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Exhibition: ‘An Edwardian Summer: Sydney & beyond through the lens of Arthur Wigram Allen’ at the Museum of Sydney

Exhibition dates: 11th December 2010 – 25th April 2011

Many thankx to the Museum of Sydney for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images © Arthur Wigram Allan, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.

For more images please see the An Edwardian Summer website.

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
We left Medlow at 10.15 am & drove through Blackheath & Mt Victoria to Bathurst
Nd
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
AWA & Boyce at lunch
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Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
Kitty and Katha working at the drawn work
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Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
11 November 1917 Mrs Frank Osborne and Miss Catterall wait in the back of one of Arthur Allens Detroit Electric broughams
1917
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

An Edwardian Summer, a new book and an exhibition opening 11th December 2010 at the Museum of Sydney showcases for the first time an extraordinary collection of photographs that capture Sydney at the turn of the century at one of the most rapidly changing times in Australia’s history.

A talented amateur photographer, lawyer and Sydney identity Arthur Wigram Allen was fascinated by the social and technological changes that occurred during his lifetime, 1862-1941. Allen created 51 albums now held by the State Library of NSW.

In 1885 after the sudden death of his father and uncle and at the age of just 23, Allen was thrust into the role of heading up the family law firm founded by his grandfather George Allen, known internationally today as Allens Arthur Robinson. While Allen’s photographs span 1890-1934, the book and exhibition concentrate on the Edwardian years, 1890s-1915, a brief often overlooked but important period in Australia’s history that heralded a new century of significant inventions and social changes, including powered flight, the rise of the motorcar and a new federated Australia.

Through Allen’s lens, we see the first mixed bathing on Sydney beaches, sporting events, pageants and processions, dramatic shipwrecks, the latest fashions as well as intimate family events such as motoring and harbour excursions and bush picnics. Meticulously captioned by Allen, his exquisitely personal and beautiful photographs capture a time of optimism and new ideas as Sydney emerged from the strict moral codes of the Victorian era.

Both the book and exhibition feature art works from the era by Australian artists including Arthur Streeton, Rupert Bunny, Grace Cossington Smith and Theodore Penleigh Boyd. The exhibition will also showcase items from the Historic Houses Trust collection and from the Powerhouse Museum, including examples of Edwardian fashion, children’s dress up costumes, jewellery and accessories and furniture.

Text from the Sydney Museum website [Online] Cited 08/04/2011 no longer available online

Sydney lawyer and identity Arthur Wigram Allen, a tirelessly enthusiastic photographer, was fascinated by the social and technological changes occurring during his lifetime. His talent for amateur photography produced extraordinary pictures that offer a fresh insight into the Edwardian years in Sydney.

The Edwardian era was sandwiched between the great achievements of the Victorian age and the global catastrophe of World War I. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 heralded a new century of significant inventions and social changes, including powered flight, the rise of the motorcar and a new federated Australia.

An Edwardian Summer will present a selection of Arthur Allen’s beautiful images, depicting intimate moments with family and friends, motoring and harbour excursions, theatrical celebrities, bush picnics, the introduction of surf bathing on Sydney beaches, processions, pageants and mass celebrations, and new freedoms in fashion. Most have never before been published, and they form an unrivalled personal pictorial record of these rapidly changing times.

The exhibition will also include artworks by Rupert Bunny, Ethel Carrick Fox, Arthur Streeton and Grace Cossington Smith, examples of male and female fashion including evening and day wear, motoring ensembles and children’s dress-up costumes, jewellery and accessories, furniture and decorative embellishments characteristic of the Edwardian era.

Text from the Sydney Museum website [Online] Cited 11/01/2020

Arthur Wigram Allen

Arthur Wigram Allen was born in 1862 into a large family of wealthy Sydney solicitors. One of 11 children and third in a line of six boys he attended Sydney Grammar School before moving to Melbourne in 1880 to study law at Trinity College at the University of Melbourne. In 1885 after the sudden death of his two elder brothers Arthur assumed control of the familíes Sydney firm and many business interests.

Allen married Ethel Lamb in 1891 and they went on to have four children: Ethel Joyce, born in 1893, Arthur Denis Wigram in 1894, Ellice Margaret in 1896 and Marcia Maria in 1905.

Fascinated by the new inventions of the era, he became interested in photography, purchasing the latest cameras. He soon proved to be a talented amateur photographer, capturing images of his family and friends, the city and its surrounds.

Arthur died in 1941, aged 79; his photographs, taken from the 1890s through to 1934, provide a detailed photographic record of a changing society and the emergence of the great city of Sydney.

A man of extraordinary vitality, Allen was fascinated by the times in which he lived, and tried to photograph everything he saw: family and friends; visiting ships and theatrical celebrities; bush picnics; the first mixed bathing on Sydney beaches; dramatic shipwrecks; processions, pageants and mass celebrations; coal miners; domestic life and fashion; house interiors; and sporting events. These photographs, contained in 51 albums, are now held by the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, and provide a view of the dramatic changes that took place in Edwardian Sydney.

Arthur Allen’s photographs span 1890 to 1934, but the Edwardian Summer exhibition and book concentrate on those depicting the Edwardian years, a brief, often-overlooked but important period in Australia’s history. The photographs, most of them never published before, form an unrivalled personal pictorial record of these rapidly changing times.

Text from the An Edwardian Summer website [Online] Cited 11/01/2020

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
Cecil Healy in the dinghy, ‘Port Hacking’, October 16 1904
1904
PX*D 575 negative 858
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Cecil Healy (1881-1918) found fame as the captain of Manly Surf Club and a champion swimmer; he won gold and silver medals in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.

Cecil Patrick Healy (28 November 1881 – 29 August 1918) was an Australian freestyle swimmer of the 1900s and 1910s, who won silver in the 100 m freestyle at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. He also won gold in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. He was killed in the First World War at the Somme during an attack on a German trench. Healy was the second swimmer behind Frederick Lane to represent Australia in Swimming and has been allocated the number “2” by Swimming Australia on a list of all Australians who have represented Australia at an Open International Level.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
[Roller skating on the verandah at Moombara]
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PX*D575 negative 836
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Roller skating on the verandah at Moombara, September 24, 1904. “Ethel and I and the children came down this afternoon for the Michaelmas holidays bringing Janet & Bob Rabete also. Immediately on arrival Joyce, Denis & Bob began to skate on the verandah and they used Janet & Margaret as horses to pull them along. Margaret also had some splendid rides on her tricycle”

Perhaps the greatest joy for the Allen children was the family’s waterfront holiday house, Moombara, where they played, swam, rode horses and roller skated around the verandah. Roller skating was a popular pastime of the era, with numerous rinks being built from the inner city to the beaches in the late 1880s. The Sydney Skating Club was formed in 1906 and skating displays were a common form of entertainment.

Text from An Edwardian Summer website

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
This afternoon Marcia Lamb [centre] and I took Lord Orford and Lady Dorothy Walpole [right], also Nell Knox [left] for a drive to South Head, Bondi and Coogee
February 22, 1911
PX*D594 negative 4188
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Brief stop on a drive to South Head, Bondi and Coogee, February 22, 1911. As Sydneysiders embraced the outdoors, they began picnicking at every opportunity, flocking to local beauty spots or favourite retreats such as Coogee Beach. Although the beach was thronged with bathers and spectators, Coogee’s headland provided a quieter spot for picnicking and, for Arthur Allen, taking photographs. Seen here is his camera equipment, including the box of his Guardia and Newman camera that took 5 x 4 inch (13 x 10 cm) photographic plates. The women are wearing elaborate motoring hats with scarves, which were also useful for securing their hats on a windy cliff to prevent their hair from blowing out of style.

Text from An Edwardian Summer website

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
Walter resting after lunch
November 19, 1898
PX*D566 negative 3649
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Renowned for its beauty, the Illawarra district was home to towering forests of turpentine and fig trees and tangled, dense stands of ferns and cabbage palms, tinted by the conspicuous red flowers of the Illawarra flame tree. Arthur Allen, his brother Walter and brother-in-law Rex travelled in a horsedrawn wagonette to Bulli, a small coal-mining town in the northern Illawarra, via the steep Bulli Pass road, which was built in 1867. The journey down the Bulli Pass afforded many spectacular views of the south coast.

Text from An Edwardian Summer website

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
One of the new boilers just installed at the mine
November 22, 1907
PX*D581 negative 2403
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Arthur Allen. One of the new boilers just installed at the mine. November 22, 1907.

Mt Kembla was one of a series of towns established in the Illawarra region in the mid 19th century after coal mining began at nearby Mt Keira in 1848. The first coal export from the Illawarra left Wollongong harbour in 1849 destined for Sydney. Coal was mined at Mt Kembla from 1865, and in 1880 the Mount Kembla Coal and Oil Company was formed, building a loading wharf at Port Kembla in 1883 and installing a rail link from Mount Kembla to Port Kembla in 1886. By 1900, the Illawarra mines employed 2300 men. In 1902 a disastrous gas explosion, caused by the naked flames of the miners’ torches, killed 94 men.

Text from An Edwardian Summer website

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
Joyce preparing to dive 15 January 1905
1905
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Arthur Wigram Allen (Australian, 1894-1967)
Another who is not quite so sure
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Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Museum of Sydney
cnr Bridge & Phillip Streets, Sydney

Opening hours:
Open daily 10am – 5pm

An Edwardian Summer website

Sydney Living Museums website

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Review: ‘Long Distance Vision: Three Australian Photographers’ at The Ian Potter Centre NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 28th August 2009 – 21st February 2010

Max Pam (born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980-1983)
Road from Bamiyan
1971
Gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979

Long Distance Vision is a disappointingly wane exploration of travel photography at NGV Australia. With the exception of the work of Max Pam the exhibition lacks insight into the phenomena that the curators want the work to philosophically investigate: namely how photographs shape our expectations of a place (even before we arrive) and how photographs also serve to confirm our experience – the picture as powerful mnemonic tool.

Firstly a quick story: when travelling in America to study at the Kinsey Institute I boarded a train from Chicago to what I thought was Bloomington, Indiana only to arrive many hours later at Bloomington, Illinois. Unbeknownst to me this Bloomington also had a motel of the same name as I was staying at in Indiana! After much confusion I ended up at the local airport trying to catch a single seater aircraft to Bloomington, Indiana with no luck – at the end of my tether, fearful in a foreign country, in tears because I just had to be at this appointment the next morning. Riding to my rescue was a nineteen year old kid with no shoes, driving an ex-cop car, who drove me across the Mid-West states stopping at petrol stops in the dead of night. It was a surreal experience, one that I will never forget for the rest of my life … fear, apprehension, alienation, happiness, joy and the sublime all rolled into one.

I tell this story to illustrate a point about travel – that you never know what is going to happen, what experiences you will have, even your final destination. To me, photographs of these adventures not only document this dislocation but step beyond pure representation to become art that re-presents the nature of our existence.

Matthew Sleeth‘s street photographs could be taken almost anywhere in the world (if it were not for a building with German writing on it). His snapshot aesthetic of caught moments, blinded people and dissected bodies in the observed landscape are evinced (to show in a clear manner; to prove beyond any reasonable doubt; to manifest; to make evident; to bring to light; to evidence – yes to bring to light, to evidence as photography does!) in mundane, dull, almost lifeless prints – ‘heavy’ photographs with a lack of shadow detail combined with a shallow depth of field. His remains, the people walking down the street and their shadow, are odd but as as The Age art critic Robert Nelson succinctly notes in his review of this exhibition, “To become art, the odd cannot remain merely quaint but has to signify an existential anomaly by implication.”1

If we look at the seminal photographs from the book The Americans by Robert Frank we see in their dislocated view of America a foreigners view of the country the artist was travelling across – a subjective view of America that reveals as much about the state of mind of the artist as the country he was exposing. No such exposition happens in the works of Matthew Sleeth.

Christine Godden‘s photographs of family and friends have little to do with travel photography and I struggle to understand their inclusion in this exhibition. Though they are reasonable enough photographs in their own right – small black and white photographs of small intimacies (at the beach, in the garden, at the kitchen table, on the phone, on the porch, on the float, etc…) Godden’s anthropomorphist bodies have nothing to do with a vision of a new land as she had been living in San Francisco, New York and Rochester for six years over the period that these photographs were taken. Enough said.

The highlight of the exhibition is the work of Max Pam. I remember going the National Gallery of Victoria in the late 1980s to view this series of work in the collection – and what a revelation they were then and remain so today. The square formatted, dark sepia toned silver gelatin prints of the people and landscapes of Tibet are both monumental and personal at one and the same time. You are drawn into their intimacies: the punctum of a boys feet; the gathering of families; camels running before a windstorm; human beings as specks in a vast landscape.

“If the world is unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest it is not surprising things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming, but it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time with them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.”2

The meditation on place and space that the artist has undertaken gives true insight into the connection of man and earth, coming closest to Alain de Botton’s understanding of the significance of sublime places. Through a vision of a distant land the photographs transport us in an emotional journey that furthers our understanding of the fragility of life both of the planet and of ourselves.

While the National Gallery of Victoria holds some excellent photography exhibitions (such as Andreas Gursky and Rennie Ellis for example) this was a missed opportunity. The interesting concept of the exhibition required a more rigorous investigation instead of such a cursory analysis (which can be evidenced by the catalogue ‘essay’: one page the size of a quarter of an A4 piece of paper that glosses over the whole history of travel photography in a few blithe sentences).

Inspiration could have easily been found in Alain de Botton’s excellent book The Art of Travel. Here we find chapters titled “On Anticipation”, “On Travelling Places”, “On the Exotic”, “On Curiosity”, “On the Country and the City” and “On the Sublime” to name but a few, with places and art work to illustrate the journey: what more is needed to excite the mind!

Take Charles Baudelaire for example. He travelled outside his native France only once and never ventured abroad again. Baudelaire still dreamt of going to Lisbon, or Java or to the Netherlands but “the destination was not really the point. The true desire was to get away, to go, as he concluded, ‘Anywhere! Anywhere! So long as it is out of the world!'”3

Heavens, we don’t even have to leave home to create travel photography that is out of the world! Our far-sighted vision (like that of photographer Gregory Crewdson) can create psychological narratives of imaginative journeys played out for the camera.

Perhaps what was needed was a longer gestation period, further research into the theoretical nuances of travel photography (one a little death, a remembrance; both a dislocation in the non-linearity of time and space), a gathering of photographs from collections around Australia to better evidence the conceptual basis for the exhibition and a greater understanding of the irregular possibilities of travel photography – so that the work and words could truly reflect the title of the exhibition Long Distance Vision.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Nelson, Robert. “In blurred focus: le freak c’est chic,” in The Age newspaper. Friday, October 23rd 2009, p. 18

2/ de Botton, Alain. The Art of Travel. London: Penguin, 2002, p. 178-179

3/ Ibid., p. 34

Max Pam (born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980-1983)
My donkey, our valley, Sarchu
1977
Gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979
© Max Pam

Max Pam (born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980-1983)
Sisters
1977
Gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979
© Max Pam

Max Pam (born Australia 1949, lived in Brunei 1980-1983)
Tibetan nomads
1977
Gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 20.2cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979
© Max Pam

Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947)
Bobbie and Amitabha at the beach
c. 1972
Gelatin silver photograph
13.2 x 20.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947)
Elliot holding a ring
1973
Gelatin silver photograph
15.0 x 22.8cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947)
Joanie at the kitchen table
1973, printed 1986
Gelatin silver photograph
20.1 x 30.6cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947)
With Leigh on the porch
1972, printed 1986
Gelatin silver photograph
20.2 x 30.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

“The National Gallery of Victoria will celebrate the work of Christine Godden, Max Pam and Matthew Sleeth in a new exhibition, Long Distance Vision: Three Australian Photographers opening 28 August.

Long Distance Vision will include over 60 photographs from the NGV Collection exploring the concept of the ‘tourist gaze’ and its relationship with the three artists.

Susan van Wyk, Curator Photography, NGV said the exhibition provides a fascinating insight into the unusual perspective brought by the three photographers to their varied world travel destinations.

“There’s a sense in the works in the exhibition that the photographers are not from the places they choose to photograph, and that each is a visitor delighting in the scenes they encounter.

“What is notable about the photographs in Long Distance Vision is that rather than focussing on the well known scenes that each artist encountered, they have turned their attention to the ‘little things’, the details of the everyday,” said Ms van Wyk.

From the nineteenth century, photography has been a means by which people could discover the world, initially through personal collection and albums, and later via postcards, magazines, books and the internet.

Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said that both contemporary photographers and tourists use the camera as a means to explore and capture the world.

“Through their photographs, the three artists featured in Long Distance Vision show us highly individual ways of seeing the world. This exhibition will surprise and delight visitors as our attention is drawn to not only what is different but what remains the same as we travel the world,” said Dr Vaughan.

Born in Melbourne in 1949, Max Pam began his career in various commercial photography studios in the 1960s. After responding to a university notice for assistance to drive a Volkswagen from Calcutta to London in 1969, Pam got his first taste of being a traveller. The body of Pam’s work in this exhibition is from the series The Himalayas, which was photographed over a number of early visits to India.

Christine Godden also travelled the popular overland route between Europe and India in the early 1970s, returning to Sydney in 1978. In 1972, after a period of travelling, Godden found her home in the US where she remained for six years. Godden’s photographs in this exhibition were taken between 1972 and 1974 during her stay in the US.

Born in Melbourne in 1972, Matthew Sleeth is another seasoned traveller. During the late 1990s, Sleeth settled in Opfikon, an outer suburb of Zurich, Switzerland. The series of photographs in Long Distance Vision were taken during this time, showing Sleeth’s interest not only in street photography, but also in the narrative possibilities in everyday scenes. Dotted with garishly coloured playhouses, naive sculptures and whimsical arrangements of garden gnomes Sleeth’s photographs go beyond the ‘picture-perfect’ scenes of typical tourist photography.

Long Distance Vision: Three Australian Photographers is on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square from 28 August 2009 to 21 February 2010.”

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria press release

Matthew Sleeth (Australian, b. 1972)
Photographs from the series Opfikon
1997, printed 2004
Type C photograph
43.2 x 43.0cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through the NGV Foundation by Patrick Corrigan, Governor, 2005
© Matthew Sleeth courtesy of Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia Federation Square
Corner of Russell and  Flinders Streets, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Every day 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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