay Region – all undertaken by train, bus, boat, car and possibly even by horse and bicycle.
Curator Phil Manning, who discovered the last cigar box, said it was evident from the body of work that Elliott was proud of his city.
“He documented the city by walking the streets and going on travels with his family,” Mr Manning said. “He had a strong connection to the British Empire, that was probably the area he was most drawn to documenting … royal visits and the Queensland troops going off to the Boer War. But he’s also photographed Brisbane’s new buildings and structures such as the bridges that went up following the 1893 flood.”
Elliot’s first photographs were dated 1890 and captured on dry-plate glass negatives, including both single image and stereograph negatives. They were a mixture of amateur and professionally produced plates. Elliot used glass plates until 1921 when it appeared he changed to a camera with film.
Very little was known about Alfred Henrie Elliott. He was born in Paignton in England in 1870 and was the youngest of seven children. His family came to Queensland when he was seven years old, with his father taking up post as principal of Humpybong Primary School in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane. Elliott was known to have worked in Brisbane as a civil servant in a variety of roles. His working life also included jobs as a law clerk, professional shorthand writer and a bank clerk.
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Eight hour day procession on Queen Street in Brisbane city 1893 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Alfred Goldsbrough Elliott, Stanley Terrace, Taringa 1908 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Dorothy Elliott 1911 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Dorothy Elliott (detail) 1911 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Grand Arch, Queen Street, visit of the Duke of York 1901 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Grand Arch, Queen Street, visit of the Duke of York (detail) 1901 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Picnic party on Brisbane River at Seventeen Mile Rocks 1898 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Picnic party on Brisbane River at Seventeen Mile Rocks (detail) 1898 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Queen Street, Brisbane 1899 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Treasury Building, Queen and William Street 1901 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) ‘Welcome to Brisbane’ arch, Queen Street 1920 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) ‘Welcome to Brisbane’ arch, Queen Street (detail) 1920 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Windmill, Wickham Terrace 1895 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Windmill, Wickham Terrace (detail) 1895 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Alfred Henry Elliott (1870-1954) 1899 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Alfred Elliott (Australian, 1870-1954) Elizabeth Ellen Elliott and Alfred Elliott 1899 City of Brisbane Collection, Museum of Brisbane
Museum of Brisbane
Museum of Brisbane is located on Level 3, Brisbane City Hall (Adelaide and Ann Street, Brisbane QLD)
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Argyle Cut, The Rocks c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
There is an almost Dickensian mellow dramatic feel to some of these 1880s-1900 albumen photographs by Sydney photographer Arthur K. Syer.
While the photographs offer a unique point of view (low down by the waist) of Victorian era Sydney, you get the feeling that Syer was more interested in the fact that his camera was hidden, and the game he was playing to get these photographs, than in the visual construction of the images themselves.
The best of them are photographs – such as Hawker haggling with customers, with its links to the photography of Atget, and crowd scenes like Men in street, where the different poses of the men and the rising and falling of the six items of headgear – offer a rhythmic consideration and interest that other photographs in the posting lack.
The gem in this group of images is the outstanding Forest Lodge double decker steam tram stopped on Elizabeth Street near Supreme Court N.S.W. Again, it is the attitude and rhythm of the protagonists within the image frame that makes this diorama so engaging. The man at left looks away from us with his back to the camera, while above him a man stands in the tram perpendicular to him, giving a nice play to the space between the tram carriages. Three people in alternating dark and light hats wait patiently for a old biddie to descend from the open door of the tram, the man holding on to the hand rail of the tram ready to pull himself up, just as everyone still does on old trams in Melbourne to this day. Above on the top deck sits a young man staring straight at the camera (without knowing it is there), with his legs crossed in a most unusual and uncomfortable way.
Below him to the right a gent in a bowler hat talks with his wife, cigar stuck in his mouth. His facial outline, lit by the sun, is echoed in the darkness of the interior of the tram by another man with a beard and hat sitting in shadow. In front of this husband and wife is a son with his mother / grandmother – she, clutching her bag in heavy tassel-fringed cloak, protecting herself with umbrella against the sun – he, in long gents morning coat and hat looking very dapper. It must be mid afternoon by the length of the shadows cast by the sun. To the right of this pair is an older, heavy set man with great beard and hat, looking out of the image to the right. His gaze is cut across by a man sitting in the tram, all darkness and outline, beard and hat, looking out onto the scene from the interior. Finally, to ground the foreground of the image, there is a mother and daughter at bottom right of the image, with the small child clutching at the mother’s dress.
The characters in this Dickens play rise and fall from left to right. They wash over you in their happenstance, frozen interaction. It is a superbly constructed image. Interesting as they are in their own vernacular way, it just makes the other images in this posting seem rather, well, prosaic.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the State Library of New South Wales for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) George Street, The Rocks c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Thank you to Philip Cohen for pointing out this is Little Essex Street, looking East towards George Street; this street is no more as the underground railway now comes out at this point.
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) George Street, The Rocks (detail) c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Martin Place near the GPO Colonnade c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Devonshire and Chalmers Streets near Central Station c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Forest Lodge double decker steam tram stopped on Elizabeth Street near Supreme Court N.S.W. c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Thank you to Philip Cohen for the following comments:
“I’d love to know how you [the Mitchell Library that is] identified this view as being “near Supreme Court”. Does this imply that it is King Street on the left? But the building behind the tram has a window on the corner facade; the Supreme Court building has no such feature; then, the destination is Forest Lodge which implies that the tram is traveling South. The building behind the tram looks more like that one on the corner of Park Street, complete with telegraph pole; see “Trams in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, 1886” on the City of Sydney Archives & History Resources website Len Stone and Vic Solomons Collection Nd [Online] Cited 29/01/202.
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Forest Lodge double decker steam tram stopped on Elizabeth Street near Supreme Court N.S.W. (detail) c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Forest Lodge double decker steam tram stopped on Elizabeth Street near Supreme Court N.S.W. (detail) c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Forest Lodge double decker steam tram stopped on Elizabeth Street near Supreme Court N.S.W. (detail) c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Some of the world’s earliest street photographs, capturing many previously unseen views of Sydney from the 1880s will go on public display for the first time in a new exhibition opening at the State Library of NSW, from Saturday 4 April. Crowd Source presents over 50 rare snapshots of Sydneysiders and Sydney’s bustling streets secretly taken with the world’s first hand‐held camera – branded the ‘Detective Camera’ – by amateur local photographer Arthur Syer.
“Arthur Syer took candid photographs of ordinary people in everyday situations which he supplied to illustrators to use as ‘source material’ to help them create a life-like quality and characters in their drawings,” says exhibition co-curator Margot Riley. “Syer’s distinctive low angle photographs evocatively capture the buzz of 1880s Sydney showing the shoe-shiners and fruit sellers, road workers, transport deliveries and barrow shopping, queues at Circular Quay, children playing, shipping and scenes at the horses races,” said Ms Riley.
Syer crossed into the publishing industry through his artist brother Walter, who introduced him to internationally renowned English cartoonist, Phil May. Invited to Sydney by The Bulletin in 1885, May often used Syer’s images to add authenticity to the backgrounds for his illustrations, for example drawings of people at the racecourse.
When the hand‐held camera was introduced in Australia in the mid‐1880s “it became a craze much like the smart phone or selfie stick of today, with photographs for the first time being able to be taken quickly and unnoticed,” said Ms Riley. The camera resembled “a square case… disguised as a … shoeblack’s box, or even a book. The operator places it upon the ground, or under his arm, the pressure of the pneumatic ball opening or closing the hidden lens at the required moment.” (The Sydney Mail, 2 July 1881).
No skill was required to operate the Detective Camera, signalling the beginning of mass photography. It used dry plate negatives – commercialised by George Eastman of Kodak fame – which were available over the counter at photography shops where negatives could be taken for developing and printing.
“This new technology, which also saw the introduction of other novelties like the ‘vest camera’ and ‘watch camera’, triggered debate around issues of privacy which led to the passing of new privacy laws in America,” says Ms Riley. “Manners and rules around candid photography continue to be a hot topic today.”
The State Library holds over 170 original Arthur Syer photographs – the most extensive collection of early Australian street photography known to exist. With the help of the Flickr community the Library has been able to label many of the images in the collection.
Crowd Source is a free exhibition at the State Library of NSW from 4 April to 23 August 2015. #1880Sydney @statelibrarynsw
Press release from the State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Tram, West Crescent St., North Sydney c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Thank you to Philip Cohen for pointing out this is in fact Elizabeth Street, near King Street.
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Tram, West Crescent St., North Sydney (detail) c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Pyrmont Bridge looking across to City c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Circular Quay near First Fleet Park c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Children crowd around a ladder c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Children crowd around a ladder (detail) c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Royal Exchange Building in Bridge Street c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Men in street c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Hawker haggling with customers c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Arthur K. Syer (Australian, d. 1935) Shoe shiner with customer c. 1880s-1900 Albumen print From an album of Sydney street life, harbour and beach scenes, domestic animals 81 photographs in album: 15.2 x 20.4cm or smaller Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
State Library of New South Wales Macquarie Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Australia Phone: +61 2 9273 1414
Curator: Judy Annear, Senior curator of photographs, AGNSW
Judy Annear. The photograph and Australia. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015. p. 236
“Cultural theorist Ross Gibson has written that ‘being Australian might actually mean being untethered or placeless … and appreciating how to live in dynamic patterns of time rather than native plots of space’. Photographs always enable imaginative time and space regardless of their size and how little we might know of the ostensible subject. When people are oriented toward the camera and photographer, there is a gap which the viewer intuitively recognises. The gap is time as much as space. Occasionally – as in an anonymous 1855 daguerreotype taken at Ledcourt, Victoria, of Isabella Carfrae on horseback where we see a servant standing on the verandah, shading her eyes, and in the 1877 Fred Kruger photograph of the white-clad cricketer at Coranderrk – a subject in the photograph presses so close to the picture plane that we know for the time of the exposure they look directly into an unknowable future and collide now with our gaze as we look back.”
Judy Annear. “Time,” in Judy Annear. ‘The photograph and Australia’. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015. p. 19.
This is an important exhibition and book by Judy Annear and team at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, an investigation into the history of Australian photography that is worthy of the subject. Unfortunately, I could not get to Sydney to see the exhibition and I have only just received the catalogue. I have started reading it with gusto.
With regard to the exhibition all I have to go on is a friend of mine who went to see the exhibition, and whose opinion I value highly, who said that is was the messiest exhibition that she had seen in a long while, and that for a new generation of people approaching this subject matter for the first time it’s non-chronological nature would have been quite off putting.
But this is the nature of the beast (that being a thematic not chronological approach) and personally I believe that modern audiences are a lot more understanding of what was going on in the exhibition than she would give them credit for.
In the “Introduction” to the book, Annear rightly credits the work undertaken by colleagues – especially Gael Newton’s Shades of light: photography and Australia 1839-1988, published in 1988; Alan Davis’ The mechanical eye in Australia: photography 1841-1900, published in 1977; and Helen Ennis’ Photography and Australia, published in 2007.
As the latter did, this new book “emphasises the ways in which photographs, especially in the nineteenth century, function in social, cultural and political contexts, exploring photography’s role in representing relationships between Indigenous and settler cultures, the construction of Australia, and its critique.” (Annear, p. 10)
While Ennis’ book took a chronological approach, with sections titled First Photographs, Black to Blak, Land and Landscape, Being Modern, Made in Australia, Localism and Internationalism, The Presence of the Past – Annear’s book takes a more conceptual, thematic approach, one that crosses time and space, linking past and present work in classificatory sections titled Time, Nation, People, Place and Transmission.
Both books acknowledge the key issues that have to be dealt with when formulating a book on the photograph and Australia: “the medium itself, Australia’s history, and the relationship between them. Is Australian photography different? If so, how, and in relation to what? One has to look at places with not dissimilar histories, such as Canada and New Zealand. And other questions: what has preoccupied photographers working in relation to Australia at various points in time? Have their concerns been primarily commercial, aesthetic, historical, realist, interpretive, or theoretical? Have they developed projects unique to the photographic medium; for example, large-scale classificatory projects? What have they achieved, what did it mean then, and what does it mean now?” (Annear, p.10)
These questions are the nexus of Annear’s investigation and she seeks to answer them in the well researched chapters that follow, while being mindful of “preserving some of the slipperiness of the medium.” And there is the rub.
In order to define these classificatory sections in the exhibition and book, it would seem to me that Annear shoehorns these themes onto the fluid, mutable “state of being” of the photograph, imposing classifications to order the mass of photography into bite sized entities. While “the book encourages the reader to explore connections – between different forms of photography, people and place, past and present” it also, inevitably, imposes a reading on these historical photographs that would not have been present at the time of their production.
The press release for the book says, “The photograph and Australia investigates how photography was harnessed to create the idea of a nation.”
Now I find the use of that word “harnessed” – as in control and make use of – to be hugely problematic.
Personally, I don’t think that the slipperiness and mutability of photography can ever be controlled by anyone to help create the idea (imagination?) of a nation. Nations build nations, not photography. As a friend of mine said to me, it’s a long bow to draw… and I would agree.
The crux of the matter is that THERE ARE NO HANDLES, only the ones that we impose, later, from a distance. There is no definitive answer to anything, there are always twists and turns, always another possibility of how we look at things, of the past in the present.
Photography and photographs, “with its ability to capture both things of the world and those of the imagination,” are always unstable (which is why the photograph can still induce A SENSE OF WONDER) – always uncertain in their interpretation, then and now. Photographs do not belong to a dimension or a classification of time and space because you feel their being NOT their (historical) consequence. Hence, all of these classifications are essentially the same/redundant.
Perhaps it’s only semantics, but I think the word “utilises” – make practical and effective use of – would be a better word in terms of Annear’s enquiries. It also occurred to me to turn the question around: instead of “how photography was harnessed to create the idea of a nation”; instead, “how the idea of a nation helped change photography.” Think about it.
Finally, a comment on the book itself. Beautifully printed, of a good size and weight, the paper stock is of excellent quality and thickness. The type is simple and legible and the book is lavishly illustrated with photographs. The reproductions are a little ‘flat’ but the main point of concern is the size of the reproductions. Instead of reproducing carte de visite at 1:1 scale (that is, 64 mm × 100 mm), their mounted on card size – they are reproduced at 40 mm x 68 mm (see p. 236 of the catalogue below). Small enough already, this printing size renders the detailed reading of the images almost impossible. Worse, the images are laid out horizontally on a vertical page, with no size attribution of the original, nor whether they are 1/9th, 1/6th daguerreotype’s or ambrotypes, CDV’s or cabinet cards next to the image.
The reproduction size of the daguerreotypes and ambrotypes is even worse, making the images almost unreadable. For example, in an excellent piece of writing at the end of the first chapter, “Time”, Annear refers to “an anonymous 1855 daguerreotype taken at Ledcourt, Victoria, of Isabella Carfrae on horseback where we see a servant standing on the verandah, shading her eyes,”.
In the image in this posting (below) we can clearly see this woman standing on the verandah, but in the reproduction in the book (p. 139), she is reduced to a mere smudge in history, an invisibility caused by the size of the reproduction, thereby negating all that Annear comments upon.
Instead of the “subject in the photograph presses so close to the picture plane that we know for the time of the exposure they look directly into an unknowable future and collide now with our gaze as we look back,” there is no pressing, hers has no presence, and our gaze cannot collide with this vision from the future past. Why designers of photographic books consistently fall prey to these traps is beyond me.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thank to the Art Gallery of New South Wales for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Unknown photographer Australian scenery, Middle Harbour, Port Jackson c. 1865 Carte de visite Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of Josef & Jeanne Lebovic, Sydney 2014
Unknown photographer Australian scenery, Middle Harbour, Port Jackson (verso) c. 1865 Carte de visite Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of Josef & Jeanne Lebovic, Sydney 2014
The first large-scale exhibition of its kind to be held in Australia in 27 years, The photograph and Australia presents more than 400 photographs from more than 120 artists, including Richard Daintree, Charles Bayliss, Frank Hurley, Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Sue Ford, Carol Jerrems, Tracey Moffatt, Robyn Stacey, Ricky Maynard and Patrick Pound.
The works of renowned artists are shown alongside those of unknown photographers and everyday material, such as domestic and presentation albums. These tell peoples’ stories, illustrate where and how they lived, as well as communicate official public narratives. Sourced from more than 35 major collections across Australia and New Zealand, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia and the Australian Museum, The photograph and Australia uncovers hidden gems dating from 1845 until now.
A richly illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition, reflecting the exhibition themes and investigating how Australia itself has been shaped by photography.
Extract from “Introduction”
“The task of this book is to formulate questions around Australian photography and its history, regardless of Australia’s, and the medium’s, permeable identity. While early photography in Australia made histories of the colonies visible, and a great deal can be read from the surviving photographic archives, interpretation of this material is often conjecture, and much remains oblique. Patrick Pound describes the sheer mass of photographs and images in the world today as an “unhinged album.”11 This dynamic of making, accumulating, ordering, disseminating, reinterpreting, re-collecting and re-narrating is an important aspect of photography. The intimate relationship, historically, between the photograph and the various arts and sciences, along with the adaptability to technological change and imaginative interpretations, allows for a constant montaging or weaving together of uses and meanings. This works against the conventional linear structure of classical histories and the idea of any progressive evolution of the medium. If what we are dealing with is a phenomenon rather than simply a form then analysing the phenomenon and its dynamic relationship to art, society, peoples, sciences, genres, and processes is critical to our modern understanding of ourselves and our place in the world as well as of the medium itself.12
In the 1970s, cultural theorist Roland Barthes wrote an essay entitled The photographic message.13 While he focussed primarily on press photography and made a distinction between reportage and ‘artistic’ photography, his pinpointing of the special status of the photographic image as a message without a code – one could say, even, a face without a name – and his understanding of photography as a simultaneously objective and invested, natural and cultural, is relevant in the colonial and post-colonial context.
We search for clues in photographs of our past and present. In some ways this is a melancholy activity, in other ways valuable detective work. In many cases it is both. Photography since its inception has belonged in a nether world of being and not being, legibility and opacity. This book preserves some of the slipperiness of the medium, while providing a series of texts touching on the photographs at hand. The history of the photograph and its relationship to Australia remains tantalisingly partial; the ever-burgeoning archives await further excavation.”14
Judy Annear. “Introduction,” in Judy Annear. The photograph and Australia. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015. p. 13.
11/ See ‘Transmission’ pp. 227-33 12/ See Geoffrey Batchen, A Subject For, A History About, Photography accessed 23 December 2021 13/ Roland Barthes, ‘The photographic message’, Image, music, text, trans Stephen Heath, Flamingo, London, 1984, pp. 15-31 14/ Parts of this Introduction were in a paper delivered at the symposium, Border-lands: photography & cultural contest, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 31 Mar 2012
Time
The relationship of the photograph to ‘Time’ is discussed in chapter one, which examines how contemporary artists such as Anne Ferran, Rosemary Laing and Ricky Maynard reinvent the past through photography. The activities of nineteenth-century photographers such as George Burnell and Charles Bayliss are also discussed… The manipulation by artists and photographers of imaginative time – the time of looking at the photographic image – allows for consideration of the nexus between space and time, how subjects can be momentarily tethered and, equally, how they can float free.
Nation
Chapter two considers the idea of ‘Nation’: looking at the public role of the photograph in representing Australia at world exhibitions before Federation in 1901. Photography in this period enabled new classificatory systems to come into existence… Of particular importance was the use of the photograph to cement Darwinistic views that determined racial hierarchies according to superficial physical differences. The photograph also advertised the growing colonies to potential migrants and investors through the depiction of landscapes and amenities.
People
The third chapter, ‘People’, analyses the uncertain post-colonial heritage that all Australian inherit and how that can be evidenced and examined in photographs. The chapter encompasses portraits by Tracy Moffatt and George Goodman, for example, and considerations of where and how people lived and chose to be photographed. These include the people of the Kulin nation of Victoria, those who resided at Poonindie Mission in South Australia, the Yued people living at New Norcia mission in Western Australia, as well as the Henty family in Victoria, the Mortlocks of South Australia, the children living at The Bungalow in Alice Springs and the people of Tumut in New South Wales.
Place
‘Place’ is examined in chapter four, particularly in terms of the use of photography to enable exploration, whether to Antarctica (Frank Hurley), to map stars and further the natural sciences (Henry Chamberlain Russell, Joseph Turner), or to open up ‘wilderness’ for tourism or mining (JW Beattie, Nicholas Caire, JW Lindt, Richard Daintree) … Photographs are examined as both documents and imaginative interpretations of activity and place.
Transmission
Chapter five, ‘Transmission’, considers the traffic in photographs and the fascination with the medium’s reproducibility and circulation… The evidential aspect of the photograph has proven to be fleeting and only tangentially related to the thing it traces. The possibility of being able to fully decipher a photograph’s meaning is remote, even when it has been promptly ordered and annotated in some form of album. Each photographic form expands the possibility of instant and easy communication, but the swarm of material serves only to prove the impossibility of order, classification, and accuracy. The photograph as an aestheticised object continues regardless of platform, and the imaginative possibilities of the medium have not been exhausted.
Sections from Judy Annear. “Introduction,” in Judy Annear. The photograph and Australia. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015. p. 12. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Charles Bayliss (Australian born United Kingdom, 1850-1897) Group of local Aboriginal people, Chowilla Station, Lower Murray River, South Australia 1886 From the series New South Wales Royal Commission: Conservation of water. Views of scenery on the Darling and Lower Murray during the flood of 1886 Albumen photograph Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1984
This tableaux of Ngarrindjeri people fishing was carefully staged by photographer Charles Bayliss in 1886. Not just subjects, they actively participated in the photography process. It was observed at the time that the fishermen arranged themselves into position, with “the grace and unique character of which a skilful artist only could show.”
“In one extraordinary image created in 1886 by the photographer Charles Bayliss, the Ngarrindjeri people of the lower Murray River were active participants in the staging of a fishing scene. Writing in his journal, Bayliss’s companion Gilbert Parker noted: “Without a word of suggestion, these natives arranged themselves in a group, the grace and unique character of which a skilful artist only could show.” Annear says the image looks like a museum diorama to modern eyes. “But these people were very active in deciding how they wanted to be photographed,” she says. “They were determined to create an image they felt was appropriate.”
The first photographs of indigenous Australians were formal, posed portraits, taken in blazing sunlight. The sitters are often pictured leaning against each other (stillness was required for long exposure times) with eyes turned to the camera and bodies wrapped in blankets or kangaroo skins. Some wore headdresses or necklaces that may or may not have belonged to them.
“Indigenous Australians agreed to be photographed out of curiosity, or perhaps for food,” says Judy Annear, curator of The photograph and Australia, a major new photography exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. “In the past, it was considered that these sorts of early pictures were indicative of the colonial gaze. But now there is a lot of research going on into how these early photos were made. Often, the local people would have been invited to come into a studio and they were paid. They would have been dressed up and told what to do.””
Text in quotations from Elissa Blake. “Art Gallery of NSW photography exhibition: Stories told in black and white,” on the the Sydney Morning Herald website April 2, 2015 [Online] Cited 28/05/2015. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Ernest B Docker (Australian, 1842-1923) The Three Sisters Katoomba – Mrs Vivian, Muriel Vivian and Rosamund 7 Feb 1898 1898 Stereograph Macleay Museum, The University of Sydney
Charles Nettleton (Australian, 1825-1902) Untitled 1867-1874 Carte de visite 6.2 x 9.1cm image; 6.3 x 10.0cm mount card Purchased 2014 Art Gallery of New South Wales
Charles Nettleton was a professional photographer born in the north of England who arrived in Australia in 1854, settling in Melbourne. He joined the studio of Townsend Duryea and Alexander McDonald, where he specialised in outdoor photography. Nettleton is credited with having photographed the first Australian steam train when the private Melbourne-Sandridge (Port Melbourne) line was opened on 12 September 1854. Nettleton established his own studio in 1858, offering the first souvenir albums to the Melbourne public. He worked as an official photographer to the Victorian government and the City of Melbourne Corporation from the late 1850s to the late 1890s, documenting Melbourne’s growth from a colonial town to a booming metropolis. He photographed public buildings, sewerage and water systems, bridges, viaducts, roads, wharves, and the construction of the Botanical Gardens. In 1861 he boarded the ‘Great Britain’ to photograph the first English cricket team to visit Australia and in 1867 was appointed official photographer of the Victorian visit of the Duke of Edinburgh. For the Victorian police he photographed the bushranger Ned Kelly in 1880. This is considered to be the only genuine photograph of the outlaw.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales is proud to present the major exhibition The photograph and Australia, which explores the crucial role photography has played in shaping our understandings of the nation. It will run from 21 March to 8 June 2015.
Tracing the evolution of the medium and its many uses from the 1840s until today, this is the largest exhibition of Australian photography held since 1988 that borrows from collections nationwide. It presents more than 400 photographs by more than 120 artists, including Morton Allport, Richard Daintree, Paul Foelsche, Samuel Sweet, JJ Dwyer, Charles Bayliss, Frank Hurley, Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Sue Ford, Carol Jerrems, Tracey Moffatt, Robyn Stacey, Ricky Maynard, Anne Ferran and Patrick Pound.
Iconic images are shown alongside works by unknown and amateur photographers, including photographic objects such as cartes de visite, domestic albums and the earliest Australian X-rays. The exhibition’s curator – Judy Annear, senior curator of photographs, Art Gallery of NSW – said:
“Weaving together the multiple threads of Australia’s photographic history, The photograph and Australia investigates how photography invented modern Australia. It poses questions about how the medium has shaped our view of the world, ourselves and each other. Audiences are invited to experience the breadth of Australian photography, past and present, and the sense of wonder the photograph can still induce through its ability to capture both things of the world and the imagination.”
The exhibition brings together hundreds of photographs from more than 35 private and public collections across Australia, England and New Zealand, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia and the State Library of Victoria. Highlights include daguerreotypes by Australia’s first professional photographer, George Goodman, and recent works by Simryn Gill. From mass media’s evolution in the 19th century to today’s digital revolution, The photograph and Australia investigates how photography has been harnessed to create the idea of a nation and reveals how our view of the world, ourselves and each other has been changed by the advent of photography. It also explores how photography operates aesthetically, technically, politically and in terms of distribution and proliferation, in the Australian context.
Curated from a contemporary perspective, the exhibition takes a thematic rather than a chronological approach, looking at four interrelated areas: Aboriginal and settler relations; exploration (mining, landscape and stars); portraiture and engagement; collecting and distributing photography. A lavishly illustrated 308-page publication, The photograph and Australia (Thames & Hudson, RRP $75.00), accompanies the exhibition, reflecting its themes and investigating the medium’s relationship to people, place, culture and history.
Press release from the Art Gallery of New South Wales
In this evocative image Moore condenses the anticipation and apprehension of immigrants into a tight frame as they arrive in Australia to begin a new life. The generational mix suggests family reconnections or individual courage as each face displays a different emotion.
Moore’s first colour image Faces mirroring their expectations of life in the land down under, passengers crowd the rail of the liner Galileo Galilei in Sydney Harbour was published in National Geographic in 1967.1 In that photograph the figures are positioned less formally and look cheerful. But it is this second image, probably taken seconds later, which Moore printed in black-and-white, that has become symbolic of national identity as it represents a time when Australia’s rapidly developing industrialised economy addressed its labour shortage through immigration. The strength of the horizontal composition of cropped figures underpinned by the ship’s rail is dramatised by the central figure raising her hand – an ambiguous gesture either reaching for a future or reconnecting with family. The complexity of the subject and the narrative the image implies ensured its public success, which resulted in a deconstruction of the original title, ‘European migrants’, by the passengers, four of whom it later emerged were Sydneysiders returning from holiday, alongside two migrants from Egypt and Lebanon.2 Unintentionally Moore’s iconic image has become an ‘historical fiction’, yet the passengers continue to represent an evolving Australian identity in relation to immigration.
1/ Max Dupain and associates. Accessed 17/06/2006. No longer available online 2/ Thomas D & Sayers A 2000, From face to face: portraits by David Moore, Chapter & Verse, Sydney
David Moore (Australian, 1927-2003) Redfern Interior 1949 Silver gelatin print 26.7 x 35.4cm Purchased with funds provided by the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales 1985
David Moore’s career spanned the age of the picture magazines (for example: Life, Time, The Observer) through to major commissions such as the Sydney Opera House, CSR, and self initiated projects like To build a Bridge: Glebe Island. The breadth and depth of his career means there is an extraordinary archive of material which describes and interprets the last 50 years of Australian life, the life of the region, and events in Britain and the United States. He was instrumental in advancing Australian photography throughout his career and in the early 1970s was active in setting up the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. From well-known images such as Migrants arriving in Sydney to Redfern interior, Moore has documented events and conditions in Sydney.
Charles Bayliss (England, Australia 1850-1897) Henry Beaufoy Merlin (England, Australia 1830-1873) Untitled c. 1872 Albumen photograph Dimensions 24.5 x 29.4cm image/sheet Gift of Josef & Jeanne Lebovic, Sydney 2014
Paul Foelsche (Australian, 1831-1914) Adelaide River 1887 Albumen photograph Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of Josef & Jeanne Lebovic, Sydney 2014
This photo of people relaxing on the banks of the Adelaide River in the Northern Territory was taken by Paul Foelsche, a policeman and amateur anthropologist.
The collection of 19th century images brought together in The photograph and Australia show indigenous people in formal group portraits or as “exotic” subjects. They are photographed alongside early settlers, working as stockmen or holding tools. Amateur gentleman photographers such as the Scottish farmer John Hunter Kerr captured such images on his own property, Fernyhurst Station, in Victoria. Another amateur photographer, Paul Foelsche, the first policeman in the Northern Territory, took portraits of the Larrakia people, which have since become a priceless archive for their descendants.
NSW Government Printer The General Post Office, Sydney 1892-1900 Albumen photograph State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, presented 1969
Melvin Vaniman (American, 1866-1912) Panorama of intersection of Collins and Queen Streets, Melbourne 1903
Melvin Vaniman (American, 1866-1912)
Chester Melvin Vaniman (October 30, 1866 – July 2, 1912) was an American aviator and photographer who specialised in panoramic images. He shot images from gas balloons, ships masts, tall buildings and even a home-made 30-metre (98 ft) pole. He scaled buildings, hung from self-made slings, and scaled dangerous heights to capture his unique images.
Vaniman’s photographic career began in Hawaii in 1901, and ended some time in 1904. He spent over a year photographing Australia and New Zealand on behalf of the Oceanic Steamship Company, creating promotional images for the company, many as panoramas and which popularised the format in Australia, which was taken up with enthusiasm by Robert Vere Scott among others. During this time the New Zealand Government also commissioned panoramas.
Beginning in 1903, he spent over a year photographing Sydney and the surrounding areas. It was during this time that he created his best known work, the panorama of Sydney, shot from a hot air balloon he had specially imported from the United States. Vaniman is best known for his images of Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand.
J. W. Lindt (Germany 1845 – Australia from 1862, Australia 1926) Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly gang, hung up for photography, Benalla 1880 Gelatin silver print
Australia’s first ever press photograph pushed boundaries few journalists would transgress today. Captured by J.W, Lindt in 1880, the photo shows the dead body of a member of Ned Kelly’s infamous gang, strung up on a door outside the jail house in Benalla in regional Victoria.
Joe Byrne died from loss of blood after being shot in the groin during the siege of Glenrowan pub. Another photographer is pictured mid-shot, while an illustrator walks away from the new technology with his hat on and portfolio tucked under his arm. “We see this as the first Australian press photograph. It has that spontaneity media photographs have, and it’s also very evocative with many different stories in it,” the gallery’s senior curator of photographs, Judy Annear, said.
Text from Rose Powell. “First Australian press photo shows body of Kelly Gang member Joe Byrne,” on the Sydney Morning Herald website March 20, 2015 [Online] Cited 30/05/2015. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Richard Daintree (Australian, 1832-1878) Midday camp 1864-1870 Albumen photograph, overpainted with oils Queensland Museum, Brisbane
This image was an albumen photograph (using egg whites to bind chemicals to paper) which was then hand-coloured with oil paints to bring it to life. The photographer took it in the 1860s to advertise Australia as a land of opportunity.
Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) Ben Lomond, Tasmania , Cape Portland, Tasmania The Healing Garden, Wybalenna, Flinders Island, Tasmania, from the series Portrait of a distant land 2005, printed 2009 Gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned 34 x 52cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased with funds provided by the Aboriginal Collection Benefactors’ Group and the Photography Collection Benefactors’ Program 2009
Ricky Maynard has produced some of the most compelling images of contemporary Aboriginal Australia over the last two decades. Largely self taught, Maynard began his career as a darkroom technician at the age of sixteen. He first established his reputation with the 1985 series Moonbird people, an intimate portrayal of the muttonbirding season on Babel, Big Dog and Trefoil Islands in his native Tasmania. The 1993 series No more than what you see documents Indigenous prisoners in South Australian gaols.
Maynard is a lifelong student of the history of photography, particularly of the great American social reformers Jacob Riis, Lewis Hines, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Maynard’s images cut through the layers of rhetoric and ideology that inevitably couch black history (particularly Tasmanian history) to present images of experience itself. His visual histories question ownership; he claims that ‘the contest remains over who will image and own this history…we must define history, define whose history it is, and define its purpose as well as the tools used for the telling it’.
In Portrait of a distant land Maynard addresses the emotional connection between history and place. He uses documentary style landscapes to illustrate group portraits of Aboriginal peoples’ experiences throughout Tasmania. Each work combines several specific historical events, creating a narrative of shared experience – for example The Mission relies on historical records of a small boy whom Europeans christened after both his parents died in the Risdon massacre. This work highlights the disparity between written, oral and visual histories, as Maynard attempts to create ‘a combination of a very specific oral history as well as an attempt to show a different way of looking at history in general’.
JW Lindt (Australian born Germany, 1845-1926) No 37 Bushman and an Aboriginal man 1873 Albumen photograph Grafton Regional Gallery Collection, Grafton, gift of Sam and Janet Cullen and family 2004
Professional photographers such as the Frankfurt-born John William Lindt (who became famous for photographing the capture of the Kelly Gang at Glenrowan in 1880) took carefully posed tableaux images in his Melbourne studio. One set of Lindt photographs, taken between 1873 and 1874, show settlers and indigenous people posing with the tools of their trade. One unusual image shows a settler holding a spear and a local man holding a rifle.
Annear says the photographs speak of a time when early settlers and indigenous people were engaged in an exchange of cultures. “These photos weren’t just a passive, one-way process,” Annear says. “It wasn’t just about capture and exoticism. We are finding contemporaneous accounts that point to a level of exchange going on that was extremely important. These photos show who those people were, where they lived and what they were doing. They have a very powerful presence in that regard, and Aboriginal people today are going back through these photographs in order to trace their family trees.” …
Annear says she could have put together an exhibition of images of the “great suffering” experienced by Aboriginal people in Australia, but chose not to. “I found the 19th century material so rich and strong and most people aren’t aware of these images. It seemed like a great opportunity to bring them forward,” she says. “I don’t want to whitewash history, but I do want people to see how rich life was, how people were adapting, and then how that was removed. After Federation and the White Australia policy and other assimilation policies, photos of indigenous people seem to disappear. Why did they disappear? The people were still here. They were greatly diminished in many senses, but nonetheless they were still here.”
Elissa Blake. “Art Gallery of NSW photography exhibition: Stories told in black and white,” on the Sydney Morning Herald website, April 2, 2015 [Online] Cited 30/05/2015. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Charles Bayliss (Australian born England, 1850-1897) Lawrence Hargrave trochoided plane model 1884 Albumen photograph Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, gift of Mr William Hudson Shaw 1994
Unknown photographer Duryea Gallery, Grenfell Street, Adelaide c. 1865 Carte de visite State Library of South Australia, Adelaide
J. J. Dwyer (Australian, 1869-1928) Kalgoorlie’s first post office c. 1900 Gelatin silver photograph Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth Photo: Acorn Photo, Perth
Harold Cazneaux (Australian, 1878-1953) Spirit of endurance 1937 Gelatin silver photograph Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of the Cazneaux family 1975
Keast Burke (New Zealand, Australia 1896-1974) Husbandry 1 c. 1940 Gelatin silver photograph, vintage 30.5 x 35.5cm image/sheet Gift of Iris Burke 1989
Eric Keast Burke (16 January 1896 – 31 March 1974) was a New Zealand-born photographer and journalist.
Unknown photographer Isabella Carfrae on horseback, Ledcourt, Stawell, Victoria c. 1855 Daguerreotype, hand-tinted National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2012
Unknown photographer Isabella Carfrae on horseback, Ledcourt, Stawell, Victoria c. 1855 Daguerreotype, hand-tinted National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2012
“In the late 19th century, cameras were taking us both inside the human body and all the way to the moon. By the 1970s the National Gallery of Victoria had begun collecting photographic art, and within another decade the digital revolution was underway. But this exhibition – the largest display of Australian photography since Gael Newton mounted the 900-work Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1838-1988 at the National Gallery of Australia 27 years ago – is not chronological.
It opens with a salon hang of portraits of 19th and 20th century photographers, as if to emphasise their say in what we see, and continues with works grouped by themes: Aboriginal and settler relations; exploration; mining, landscape and stars; portraiture and engagement; collecting and distributing photography.
“A number of institutions and curators have tackled Australian photography from a chronological perspective and have done an extremely good job of it,” Annear says. “I have used their excellent research as a springboard into another kind of examination of the history of photography in this country. Nothing in photography was actually invented here, so I have turned it around and considered how photography invented Australia.”
Most of the photographs – about three quarters of the show, in fact – date from the first 60 years after Frenchman Louis Daguerre had his 1839 revelation about how to capture detailed images in a permanent form. Annear says the decades immediately following photography’s arrival in Australia provide a snapshot of all that has followed since.
“In terms of the digital revolution it is interesting to look back at the 19th century. What is going on now was all there then, it is just an expansion. There is a very clear trajectory from the birth of photography towards multiplication. After the invention of the carte de visite in the late 1850s they were made like there was no tomorrow. There are millions of cartes de visite in existence.”
There are quite a few of these small card-mounted photographs (the process was patented in Paris, hence the French) in the exhibition too, including one of a woman reflected in water at Port Jackson dating from circa 1865. With the trillions of images now in existence, it is easy to forget that once upon a time catching your reflection in the water, glass or a mirror was the only way to glimpse your own image (short of paying hefty sums for an artist to draw you).
After the invention of photography, people were quick to see how easily they could manipulate the impression created. While photographs are about fixing a moment in time, we can never be really sure just what it is they are fixing. “It’s not as simple as windows and mirrors – what we are looking at has always been constructed in some way,” Annear says. “What’s interesting about the medium is that you think it’s recording, fixing and capturing, but it is just creating an endless meditation on whatever a photograph’s relationship might be to whatever was real at the time it was taken.”
Extract from Megan Backhouse. “How the Photograph Shaped a Nation,” on the Art Guide Australia website, 20 April 2015 [Online] Cited 30/05/2015. No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
George Goodman (Australian born England, 1815-1891) Caroline and son Thomas James Lawson 1845 Daguerreotype State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, presented 1991
Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003) Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind c. 1939 Gelatin silver photograph Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased with funds provided by John Armati 2006
Unknown photographer John Gill and Joanna Kate Norton 1856 Albumen photograph Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
Unknown photographer Alfred and Fred Thomas, proprietors of the Ravenswood Hotel 1880-1890 Tintype State Library of Western Australia, Perth
Mervyn Bishop (born July 1945) is an Australian news and documentary photographer. Joining The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 1962 or 1963, he was the first Aboriginal Australian to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper and one of the first to become a professional photographer. In 1971, four years after completing his cadetship, he was named Australian Press Photographer of the Year. He has continued to work as a photographer and lecturer.
Though not born in Australia, Axel Poignant’s work is largely about the ‘Outback’, its flora and fauna and the traditions of Australian and Indigenous identity. Poignant was born in Yorkshire in 1906 to a Swedish father and English mother, and arrived in Australia in 1926 seeking work and adventure. After tough early years of unemployment and homelessness, he eventually settled in Perth and found work as a portrait photographer, before taking to the road and the bush in search of new subjects. Poignant became fascinated with the photo-essay as a means of adding real humanity to the medium, and much of his work is in this form. The close relationships he developed with Aborigines on his travels are recorded in compassionate portraits of these people and their lives – the low angles and closely cropped frames appear more natural and relaxed than the stark compositions of earlier ethnographic photography.
Nicholas Caire (Australian born England, 1837-1918) Fairy scene at the Landslip, Blacks’ Spur c. 1878 Albumen photograph National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased 1994
Nicholas John Caire (28 February 1837 – 13 February 1918) was an Australian photographer. Caire was born in Guernsey, Channel Islands, to Nicholas Caire and Hannah Margeret. As a boy Caire spoke French found he had a passion for photography that his parents encouraged. Caire moved to Adelaide, Australia, along with both his parents in 1860. Around this time Caire Found a mentor in Townsend Duryea. in 1867 he opened his own studio in Adelaide, Australia. He was married to Louisa Master in 1870 and then shortly after moved to Talbot, Victoria where he continued his photography and started to write for Life and Health Magazine. Caire died in 1918 in Armadale, Victoria.
Frank Styant Browne (Australian born England, 1854-1938) Hand 1896 X-ray Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery collection, Launceston
Art Gallery of New South Wales Art Gallery Road, The Domain Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
Opening hours: Open every day 10am – 5pm except Christmas Day and Good Friday
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 2015 Digital photograph From the series Too Much of the Air
Too Much of the Air
After 16 months hard work, I have completed a new 52 image sequence.
These images will be printed large to reinforce the disintegration of the image, technology and human being. Tullio Crali‘s painting Before the Parachute Opens (Prima che si apra il paracadute) (1939) was one of a few starting points, inspirations, for the new sequence.
Below is a selection of images from the sequence. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.
“Imagine being in these planes knowing that you only had moments to live, and knowing that you could do nothing about it. What brought you to that point, what decisions did you take as a human being (or were taken for you) that enacted this scenario.
The “greatness” as the event passes is what is being worked with here. It is the inverse aspect of the sublime. Usually the sublime is regarded as beyond time … but not here. Essentially I am sustaining the last moments of a doomed life, outside of time.
We are unusually privileged to experience the sublime in this way. It is usually a lost aspect through the death of the witness.”
![Rex Hazlewood (Australian, 1886-1968) '[Men drinking billy tea]' 1911-1927](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/hazelwood-billy-tea.jpg "Rex Hazlewood (Australian, 1886-1968) '[Men drinking billy tea]' 1911-1927")
![James Fox Barnard (Australian, 1874-1945) '[Tea on the verandah]' c. 1900](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/barnard-tea-verandah.jpg "James Fox Barnard (Australian, 1874-1945) '[Tea on the verandah]' c. 1900")
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