Based
on text from the original book: Shades of Light:
Photography and Australia 1839-1988
Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery
Chapter 6
Expeditions, Excursions and Expositions
footnotes contents next chapter search-shades
Photography on the move and on display, 1850s-1900
Photography
arrived in Australia too late for the heroic first expeditions
into the interior of the continent. However, the
medium did play an increasingly important role in satisfying
European and local curiosity about the country during the
nineteenth century.
At mid-century much of Australia still had not been explored
or mapped. A number of rivers seemed to flow inland and it
was hoped a sea existed in Central Australia. However, exploration
had already indicated the heart of the land was a desert.
In
1846, in response to the vagueness of exploration narratives
from Australia, the English Art Union magazine pointed out
that:
were
Talbotypes taken of some of the spots where water had
been discovered, we should, ere long, have plans organised
for a systematic
exploration of Central Australia(1).
A
jolly vision - despite its naivety about the difficulties
of both exploration and photography in regions
of minimal rainfall.
Indeed, only a few expeditions into the interior
of Australia even had artists attached to the party(2).
Little
progress was made after 1845 in exploration or photography
of the far
interior. There was a proposal to assign a photographer
to Augustus Gregory's (1819-1905) Northern Australian
Expedition of 1855-1856, but painter Thomas Baines
(1820-1875)
was appointed instead(3). Given
the difficulties the expedition had with supplies of
drinking water, it is unlikely
any
water could have been spared for photographs to be
made. Nor could
they have been as action filled as some of the scenes
Baines included in his copious records of the expedition.
As late
as 1858 the Sydney Magazine of Science and Art noted
that the continent
still 'refused to yield its secrets'. Undeterred, the
writer scorned the notion that the centre was an arid stony
desert
and recalled the proposal of English aeronaut, Charles
Green (1785-1870),
to fly across the territory in a balloon(4).
None
of the great expeditions into unknown territory in
Australia had official photographers, although explorers
had their
photographs taken, as in the case of Robert Burke
and William
Wills prior
to their departure into the interior in 1860. Theirs
was the most lavishly equipped and funded expedition
of its
day and ended
in the death of the two leaders and other members
of the expedition but, curiously, no particular record
of
the
grand departure of
the expedition was made(5).
One
of the earliest known applications of photography
was on more modest scientific expeditions undertaken
by Polish
naturalist
and artist William Blandowski (1822-1883) in
his capacity as Government Zoologist in charge
of the Museum of Victoria.
Blandowski carried a camera on his first expedition
to central Victoria in 1854 (as did Mr Brown, another
member of the party),
and on his third expedition to the junction of
the Murray and Darling Rivers. Photographs appear to
have been used as the basis
for several engravings in Blandowski's rather poetic
portfolio Australia terra cognita of 1855-1856.
Scientific use of them for illustration is known
although most of Blandowski's
work has been lost(6).
Richard
Daintree
Geologists
were among the earliest scientific groups to use photography
in their fieldwork(7). Alfred
Selwyn's display
of daguerreotypes
in connection with the Geological Survey of Victoria
in 1854
has been noted. By 1859 two other members of
his staff, Richard Daintree and Charles Wilkinson (1843-1891)
were using photography. Their photographs were
subsequently used as the
basis of illustrations
in reports or for displays(8).
In
the late 1850s art could fulfill documentary,
scientific and aesthetic functions simultaneously,
as is well illustrated
in
the evolving career of Richard Daintree. Landscapes
with geological features had been included
in his commercial
views album Sun
Pictures of Victoria of 1858.
He
used his own geological photographs for official reports,
other specialised
publications
and in
the illustrated
papers. As well he sold views to commercial
stereograph companies(9).
In
1859, the painter George Gilbert was employed
by the Museum of Victoria to colour some
of Daintree's photographs
for
display purposes. Daintree must have been
pleased with the response to
these enlivened images as he consistently
had his photographs coloured for exhibitions
for
the rest
of his career.
Daintree
moved to Queensland in 1864 to try life on a pastoral property
but soon
took
up his geological
explorations,
first privately, then from 1867 as Government
Geologist for northern
Queensland. During his extensive travels
in search of gold
and other mineral resources, often in
remote districts, Daintree energetically pursued
his photography.
Lugging all the equipment
for wet plate work, which could amount
to over twenty-two kilograms,
cannot have been easy to fit in with
his pastoral or official duties. Daintree made
a 'dry' preservative
solution
of
his own from the resin of the eucalyptus
tree, which extended the life
of his plates and dispensed with the
need to carry chemicals and trays(10). Daintree's
photographs
are well represented
in the Oxley Library and Museum of Queensland
and
the La Trobe Library
in Melbourne. His Queensland work is
the largest and earliest body of views of the
northeast.
Daintree's
technical innovations are attested to by the different cameras
and processes
he used
over the years
which included
standard plate, stereoscopic, and Sutton
panoramic cameras, handcoloured
prints and positive and transmission
views on glass, as well as elaborate
painted-over
enlargements
made for him
by the
Autotype Company in London in 1875.
The
energy Daintree expended on making
his photographs more appealing was
recognition of the value of the medium for promotion
and public
communication(11).
In
1870 Daintree organised a highly
successful display on Queensland for
the London
Exhibition of Art and
Industry of 1871, using
his photographs and collection of
mineral samples. As a consequence
he was appointed Agent General for
Queensland in London, where his responsibilities
included promoting
emigration
to the underdeveloped
colony.
Photography
was a major resource in achieving this objective. In 1872
Daintree published a
guide for emigrants,
Queensland,
Australia, with collotype illustrations
from his photographs and another
folio of his
Queensland
views was published
with autotype illustrations called Twelve
Illustrations of Life
and Scenery in Queensland,
c.1872(12). His
photographs illustrating life
in
Queensland
were shown
at a
number of international
exhibitions,
including the Philadelphia Centennial
in 1876.
One
image which Daintree used on several occasions was Bush
Travellers,
Queensland
c.1864-1870. It was one
of the enlargements made for
him by the London Autotype Company
and was heavily painted
over in oil colour, stretched
onto canvas, and probably originally
framed to resemble a painting(13). The
composition in fact resembles
a famous painting of 1863 by
French artist Edouard Manet (1832-1883); Le déjeuner sur l’herbe.
Daintree is not known to have
had a particular interest in
painting
but he was using the
same popular iconographic tradition
of the picnic, or féte
champetre, which influenced Manet(14).
The
picnic is a civilised man's
dream of being 'at home' in the
landscape,
and a
very potent
image to
a pioneer
generation involved
in taming the land and its
native inhabitants. Daintree's scene
seems staged, if not,
enlargement and colouring
have helped convert
a document into an idyllic
lure for prospective emigrants.
The
flies, fevers, infant mortality, economic depression and
tense
relations with the
Aboriginals, which
were all aspects
of life in Queensland, are
absent. In this image the
pale 'new chum'
sits up
straight
awaiting
his drink.
He will
learn to help
himself and keep his hat
on in the sun and landscape just
like
his lounging
fellow travellers.
In
many ways this
was Daintree's
own experience. He had left
England in
1852, seeking a warmer climate
and new experiences
on the goldfields.
He
developed
a career as a pioneer Australian
geologist and photographer
and ended as a passionate
advocate of the development of the young
colony
in
the north.
Tasmania
Other
photographers in the 1860s made expeditions in search of
picturesque views for commercial sale, or personal pleasure.
One traveller,
Paul Ricochet, reported to the English Photographic News
of his 1861 visit to Lake St Clair in the highlands of
Tasmania(15).
He was the first photographer known to have visited this spectacular
region. The painter John Skinner Prout had made expeditions
there as early as 1845,
Ricochet
adopted 'dry' collodion plates and a stereoscopic camera
for convenience and to avoid the discomforts of a wet plate
tent
in the Australian heat. He appears to have been a gentleman
amateur, serious and competent at his photography. He was
followed by
Morton Allport, his wife and others in their party who visited
the Lake in 1863. They also used stereoscopic cameras and
preservative processes(16).
Tasmanian
amateur photographer, Bishop Francis Nixon and Reverend
John Fereday (1813-1871),
an Episcopalian clergyman at George Town, were among
the earliest to record the Aboriginal
people of Tasmania. Nixon made the only photographs of
the groups on the reserve at Oyster Cove in 1858 and, with
Fereday, accompanied
Archdeacon Thomas Reiby on mission voyages to the Furneaux
Islands in Bass Strait in 1862-1863. Both used
stereoscopic cameras for expedition work. Nixon's portraits
were copied
and widely
circulated(17). Fereday's
are in poor condition and only recently were rediscovered
in the St David's Church archives
in Hobart.
Burnell
and Cole on the Murray
In
South Australia around the same years, photographers George
Burnell (1831-1894) and E.W. Cole (1832-1918)
were two English emigrants who drifted into photography
in the 1860s,
having tried the diggings.
In
1862 Burnell conceived a plan to voyage down the Murray
River in a flat-bottomed
boat, taking views. These had
not been made
earlier due to difficulties caused by the movement
of trees and water. Using a stereoscopic camera the team
were able
to make
a large number of views during their four-month journey
down the 2,414 kilometres of the river from Echuca
to
Wentworth, then on to Point McLeay which they reached
in May, and
finally
to
Goolwa on the coast.
At
Point McLeay, Burnell's brother-in-law the Reverend George
Taplin (1831-1879) ran an Aboriginal
mission on the shores of Lake Alexandrina. He took an
enthusiastic interest in their
trip and suggested Burnell and Cole tour the main
cities giving lectures on the trip down the river, illustrated
with their
photographs(18).
The
two men were tired of each other by the time they
reached Goolwa and attempted nothing as grand
as an
American-style diorama. However, Burnell marketed
a two-box set of sixty
stereograph
views from the journey which were praised by the
newspapers as both informative and artistic and
seem to have been
regarded as the first views of the river scenery(19).
The
Murray River stereographs survive as a set and
demonstrate the flexibility of the stereoscopic
camera(20). The
sequenced set also introduces the important narrative
dimension
which stereographs
could achieve.
Whereas
the portrait trade had sustained photography studios in
the 1840s and
1850s, in the 1860s
specialist landscape
and views photographers could support their
work by sales to the
public, particularly of sets of stereographs.
These involved expeditions of some difficulty
into remote
regions, or
excursions to local points of interest. Aboriginal
missions set up in
the 1850s in most areas, functioned as convenient
locations for making
portraits for sale as part of the 'views' trade.
Thousands
of photographs were made of Aboriginal people in the
nineteenth century but this was
not an extension
of the
portrait
trade, since few of the subjects requested
their images, or even had any real power
to refuse.
It was a new
application of photography
in which some genuine anthropological study
was mixed with plain curiosity and even nostalgia
for the loss
of the
wilderness and
the presumed fate of native peoples as Western
civilisation spread over the globe.
Charles
Walter
Charles
Walter (w. 1864-1874) from Mecklenberg Germany, was one
of the new breed of photographers.
He specialised
in
landscape
work and, from the mid 1860s, made extensive
expeditions into remote areas of Victoria.
On his journeys
he contributed articles
to the illustrated papers, possibly on
commission, anticipating the photojournalism of the twentieth
century. By the
early '70s Walter had quite a profile
in
these papers for, in
1873 the Illustrated
Australian News included a drawing
of 'our artist' off to work in the bush
with neat
pith helmet,
axe and camera
bag(21). The
following year the Australasian Sketcher
showed 'our artist' at work in the bush
in
rather
more realistic
comfortable
clothes but with an Aboriginal shown as
a pin-up girl(22). Earlier
in October 1866 the editors of the News had shown
how impressed they were with the efforts made
by Walter to
get pictures. They
informed
their readers that he travelled alone,
'with his apparatus and tent upon his back - the
whole weighing
about fifty
pounds,' and that on a recent journey,
'he walked the whole way from
Andersons
Creek to Mount Buller, the most western
culmination of the Australian Alps, and had to cross
all the intervening ranges'.
Having
described the artist hacking his way through the landscape
'to get
the nearest
and best views',
the writer
concluded:
Mr
Walter deserves the highest praise for his exertions in
so ably illustrating
the
romantic
and picturesque
which nature
has
scattered so lavishly about us and
not the least important result of the publication
will be to
direct the lovers
of nature to
places hitherto unknown, where they
will be able to gratify their admiration to
the
full(23).
Walter
sold his views and stereos through agents in Melbourne(24). These
included views of Lake
Tyers Aboriginal
Mission,
whaling at Twofold Bay, the diggings
and settlers huts and pastoral
scenes. His subject matter was
the standard fare of the illustrated
papers. A group of more sober ethnographic
portraits
with detailed notes of their ages,
taken by Walter, are held by the
Pitt Rivers Museum
in Oxford and the Museum of Victoria.
In
1869 Walter travelled with the Geodetic Survey to Cape
Howe in
Victoria. He
was later selected
to accompany
the
Victorian
Government Astronomer R. L.J.
Ellery (1827-1908) to Cape
Sidmouth in northern Queensland
to make photographs of the eclipse
of the sun, due on 12 December
1872. The Australian
Eclipse Expedition
was the earliest and most serious
application of photography to
science. Over thirty people travelled to
Cape Sidmouth,
the principal members were Ellery
and H.C. Russell (1836-1907),
the recently appointed Government Astronomer
in New South Wales.
He was assisted by Beaufoy Merlin
of the American and Australasian
Photographic Company. Rain obscured
the eclipse, preventing any photography(25).
Astronomy
Both
Government Astronomers had
already introduced photography
to their respective
observatories'
work. Ellery had started
photographing the moon around
1867 before the installation
of the
Great Melbourne
Telescope and had sent for
specialised photographic apparatus that was
received in 1871. Photographs
of the moon made
under Ellery's supervision
by assistant Joseph Turner (w.1873-1883)
were considered some of the
best made to that date(26).
H.C.
Russell had begun to photograph the Milky Way by 1869.
He later
gained international
recognition for his
photographic
results
as part of the worldwide
program to observe the transit
of Venus across the sun in
1874(27) and
for his photographs of
Southern
Hemisphere nebulae in the 1890s.
Northern
Territory
Photographs
were taken in the Northern Territory, then under South
Australian rule, by Arthur
Hamilton and Charles Hake,
surveyors on the expedition
to Adams Bay (Escape Cliffs)
to establish a northern
capital near to the present-day Darwin.
This part-private, part-official
expedition was a disaster
and the settlement was abandoned
at enormous cost. A few
images exist of the canvas town
attempting to find a toe-hold in the tropics(28).
A
later expedition under George Goyder (1826-1898), Surveyor
General of South Australia,
was sent in 1869 to establish
a new capital at Port Darwin.
Joseph Brooks was both surveyor
and official photographer
and some of his stereographs were
sold through the Adelaide
Photographic Company(29).
Captain
Samuel Sweet
Adelaide
photographer Samuel Sweet (1825-1886)
had applied unsuccessfully to be official photographer for
the Goyder
Survey.
Instead he
resumed service in the merchant marines in 1869 as commander
of the Gulnare the supply ship for Goyder's survey and the
new settlement at Port Darwin, He was never official photographer
but assumed some of Brooks' duties as the latter was occupied
with surveying. On returning from his trips to the north, Sweet
gave lectures and organised exhibitions of his views as well
as sales of prints through Williams' Stationery(30).
In
1870 Sweet was commissioned to supply the northern construction
teams racing to complete, on schedule, the British-Australian
overland telegraph link from
Darwin to Port Adelaide. His views of the men and camps, and the ceremony
of laying the first telegraph pole in Port Darwin, are the only
records of a momentous
leap in Australia's communication with the world. The desperate nature of
the work is not evident in Sweet's views. He was probably restricted
in his movements
due to his responsibility for the Gulnare. Sweet was only the third
photographer to visit the north, yet his work far outstripped the quality
of his predecessors.
His finely composed, large, well-printed images of the new settlement in
the north were encouraging to those who still hoped that settlement
would one day
cover the continent, and the pictures of the electrical umbilical cord connecting
Australia with Europe were a promise of the future(31).
New
Guinea (D'Albertis)
At
the same time as Sweet was portraying progress in the wilder
northern regions, Luigi D'Albertis (1841—1901) the
explorer and naturalist, was in western New Guinea with Odoardo
Beccarri.
Despite ill health D'Albertis took photographs in the difficult
tropical conditions, some of which were used for engravings in
his two-volume book New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw (1880).
D'Albertis' belief in the camera as a tool for natural history
is clearly stated:
a
mere glance at the photographs of the Kiwai skulls, and then
at those of the interior of New Guinea, is better
than any description,
and brings out vividly the great differences between the three
types(32).
D'Albertis
visited the Clarence River district of Australia in 1872 where
he met the local photographer J.W. Lindt who subsequently
produced a portfolio of twelve portraits of Aboriginals taken
in his studio. The settings were elaborately designed to
convey some
sense of the subjects' tribal life and customs. Lindt's portfolio
was one of the earliest to show any anthropological interest
in the customs of the natives and may have been influenced
by D'Albertis’ work(33).
Another
foreign expedition photographer to visit Australia was Frenchman
Désiré Charnay (1828-1915)
who came in 1878, principally to photograph the Aboriginal
people(34).
In
the Northern Territory in the 1870s, Police Inspector Paul
Foelsche (1831-1914) was an amateur photographer who
found his work in demand for views of the area and its
peoples. His work illustrated
anthropological studies and other publications(35).
Antarctic
- Challenger Expedition
In
the same years, at the other end of the continent, a British
Naval Expedition under the command of
Captain
Nares
in
the Challenger was conducting hydrographic research. This expedition
was equipped
with photographic apparatus after a complaint from Thomas
Sutton of the Photographic Society of London. Fred North,
the paymaster
was the photographer(36).
The
earliest photographs of Antarctic icebergs and islands were made
during the 1874 Challenger
Expedition(37). Photographs
of the Antarctic continent proper were made
later in 1895-1897 on a Belgian expedition aboard the
Belgica, under A. Gerlache de Goméry(38). Louis
Bernacchi (1876-1942)
wrote an account of the British Antarctic Expedition
in 1899-1900 under C.E. Borchgrevink (1864-1934), aboard
The Southern Cross, entitled To the South Polar Regions:
The Expeditions
1898-1900.
It was one of the earliest publications illustrated with
reasonable quality Antarctic photographs. Bernacchi, who
was from Tasmania,
was the first Australian to visit the Antarctic(39).
On
magnitude as an element of attractiveness in photography
Mammoth
and Panoramas - Holtermann and Bayliss
The
principle of using photographs to promote Australian products
was established
as early as 1854 with the exhibits at the Paris Universal Exhibition.
The views trade, which developed in the 1860s, then provided the means for
widespread
documentation of civic progress and for testaments to the beauties
of the Australian landscape.
In the early 1870s, Richard Daintree pioneered the specific use of photography
to promote emigration.
At
some time during 1872, Beaufoy Merlin in Hill End made contact
with German emigrant B.O. Holtermann (1838-1885), and discussed
with him a project for illustrating the colony's progress via photography.
Bernard Holtermann was
the manager and a major shareholder in the Star of Hope Gold Mining Company.
He had recently been enriched by the discovery of a monster 286 kilogram
nugget of gold in the Star of Hope mine. Holtermann must have
identified strongly
with the symbol and source of his good fortune in Australia, for he had a
montage photograph made of himself standing beside it, which
he used for later business
ventures and projects(40).
Holtermann's
Exposition as it was called, was announced in detail in early 1873 and
Merlin was appointed official photographer and collector of specimens.
He
was aware of the success of Daintree's displays on behalf of the Queensland
Government, and urged the New South Wales people to support Holtermann.
It
was hoped the
exposition would encourage migration to Australia, instead of the more
convenient meccas in the Northern Hemisphere, chiefly America,
or other British colonies
like Canada(41). The
details of the financial arrangement with Holtermann are not known but
few, if any, photographers had ever been given
such a wide
brief in
the history of the medium in Australia.
By
August, Merlin was back in Sydney making views of the city and
surroundings specifically for the exposition
and working on the large positive transparencies
on glass that were to be coloured, just as Daintree's were(42). Sadly
Merlin died of respiratory inflammation following an epidemic
of influenza, in
September 1873. His assistant, Charles Bayliss, inherited the role of
official exposition
photographer and proved equal in vision and ability to the task. He executed
for Holtermann the star attractions planned for the exposition: a series
of large-format
panoramas of Sydney and other cities in the colonies.
By
October 1875, Holtermann and Bayliss had succeeded in producing
a number of panoramas
including a giant panorama of Sydney taken from a
camera built
on the
top of Holtermann's mansion on the north shore of Sydney Harbour. The
glass plates for this camera were 152 by 91 centimetres. A number of
other panoramas
were
also made on smaller plates. The newspapers were impressed that a home-grown
effort could rival 'Our Yankee friends who are proverbial for big things'(43).
Ernest
Docker reported on the latest progress of the project to the British Journal of Photography, predicting that the ‘enterprise
ought to have a beneficial effect in dispelling many erroneous
ideas concerning
the colonies'(44). The
giant panorama, of which the negatives have survived, was indeed
the largest
example of wet plate negatives yet recorded(45).
In
1876 parts of Holtermann's Exposition were included in the New
South Wales Court at the Philadelphia Centennial and he was awarded
a bronze
medal. Holtermann
himself travelled to America and Europe with the giant negatives
and a large roll of canvas mounted with photographs from the project.
He
later
exhibited
panoramas at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 where he was
awarded a silver medal.
In
one sense, Holtermann's Exposition never took place in the grandiose
form first described by Docker to
the British Journal of Photography in
November 1873. It was planned to have 5,000 photographs, mostly
in albums,
covering the colonies,
with some 1,000 being made into glass transparencies for projection
in a graphoscope.
Apart
from his roll of canvas, Holtermann did not independently exhibit
his exposition outside several international
exhibitions.
An
issue of the British Journal of Photography of 18 February
1876 included an article titled 'On magnitude
as an element
of attractiveness
in photography'
in which the English author Mr Sratham declared that 'these
are the days of gigantic
designs' and hoped that the Americans would build a brobdignagian
camera for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. This unpatriotic
call to
a foreign country was in recognition that America was 'the
country of inventions
as
of
scenery
on a grand scale'. The writer had already seen large plates
of the Yosemite Valley and hoped through the efforts of
a rich patron
and
opticians that
even more striking
results could be achieved(46).
Unfortunately
for Holtermann, the Philadelphia Centennial was indeed
supplied with giant photographs. One reviewer
noted
that 127 centimetre
plates were
common(47). There
was a separate wing for photography as an art in its own
right and here
the mammoth landscapes by the American West photographers
were shown. It seems the giant Holtermann panoramas were
not displayed
at Philadelphia.
The smaller
panoramas were obviously more likely to sell than the big
ones which could
only have been supported by official purchases by the colonial
government but these
were not forthcoming.
It
could not be said that Holtermann received a particularly warm
response for his grand patronage,
variously estimated
at 5 to 15,000
pounds.
His later attempts
to promote emigration from Germany were also rebuffed(48).
Mammoth
and Panoramas - The Blue Mountains
B.O.
Holtermann was not the only patron with a vision of
how to use photography to promote Australia. In 1866
the
editors
of the Illustrated
Australian
News had suggested readers might like to follow
photographer Charles Walter into
the remote but picturesque regions of Victoria.
In
the spring of 1875 a truly determined
attempt was made to lure tourists into the wilds
and to improve what was felt to be a lack of public appreciation
of the
beauties of the
Australian landscape,
both at home and abroad. For some six weeks in late
September and October, up to twenty-four men and youths were
engaged
in trail-blazing,
sketching
and photographing
in the valley floor near Govetts Leap Falls and the
junction of its creek with the Grose River, in the Blue Mountains
129 kilometres
west of Sydney(49).
The
mastermind behind the camps was Eccleston Du Faur
(1832—1915),
chief draughtsman in the Office of the Occupation
of Crown Lands in Sydney who had
recently developed a public profile as a patron-promoter
of the arts and sciences(50).
Du
Faur owned property in the mountains and organised
the clearing of an old survey track in order to
set up the
artists' camps
in the floor
of
the valley.
The availability of tile camps was advertised through
the New South Wales Academy of Art to any artists
or other
interested parties.
Du Faur also
engaged the
professional photographer Joseph Bischoff (w, 1874-1895)
to execute landscape views on a quantity of mammoth
plates on behalf of the commissioners for the forthcoming
Philadelphia Centennial(51). He
also sought the participation of leading wilderness
painter William Piguenit (1836-1914)(52). Du
Faur hoped the images from the expedition would
encourage
an appreciation of the scenic wonders and that
the camps might develop into a permanent resort(53).
The
reports of the participants in the Grose Valley
Expedition could not he said to have taken the
project very seriously
and their discomforts
on the
trip, despite
cook, guide and packhorse, loomed large to the
city bred ‘explorers'. Nor
was Du Faur impressed with the results, as he
conceded when exhibiting photographs by Bischoff
and Alexander
Brodie (w. 1867-1891), another photographer
who had been working at the top of the steep
escarpments of the valley at the same
time(54).
Du
Faur's aspirations for the artists' camps were
made clear at the conversazione held at
the Academy
of Art,
and brought
out by
his
disappointment with
what was produced. Brodie’s pictures
were admitted to have given the details perfectly
but 'his plates were not of a size worthy of
the subject' and Bischoff's were
limited by the lack of 'a single dull, still
day, with diffused lights, by which alone satisfactory
results can be obtained in such scenery. Yet
as Du Faur stressed
'some of the wildest, grandest and most beautiful
scenery in New South Wales is within a few
hours
journey from Sydney by rail', scenery which
he declared
rivalled the best in Now Zealand, Tasmania
and Victoria and the Yosemite Valley in America(55).
Mammoth
and Panoramas - Vs USA
However,
only a few images by Bischoff in any way
match the grandeur of American West scenery
or
the already
renowned photographs of the 'pioneer generation
of 1865' specialist landscape photographers:
Timothy O'Sullivan. Edward Muybridge, Charles
Weed, William
Henry Jackson and
A.J. Russell(56). In
general, Bischoff's
works lack the classic monumentality of
the American contemporaries, and his handling
of figures trivialises
the images(57).
How
familiar the Australians were with the
mammoth prints of some of the American photographers
is not clear, although
the
scenic
wonders of the
American West
were well known(58). The
seeming failure of the Grose Valley expedition
and the lack
of any
comparable
monumental school of landscape
photography in
Australia
can only be partly attributed to the
more modest dimensions of the landscape
and
the lack of
population and wealth
to support official
expedition
photographers. In fact, there were grand
landscapes and
the chasms
of the Grose Valley
had attracted artists since its discovery
in the
early nineteenth century.
Perhaps
Du Faur
was not ultimately unsuccessful, tourism
to the Blue Mountains did increase and
the Valley
became
a National
Park. A railway
guide to
the area was
issued in
1879, illustrated with photographs(59). Artists
and photographers since have rarely bothered
with the
difficulties of
the narrow valley when
all the
drama required
can be had more comfortably from above(60).
In
the mid 1870s it seems that many connoisseurs
of photography felt the desire for a
grander, more artistic
level of
work but there was
perhaps insufficient awareness of the
photograph as a separate pictorial entity
for the Australians
to be able to produce grand photographs
from grand scenery. The Americans were
further ahead in this regard. At the
Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, the
American West photographers were shown
in a separate hall for the art of photography(61). The
Australians, locked into the promotional
use of the visual arts, combined their
exhibits
in
colonial subsections
and
thematic groups.
In
the I880s there is evidence that a more sophisticated understanding
of the
autonomy
of the photographic
picture was exploited by
both government instrumentalities
and the views trade photographers of
the period.
Picturesque
New Guinea
In
1885 the New South Wales Government Printing Office published
an album commemorating the proclamation on 6 November
1884 of
a British Protectorate over the southeast coastal region of
New Guinea. Titled Narrative of the Expedition of the Australian
Squadron to the South East Coast of New Guinea October to December
1884, the book contains a short text by Commodore James Erskine
(1838-1911) in charge of the squadron, some chromolithographs
and thirty-five photographs showing the ceremonies, the localities
and the native villages. The Colonial Secretary for New South
Wales, William Dalley (1831-1888) had 500 copies prepared
for presentation to 'distinguished Queen Victoria, a keen supporter
of photography, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India', in
whose name the Protectorate was announced, was given a special
copy(62).
The
New Guinea Album is an outstanding Australian case of both nineteenth
century expedition photography and books
illustrated
with original photographs. Its preeminence in the latter arises
from the fact that it has ‘more photographs, larger photographs,
and a more integrated combination of text and image' than any
other of the 200 works of this genre(63). Many
documents had been made
in photography, but few events were provided with a visual
reportage, as in the New Guinea Album.
The
photographs have been attributed to Augustine Dyer (w.1873-1923),
then sub-overseer of the photomechanical branch of the New
South Wales Government Printing Office(64).
The
text of the New Guinea Album reads like a travelogue, with
the sights being assessed in terms of their colours and atmosphere.
New Guinea was declared, somewhat picturesque(65). The sequencing
of the images to show both ceremonies and locations is an
integral part of the 'Narrative' implied in the title. The Album
as
a whole shows the degree to which government instrumentalities
had learned
the power of photography through the views trade and the
public exhibition.
The
production of the New Guinea Album was carried out by the New
South Wales Government(66) so that its
message of
future
responsible administration of New Guinea was meant to reflect
well on Australia
as much as on Britain. The prints were widely exhibited
and used in other publications that were also rushed into print
to capitalise
on the public interest in New Guinea. Interestingly, these
unofficial records counter the impression of disinterested
imperialism of
the main album.
Charles
Lyric, a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald who accompanied
the expedition (there were no
press photographers),
published an
account in his book New Guinea (1885) and used nine of
Dyer's photographs. He renamed one of a native chief
being photographed
beside the
flagpole 'a Motu Motu Dandy' and derided the native ‘queen'
Koloki for her lack of regal bearing(67).
J.W.
Lindt
Settlers
and traders were not permitted to stream into New Guinea unchecked
after the Protectorate, but enterprising
photographer J.W. Lindt was able to secure an honorary
appointment
as official
photographer to the expedition of Sir Peter Scratchley
(1835-1885),
the newly appointed Special Commissioner for British
New Guinea. The expedition left in July 1883 with
Lindt, a darkroom and 400
dry plates on board. During his six weeks in New
Guinea, Lindt took several hundred negatives and built up a
collection of artifacts.
On his return Lindt had sufficient images to prepare
a five-volume album series for sale. Most of these
images have fine tone with
good shadow detail and graceful figure groups. The
natives and members of Scratchley's expedition are
often taken
deep within
the landscape and few have the staring confrontation
and discomfort of subjects which Dyer could not eliminate
from his coverage(68).
Lindt's
New Guinea pictures are distinguished by their naturalism and
contextual settings.
Since making the
portfolio of Aboriginals
and shearer-miner types of 1872, Lindt had not been
particularly associated with Aboriginal subject matter,
but he had
dreamed of going to New Guinea since his meeting
with D'Albertis
in 1872. Perhaps New Guinea excited his imagination,
or he saw
it as a
place
where his experience with dry plates could be fully
exploited.
The
response to Lindt's New Guinea work was overwhelmingly positive
and created for him a new persona
as a serious
ethnographic researcher.
In 1887, Lindt travelled to London to arrange publication
of Picturesque New Guinea. His written account
of his trip included
fine illustrations
by the London Autotype Company. A number of prints
were enlarged by the process for display purposes(69). In
his preface he
remarked on the general absence of illustrated
travel books, noting
that he had only seen John Thomson's China
and its Peoples and Stuart
Wortley's illustrations for Lady Brassey's book
on Tahiti of 1882(70). There
had been photographs taken in New Guinea
before
the New
Guinea Protectorate Album but these had not been
as widely published as Lindt's and lacked the close
portraiture
of the New Guineans
and their world which Lindt's work provided. On
the basis
of his New Guinea work Lindt was elected to the
Victorian Branch
of the
Royal Geographic Society and by 1893 was a councillor.
Through the Society he became friendly with pioneer
Australian anthropologist
Baldwin Spencer.
As
with the Aboriginal portfolio, Lindt's New Guinea pictures were
in continual use being exhibited,
reproduced and copyrighted.
As
late as 1909 the art critic Blamire Young (1865-1935)
in reviewing an exhibition at the Victorian Artists
Association Gallery,
spoke with evident emotion of Lindt's earlier
works:
Who
does not know Lindt's New Guinea studies? The sustained excellence
of the series is phenomena].
The art of
photography was young
when these plates were exposed: but with all
the
improved facilities of modern times they still
remain in their
class, the despair
of
the operators of today(71).
This
was said after Baldwin Spencer's Aboriginal photographs had been
widely published.
The
consistency of response to Lindt's work suggests that it was
not just that the exotic
subject
matter was stimulating
to an urban
population, but that the aesthetic impact
of his prints was considerable. In awarding him
a gold
medal at the
Centennial Exhibition in
1888 the judges declared in the Official
Record:
It
has often been a matter of discussion how far, or whether
at all photography may
be considered
as a fine
art. By
the works of
Mr Lindt this question is decided in
a way that is a triumph for his profession(72).
New
Guinea remained topical as did the Pacific Islands, with other
fine photographs
being
taken by George
Bell and Langford
in 1887(73) and the Burton Brothers of New Zealand
had extensive catalogues of the Coral
Islands as
early as 1884(74). The islands remained
popular with later views trade photographers
in the 1890s and at the turn of the century(75).
The
Australian colonies' involvement in the proclamation of a Protectorate
over
part
of New Guinea in
1884 was followed by
an even stronger
expression of nationhood in 1885. On
3 March a contingent of
some 700 volunteer and permanent artillery
soldiers departed Sydney
to join the British Expeditionary Force
in the Sudan in southern Egypt. Acting
Premier
of New
South Wales,
William
Dalley
had negotiated this first instance
of
a self-governing British colony sending
troops to an Imperial war.
The
public turned out in force to farewell the troops, and the photographers
to
chronicle the
preparations
and departure.
It
was one of the most visually well
documented
episodes in Australian history since
the introduction of
photography. Several news
correspondents were permitted to
accompany the contingent and the newspapers
were
supplied with sketches of the troops
in the Sudan. However, Dalley did
not send
an official
photographer
as had been
provided for
the Protectorate ceremonies, nor
publish a commemorative album on the return
of troops (having seen no
action) in
July. This
was perhaps due to the unending satirising
of the campaign by those
opposed to participation, such as
in the Bulletin in Sydney(76).
Sydney
photographer, Barcroft Capel Boake constructed a huge mosaic
of
portraits
of the contingent
after its return,
which
was mounted
on canvas painted in black and
gold. Smaller copies were sold to the public
and families
of the soldiers(77).
Expeditions:
1885-1900
Charles
Bayliss
A
commission undertaken by Charles Bayliss in 1886 illustrates
the forces of change which would influence photography
in the
future.
Bayliss was appointed to accompany the New South Wales Royal
Commission into Water Conservation team on their investigation
of the Darling
River, then in a rare flood(78). The
expedition down the Darling River from Bourke to Wentworth,
was written up by Gilbert
Parker (1862-1932),
a Canadian journalist employed by The Sydney Morning Herald.
His lively word pictures as published in Round the Compass
in Australia (1892) contrast with the essentially
static photographs by Bayliss(79).
The
Darling River pictures taken by Bayliss are unusual amongst
his works for the degree and complexity of organisation of
figures. They
go far beyond the simple direct groups of people photographed
for the A & A Co in the I870s. Rowers are arranged with
their sculls forming zigzags and a thousand bullocks in numerous
teams
arc arranged
in similar patterns(80).
The
introduction of the gelatin dry plate in the 1880s cased the
difficulties of expedition photography,
so that in 1885
the British
Journal of Photography could declare 'No expedition nowadays
can be considered complete without photography(81). William
Tietkens (1844-1933) led an expedition from Alice Springs
mounted by the Royal Geographical Society
of South
Australia
in 1889
which included
a visit to Mount Olga and Ayers Rock, the great monolith
called Uluru by the Aboriginals and discovered by Europeans
in 1873(82). Tictkens'
journal records his systematic photographing of the scenery
and the Aboriginals, and his frustration at the inadequacy
of his
small plate
size equipment and his prior training for its use. From
the lack of published images or prints, it seems his negatives
turned
out failures on later development in Adelaide(83).
Explorers,
naturalists, and the new breed of professional
scientists made a far more concerted use of photography
in the 1890s,
beginning with the Elder Scientific Exploration Expedition
of 1891. This
was an elaborately funded expedition which was largely
a failure, although
without the tragic outcome of Burke and Wills' expedition(84). Dr
Frederick Elliot (c.1855-1897) was official photographer.
Two volumes of his original photographs were released
after the expedition and contain a few evocative images
that
convey something
of the highly
charged atmosphere of early contact between Europeans
and Aboriginals. The photographic records of the expedition
gave substance to
the otherwise disappointing scientific results.
Baldwin
Spencer
Negatives
and a small group of original prints by Baldwin
Spencer survive from the W.A. Horn Scientific Expedition of
1894(85). These
were surpassed by the latter's collaboration with Frank
Gillen
(1855-1912),
postmaster at Moonta, South Australia, in anthropological
expeditions into northern Central Australia. These
resulted in the pioneer
publication The Native Tribes of Central Australia of
1901(86).
Spencer
was both dedicated and energetic in his use
of photography, cinematography and photographic recording
for ethnographic
fieldwork(87). He was not the first anthropologist
to combine
photography, film
and sound recording in fieldwork. A.C. Haddon conducted
research in the Torres Strait area for Cambridge
University in 1889
and had pioneered this concerted scientific approach.
He recommended the
method to Spencer(88) who fully grasped the promotional
value of his photographs, the precedence for which
was established
by Lindt and
earlier views trade photographers(89).
Some
of the grandest natural history photography was done by English
naturalist
William Saville-Kent
(d.1908)
whose
book The Naturalist
in Australia of 1897 was illustrated with collotypes
from his own photographs, including humorous montages
of native
birds(90). His
earlier book The Great Barrier Reef of 1893 was
illustrated with beautiful autotypes of the corals and bêches-de-mer(91).
One
of the few explorers to have talent as a photographer was
Richard T. Maurice (1859-1909) who led the Transcontinental
Expedition in 1904 for the South Australian Government,
and a number of
private expeditions at the turn of the century(92). Maurice
used a panoramic camera, the spatial characteristics
and odd composition
of which he exploited well. His images of a vast
horizontal landscape
in which people and trees appear rather insubstantial
or transitory aptly
match the lack of landmarks and spatial references
of the desert.
Contrary
to the hopes of armchair explorers, over half a century elapsed
before photographs
of Central
Australia
were
achieved
and an aesthetic appreciation of the desert awaited
later generations of painters and photographers
in the 1930s
as the nation approached
its sesquicentenary(94).
next chapter
footnotes contents search-shades
List
of illustrations used in the original publication (captions may
be abbreviated):
P.45:
Richard Daintree: Upper paleozoic resting,....... above Bachuus
Marsh, 1859
P.46-47:
Richard Daintree: Bush Travellers, Queensland c.1864-1870
P.49:
Bishop Francis Nixon: Flora, An Aborigine of Tasmania. Oyster
Cove.1858
P.49:
E.W.Cole and George Burnell: 3 - from series Stereoscopics views
of the River Murray.1862.
P.50:
Charles Walter at work - engraving 1874
P.51:
Charles Walter: Open Air Service, Lake Tyers c.1868
P.51:
Capt Samuel Sweet: S.S. Tararua on roper River. 1872
P.52:
NSW Govt Printing Office: Laying the Cable Botany Bay.1876
P.52:
Wood Engraving after Luigi D'Albertis: from New Guinea book 1980.
P.53:
J.W.Lindt: Porttrait of Aboriginal woman. c.1874
P.54-55:
B.O. Holtermann & Charles Bayliss: Panorama Sydney Harbour 1875
P.55:
NSW Govt Printing Office: Govett's Leap. NSW c.1880
P.56:
Timothy O'Sullivan: Camp Beauty, Canon de Cheille. 1873
P.57:
Joseph Bischoff: Valley of the Grose. 1875
P.58-59:
NSW Govt Printing Office: Aygyll Bay. 1885 (New Guinea)
P.59:
NSW Govt Printing Office: New Guinea Chief, Motumotu 1884
P.60:
J.W. Lindt: Koiari Chiefs. Sadara Makara 1885
P.61:
Thomas H Boyd: Departure of Sudan Contingent. 1885
P.62:
B.C. Boake: NSW Contingent Sudan Campaign 1885
P.63:
Dr Frederick Elliot: Native girl surprised in the desert, Camp
40. 1891-1892
P.63:
William Saville-Kent: autotype method of photographing,
Great Barrier Reef. 1893.
P.64:
Richard T Maurice: Sturt Creek - Sheep and cattle yard. c.1901
|
|
|