bondi beach sydney – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Photographs: ‘Australia 1946-1947’ Part 1 March 2020

March 2020

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (girl on porch)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

One of the great joys about compiling this archive is the ability to rescue unloved and unknown images. To give them a voice in the contemporary world.

These 2 1/4″ square (6 x 6cm) medium format black and white negatives come from the collection of my friend Nick Henderson. There is no marking on any of the negatives, leading me to believe that the film numbers were on the backing paper of the 120 film roll. The negatives are housed in paper packets adorned with a logo and words ‘APS Developing and Printing Service’ – perhaps Australian Photographic Services? Each packet contains basic title information for some of the photographs. Looking at the photographs and their perspective on the world, it would seem that the camera is a waist view camera, in other words the photographer was looking down into the viewfinder, the camera not held at eye level. The camera could possibly have been a Voigtländer or similar camera (see below). The quality of the negatives is reasonable, with some fall off in terms of sharpness occurring at the edge of the image. The photographs can be dated to 1946-1947 due to the February 1947 expiry Victorian registration label on the Chevrolet (thank you Simon Barnfield for spotting this!), are taken by an unknown photographer (probably male)… photographs of life in Sydney, his family and their travels around Australia. This is the first tranche of photographs with roughly the same number to come in the second part of the posting.

What makes these photographs particularly interesting is:

1/ the breadth of subject matter taken just after the Second World War and the fact that they are medium format

2/ the relaxed nature and beauty of the photographs of the children, and the light!

3/ the unknown images of places such as Bondi Beach and historical monuments, such as that of the forlorn The Dog on the Tuckerbox

4/ the photographs of the motor sport activity of hillclimbing, unfortunately no place known but its has been suggested it could be the 90-years-old Maldon hill climb at Mt Tarrengower because of the box-ironbark (and the fact that there are photographs of Maldon in the collection).

Variously we have country towns, theatrical groups, sailing, boating, churches, Sydney ferries, a trip to Maldon in Victoria for the Maldon Show, family picnics, cars and caravans, houses and horse riding, churches and children, and the oh so cute dogs in their own car boxes. So Australian. The photographs really give an extensive insight into suburban life in Australia just after the privations of the Second World War… and the photographer had a good eye. That is what is most important – that they knew how to take a good photograph.

Talking to my friend James McArdle who writes the oh so excellent On this Date in Photography website (essential reading!), he was unaware of the time it takes to prepare images for these postings. It has literally taken me hours and hours of hard work to scan these negatives and then digitally clean and balance them. All to give them a new lease of life in the world, to preserve their captured memories and histories. I hope you can appreciate all the hard work and admire the images I have revealed.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Nick Henderson for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All photographs collection of Nick Henderson. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

APS (Australian Photographic Services?) Developing and Printing Service
Film packets and negatives
1946-1947
Negatives: 2 1/4″ square (6 x 6 cm)
Packet (closed): 3 7/8 x 3 1/4″ (10cm x 8cm)
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Voigtländer Billiant
1930s
Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr

The Voigtländer Brillant is a range of pseudo-TLR cameras, and later true TLR cameras, taking 6 × 6 cm exposures on 120 film, made by Voigtländer from 1932. Famed Hungarian-Dutch photographer Eva Besnyö used a Brillant for her early work.

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Circular Quay, Sydney)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Karrabee ferry, Sydney, leaving High St Wharf, Kurraba in the background)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Karingal and Karrabee ferry

Karingal and Karrabee were built by Morrison & Sinclair, Balmain for Sydney Ferries Limited, being launched in 1913. They were the smallest of the round-ended K-class Sydney ferries, and could carry 608 and 653 passengers respectively.

They were near identical sister ferries operated by Sydney Ferries Limited and its NSW State Government operated successors on Sydney Harbour from 1913 until 1984. Wooden ferries built at the time of Sydney Ferries’ rapid early twentieth century, they were the smallest of the round-end “K-class ferries”.

The ferries were built as coal-fired steamer and were converted to diesel in the 1930s – the first Sydney Harbour ferries to be so converted. Unlike many early twentieth century Sydney Ferries, they survived the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the 1930s, and the State Government takeover in 1951.

Karrabee sank at Circular Quay after taking on water during the Great Ferry Race in 1984 – an incident that received extensive media coverage – and did not return to service. Karingal, and the other three remaining old wooden ferries, were taken out of service shortly after Karrabee’s sinking. In service for 71 years, they were among the longest-serving ferries on Sydney Harbour.

“Karingal” and “Karrabee” are Australian Aboriginal words meaning ‘happy home’ and ‘cockatoo’ respectively.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 12/12/2019

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Bondi Beach, Sydney)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (The Dog on the Tuckerbox)
Gundagai, 1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

The Dog on the Tuckerbox

The Dog on the Tuckerbox is an Australian historical monument and tourist attraction, located at Snake Gully, approximately five miles (eight kilometres) from Gundagai, New South Wales as described in the song of the same name.

The inspiration for the statue has been traced to a doggerel poem, “Bullocky Bill”, published anonymously by “Bowyang Yorke” in 1857 (other references have 1880 in the Gundagai Times, however confirmation of either is hard to find), which humorously describes a series of misfortunes faced by a bullock driver, culminating in his dog either sitting on or spoiling the food in his tucker-box (an Australian colloquialism for a box that holds food, similar to a lunchbox, but larger). …

A dog monument was first erected at a site nine miles from Gundagai in 1926. Gundagai stonemason Frank Rusconi suggested a memorial using the legend of the Dog on the Tuckerbox in 1928; and in 1932 the proposal was taken up by the community…

The Back to Gundagai Committee chose the Five Mile camping site rather than the Nine Mile Peg as a location for the monument on the basis that it was more convenient to the Hume Highway and closer to the town, thereby more beneficial to tourism.

A nationwide competition was held to obtain the most suitable inscription for the monument. The chosen inscription on the base of the monument was written by Brian Fitzpatrick of Sydney. The inscription says:

“Earth’s self upholds this monument
To conquerors who won her when
Wooing was dangerous, and now
Are gathered unto her again.”

The dog section of the monument was modelled by Rusconi and cast at ‘Oliver’s Foundry’ in Sydney. Rusconi also sculpted its base.

The Dog on the Tuckerbox monument was erected in 1932 as part of ‘Back to Gundagai’ week, and a large crowd “gathered to her again” to witness the unveiling by Prime Minister Joseph Lyons on 28 November 1932. It was planned to donate money placed in the wishing well at the base of the monument to the Gundagai District Hospital. A souvenir shop was also opened nearby. Copyright on the monument was vested in the Gundagai Hospital, who for many years received a useful income from receipt of royalties from firms using the iconic image.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 12/12/2019

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (hillclimb, possibly at Maldon, Victoria)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (hillclimb, possibly at Maldon, Victoria) (detail)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (hillclimb, possibly at Maldon, Victoria)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown location, possibly the 90-years-old Maldon hill climb at Mt Tarrengower because of the box-ironbark (and the fact that there are photographs of Maldon in the collection).

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (hillclimb, possibly at Maldon, Victoria) (detail)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (hillclimb, possibly at Maldon, Victoria)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (hillclimb, possibly at Maldon, Victoria) (detail)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (boat)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (boat at sea)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (child on porch)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (boy outside house)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (boy smiling)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (boy and girl smiling)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (child on lawn)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (child and chairs)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (man and woman)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (house)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (boy on horse)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (dog and saucepan)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (1932 Chevrolet)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Chevrolet and caravan)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (1932 Chevrolet and dogs)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

The photographs can be dated to 1946-1947 due to the February 1947 expiry Victorian registration label on the Chevrolet. Thank you to Simon Barnfield for spotting this.

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Chevrolet and caravan)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (man and car)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (family picnic)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (man and car)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (house on hill)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (room interior)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Future Miss Maldons, Maldon Show, Maldon, Victoria, with Maldon Timber & Hardware at 28 Main Street in the background)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Where are they now, so many ghosts with flowers in their hair.

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Scottish band, Maldon Show, Maldon, Victoria)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (church)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (group of actors)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (actor and ballerina)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (actor)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (band performances)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

Unknown photographer (Australian)
Untitled (Bilsons, country town)
1946-1947
Medium format negative
Collection of Nicholas Henderson

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Review: ‘My last 60 years on the streets: John Williams Retrospective (1933 – 2016)’ at Magnet Galleries, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 14th June – 7th July 2018

Curator: Merle Hathaway

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Paper Seller, Farmer’s Building, Sydney
1965
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

An Australian Classic

When I think of Australian photography, I invariably think of four themes / concepts / era: Pictorialism, Modernism, contemporary (mainly talented female artists) … and street photography. In the latter category, the artist John Williams is an Australian classic. Personally, I have never had the facility or confidence to be a street photographer. It takes a particular kind of person with a very special “eye” to be successful in this genre of photography. Williams had that “eye” in spades.

This retrospective of his work at Magnet Galleries in downtown Melbourne Central Business District is fascinating. You know that you are having a good time at an exhibition when you walk around looking at image after image and chortling to yourself. And laughing out loud. While the quality of some of the prints might not be the best in the world, the aesthetic, fun and irony which the images contain more than make up for it. To actually see these compositions in a spilt second and recognise them for what they are, in that instant, is incomparable.

The paper seller with the woman top right, the woman half appearing at left, the table in the distance and the vanishing point far left. The woman in Paddington with her hand on her hip, looking at the camera and thinking to herself, “what the hell do you think your doing”. The man at Clovelly Beach sunning himself in all his masculinity, not knowing that there is another man with his legs spread in shot behind him. Oh the irony! My particular favourite is the photograph Anzac Day, Melbourne (1965, below) in which what looks like a homeless man, fag in hand, casts a disparaging look towards a veteran in suit and tie displaying all his medals. You can just hear him thinking: “what a tosser”. There are many more: the hand and expression on the face of the women second from the right in Rocks Pub Crawl, Sydney (1973, below) and the disparaging grimace of the man on the left in St Kilda (1975, below). The look on the attendant’s face in front of the Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa is an absolute cracker.

Williams’ street photography emerged out of the culture that inspired it. In his photographs we can observe the White Australia policy, the remains of British Empire in the stiff upper lip of ANZAC veterans, powerful white men sitting behind desks with nameless female secretaries, rebellious youth culture, the informality of beach culture and the larrikinism of pub crawls everywhere in Australia. While “Williams embraced the ‘element of chance’ or the ‘decisive moment’ (Cartier-Bresson) … to socially document the raw character of Australia”, in so doing investigating the myth of national identity, his photographs are much more complex than traditional street photography.

There is a much more formal, classical aesthetic going on in these photographs than in other street photography, for example the work of the Americans Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Here is an artist who, while working with a necessary immediacy, implicitly understands the formal composition and structure of the image plane. Williams loves his off-centre vanishing points, he loves spatially layering the image, and understands how the eye of the viewer wanders across the surface of the image. Look at the two images of the beach, Bondi Beach, Sydney (1964, below) and Clovelly Beach (1964, below) and just let your eye play over the diagonals and verticals, the negative and positive spaces, the ways of escape that the eye has out of each image. The shadow of the two heads ground the first image, while the space either side of the lying man at the top of the image allows your eye to escape the strong diagonal below; while in the second image the horizon line is breached by the sitting woman. If she were not there the image would not work.

Williams’ photographic work deserves to be better known. Here is a talented man who as a historian wrote many books on the First World War; a far sighted man who (with film maker Paul Cox and Rod McNicol), established one of the first commercial fine art photography galleries in Melbourne (The Photographers’ Gallery, Punt Road, South Yarra) in 1973; and a man who took damn good photographs that held a mirror up to Australian culture at that time, which question Australian identity through humour and irony balanced by a complex, classical aesthetic.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to John Williams’ widow Jean Curthoys, curator Merle Hathaway, Michael Silver and Magnet Galleries for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Paddington
1962
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Clovelly Beach
1964
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Bondi Beach, Sydney
1964
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Open Air Shower, Bronte Beach
1964
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Anzac Day, Sydney
1964
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Anzac Day, Martin Place (also titled Sydney)
1964
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

Sydney photographer, lecturer and historian John F. Williams has a long and personal interest in the ramifications of the Allies’ commitment to and sacrifice in the First World War which he later explored in his 1985 series From the flatlands. Williams became an amateur street photographer, inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson and the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. He read The family of man catalogue and saw the exhibition in 1959 but he rejected its “saccharine humanism and deliberate ahistoricism” choosing instead to socially document the raw character of Australia.1

When interviewed in 1994 Williams said: “After the [First World War] you had a range of societies which were pretty much exhausted, and they tended to turn inwards. In a society like Australia which had a poorly formed image of itself, where there was no intellectual underpinning, the image of the soldier replaced everything else as a national identity.”2

Sydney expresses the ‘Anzac spirit’ born in the battlefields of Gallipoli, the Somme and Flanders, a character study of an independent, introspective soldier. With an air of grit, determinedly smoking and wearing his badge, ribbons and rosemary as remembrance, Sydney stands apart from the crowd, not marching with his regiment. Williams embraced the ‘element of chance’ or the ‘decisive moment’ as he documented the soldier in a public place observing the procession. Taken from a low angle and very close up the man is unaware of the photographer at the moment the shot was taken, apparently lost in his own memories. The old soldier represents a generation now lost to history but portraits such as these continue to reinforce the myth of national identity.

1/ Jolly, M. “Faith sustained,” in Art Monthly, September 1989, pp. 18-19
2/ “John Williams – photographer and historian: profile,” in Sirius, winter, Macquarie University, Sydney, 1994, p. 5

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Anzac Day, Melbourne
1965
Silver gelatin print
© John Williams

Melbourne’s best photographic gallery, Magnet Galleries, will feature the work of two major Australian photographers, John Williams and Ingeborg Tyssen.

John Williams always wanted to hold an exhibition with his photographer wife, and sadly it did not occur during either of their lifetimes. Magnet Galleries, at 640 Bourke Street now fulfils this wish with a double exhibition running from 14 June to 7 July 2018.

The two exhibitions, “My last 60 years on the streets: John Williams Retrospective (1933-2016)” and “Swimmers: Ingeborg Tyssen (1945-2002)” feature their superb black and white photography. Both artists were keen observers of people in their environments and preferred the black and white format.

On the day she was fatally injured in an accident Tyssen was in Holland, learning to use her new digital camera. She died two days later with John at her side. Williams’ work was also darkroom generated until 2002 when he became concerned at the effects of chemicals on photographers. From then on he only used the digital format, and increasingly played with the effects of overlaying images and stitching multiple images.

Williams became well known for his 1960s and 1970s Sydney street scenes, and Anzac Day marches over the decades. He described himself as a photographer who wrote history and a historian who took photographs. He wrote seven books and many articles about World War 1. This exhibition will show the full extent of his legacy.

The exhibition at Magnet Galleries is organised by John Williams’ widow Jean Curthoys and curator Merle Hathaway.

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
William McMahon, Australian Prime Minister
1971-1972
Silver gelatin collage
© John Williams

Photographed in his parliamentary office in 1980 when he was ‘Father of the House’

At the time of this photograph, Andrew Peacock was Minister for Foreign Affairs

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Ed Douglas (photographer)
1980
From the series Living Room Portraits, 1980
Silver gelatin collage
© John Williams

John Williams (Australian, 1933-2016)
Christine, Sydney
1980
From the series Living Room Portraits, 1980
Silver gelatin collage
© John Williams

Magnet Galleries Melbourne Inc.
SC G19, Wharf st, The District, Docklands
Melbourne, Victoria, 3008
Australia
Phone: +61 3 8589 0371

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 4pm

Magnet Galleries website

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Exhibition: ‘Summers Past: Golden Days in the Sun 1950-1970’ at The Victorian Archives Centre, North Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 15th November 2011 – 15th April 2012

Many thankx to The Victorian Archives Centre for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Anonymous photographer (Australian)
Sunbathing, Sydney Beach, NSW
c. 1955
National Archives of Australia

Anonymous photographer (Australian)
Christmas party on Bondi Beach, Sydney
1959
National Archives of Australia

Anonymous photographer (Australian)
1952 Miss Pacific finalists Mary Clifton, Pamela Jansen and Judy Worrad, stand in front of surfboards on Bondi Beach, Sydney
1952
National Archives of Australia

The Victorian Archives Centre plays host to regular displays of original records from our collection as well as touring exhibitions about Victorian stories. Over Summer, the Victorian Archives Centre will present Summers Past: Golden Days in the Sun 1950-1970, a fascinating photographic exhibition highlighting Australia’s fascination with the sun and sea.

Summers Past will explore our enduring love affair of all things summer, invoking memories of carefree sunny days at the beach in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This is your last chance to view this exhibition before it returns to the National Archives of Australian in April 2012.

So slip on your cossie, slop on the sunscreen and head down to the Victorian Archives Centre this summer!
Summers Past: Golden Days in the Sun 1950-1970 will be on display until April 2012. Entry is free.