HENRI MALLARD
1884-1967
Henri
Marie Joseph Mallard was the Australian born son of French parents
who had settled in Balmain in the 1880s.
Mallard retained
a French accent due to his early education at home.
In 1900 Mallard
offered himself to Harrington’s photographic suppliers as
a lure to the French Consular trade which was going to a rival
firm,
Baker & Rouse, with Frenchman “Mons” Perier on
staff. Mallard remained with Harrington’s (later Kodak Pty
Ltd) until his retirement in 1952.
Mallard, who had been attracted
to photography
by the displays of equipment and pictures in Harrington’s
window, soon learnt the process and was exhibiting in local salons
by 1904.
In
1913 Mallard married and took up a position in the Melbourne branch
where he encouraged pictorial photography by showing a selection
of John Kauffmann’s 1914 one-man show at the firm’s
showrooms.
Mallard returned to Sydney in l9l6 and by 1917 had
joined the Sydney
Camera Circle and was regularly assisting the Photographic Society
of New
South Wales with many technical lecture/demonstrations.
Mallard
was a genial personality who used his expertise and central
position in Harrington’s to encourage several generations
of amateurs and professionals in pursuing the art or craft
of photography.
The most notable instance was his demonstration
of a movie camera
to his friend, the young Frank Hurley, who was going to the
Antarctic.
Mallard’s
own role in Australian cinema is yet to be investigated. He is
best known for the film of
the building
of the Sydney Harbour
Bridge, undertaken on his own initiative.
Despite a strong
interest in film and documentary work, Mallard was faithful
to the canons
of the pictorial style and was making delicate bromoils
at the same time as editing the Bridge film.
Exhibition prints
from any
Bridge
negatives would most likely have been treated like plate
52 (Cables, 1930) - a bromoil.
The
Bridge negatives were donated to the Australian
Centre
for Photography
and published in association with Sun Books in 1978.
