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SHADES OF LIGHT

Based on text from the original book: Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988
Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery

 

Chapter 11    Footnotes

 

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  1. It was exclusively Sydney Camera Circle members by the reports. The opening address was by Sydney Ure Smith and an illustrated catalogue was also produced, see 'The Sydney Camera Circle Exhibition at the Kodak Salon, Sydney', A.P.-R. (15 February 1921). This issue was dominated by reports of the exhibition including artist and journalist Alek Sass' criticism of 'The Artists of the Camera Circle', pp. 82-88.
  2. Harold Cazneaux, 'A Review of the Pictures', Cameragraphs, of the Year 1924: A Souvenir of the First Exhibition of the Australian Salon of Photography. Edited by Cecil W. Bostock (Sydney: Harringtons Ltd, 1924), n.p. and Cameragraphs, 1926: Selections from the Second Exhibition of the Australian Salon ofPhotography 1926. Edited by Cecil W. Bostock (Sydney: Harringtons Ltd, 1926) n.p. -- For accounts of the development of Pictorialism in the regions see; Chris Jeffery, 'The Van Raalte Club', The Royal Western Australian Historical Society Early Days journal 9, part 3 (1985): pp.16-29. The Club lasted from 1926-63; Sue Smith, Queensland Pictorialist Photography 1920-1950 (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 1984); Kathryn Needs, South Australian Pictorial Photography, Paper for the Fine Arts Department, University of Adelaide. See also jean Waterhouse and Alison Carroll, Real Visions; the Life and Work of F. A. Joyner South Australian Photographer 1863-1945 (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 1981).
  3. An Exhibition of Photographs by Pictorial Photographers ofAustralia, was held at the Royal Photographic Society premises in London from December 3 to 29. Catalogue held by the Cazneaux family. Sydney.
  4. These were initiated and published by Oswald L. Ziegler, see ch.12, p.122.
  5. See ch. 9, n.34. For an account of the Photo- Secessionists after 1909 see Robert Doty, Photo-Secession: Stieglitz and the Fine-Art Movement in Photography (New York: Dover edn. 1978).
  6. Reproduced Cameragraphs of the Year 1924, p. 13 of illustrations. The title was more 'modern' than the picture.
  7. L. W. Appleby and Harold Cazneaux. The A.P. -R editor drew attention to this feature in his comments on the 1917 exhibition, see A.P.-R (December 1917): p.648.
  8. The aspirations and audience of the Home are examined in Mary Eagle's article 'Modernism in the Twenties', Studies in Australian Art (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1978): pp.80-90,
  9. Reproduced Max Dupain and Alec Bolton, Cazneaux: Photographs by Harold Cazneaux 1878-1953 (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1978), p.20.
  10. Jack Cato, The Story of the Camera in Australia (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1955, reprinted by Institute of Australian Photographers, 1977), p.153.
  11. A selection of Cato's advertising work and other prints are held by his son John Cato in Melbourne. A number are illustrated in Cato's book, I Can Take It: The Autobiography of a Photographer (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1947). Cato's work was widely illustrated in other publications.
  12. Cazneaux describes the pressure put on him by George in a letter to Jack Cato, of February 1952, headed 'Re Freemans Studio', p.5. Ms held by the Cazneaux family, Sydney. Photocopy held by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
  13. Cecil Bostock may have been his model for Cazneaux credits him with showing how Pictorial principles could be applied to commercial art. See his article 'The Photographer over the Years' in Laurence Le Guay, ed. A Portfolio ofAustralian Photography (Sydney: Edwards, 1950), pp.9-14.
  14. A biography of Monte Luke is included in Jack Cato, The Story of the Camera in Australia, op. cit., pp. 134-5. Luke's 'Exhibition Camera Picture' a portrait of actress Monica Mack, was reproduced in colour in the Home of 1 February 1925, p.73 as an advertisement for mercolised wax.
  15. A collection of Bostock's photographs and an album recording the building of the -David Jones Store in 1929 is held by the David Jones Australia Pty Ltd archives, Sydney. Bostock's fashion photography had appeared in the Home for some years.
  16. The selection of essays edited by David Mellor, Germany: The New Photography (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978) provides a good overview of the spread of this new approach to photography. The Australian National Gallery holds a large collection of European Modernists photography, see the catalogue The New Vision: A Revolution in Photography 1920-40 (Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1987).
  17. Leon Gellert and Sydney Ure Smith's enthusiasm for new effects and experiments in the pages of the Home is mentioned in Cazneaux's letters to Jack Cato, of 6 March, pp.9-10, and 10 March, 1951, p.l. Ms. held by the Cazneaux family, copy held by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
  18. This early date for the picture has been determined by Sydney photographer Kerry Dundas on the basis of the lack of later buildings and the cenotaph, see a copy of his note attached to prints held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
  19. A 1927 copy of Das Deutsche 27 Lichtbild, (inscribed 1928), was owned by Sydney amateur photographerj. W. Metcalfe, also a member of the Sydney Camera Circle. Cazneaux does not appear to have subscribed to the German annual.
  20. Cazneaux's modern works as reproduced in Max Dupain and Alex Bolton, Cazneaux: Photographs by Harold Cazneaux 1878-1953, op. cit., can be compared with those of De Meyer and Genthe in standard histories of photography, e.g. Cecil Beaton and Gail Buckland, The Magic Image: The Genius.of Photographyfrom 1839 to the Present Day (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), pp. 106-9, 139.
  21. Advertisement for the Home in the Home Easter Pictorial, 1929. Cazneaux's New Idea portrait of Doris Zinkeisen (with patterned background) was used as an illustration.
  22. See the Home, March 1931 for Cazneaux's winning portrait of Lesley Sugden. For a reproduction of the second place-getter, Autumn leaves, a portrait of Patricia Minchin, see Gael Newton, Silver and Grey: Fifty Years of Australian Photography (Sydney: Angus and Robertson 1980), pl.32.
  23. See discussion of the respective understanding of modern photography of Cazneaux and Max Dupain in Gael Newton, Max Dupain (Sydney: David Ell Press, 1980). For Dupain, Modernism was a passionate philosophy, and for Cazneaux a new decorative style.
  24. Leon Gellert, The Bridge Book By Cazneaux (Sydney: Art in Australia, 1930).
  25. Jean Curlewis, 'Sydney', Australia Beautiful - The Home Easter Pictorial Sydney Number (1928), p. 14.
  26. 26 See J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History (Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 1972), pp.24563. The Pyrmont silos certainly appear monstrous in the landscape in Alan Devereux's drawing of them reproduced in Art in Australia, 3rd series; no. 17, (September 1926), p.46.         
  27. Mallard's film is held by the Institute of Engineers, Sydney, and his negatives (many stereoscopic) of the construction of the bridge are held by the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. A selection of these were reprinted by David Moore and published in Building The Sydney Harbour Bridge: the Photography of Henri Mallard. Introduction by Max Dupain and Howard Tanner (Melbourne: Sun Books, 1976).
  28. A small group of bromoils of the bridge is held by Josef Lebovic Gallery, Sydney, and a better quality bromoil transfer titled Cables (1934), is held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
  29. The bromoil transfer is held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra and reproduced in Gael Newton, Max Dupain, op. cit., p.23, opposite a reproduction of John Kauffmann's The Cloud (c.1910), which also treats a railway signal as a decorative form.
  30. See Lewis W. Hine, Men at Work: Photographic Studies of Modern Men and Machines (New York: Macmillan, 1932. Reprint New York: Dover, 1977). The reprinting of Henri Mallard's negatives for publication (see n.2 this chapter), in sharp focus on modern photographic papers made the images appear more akin to Hine's style than if Mallard had printed them.
  31. A biography is included in Cecil Beaton and Gail Buckland, The Magic Image (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 197 5), p. 13 8. Hopp6 had been in Germany the year before and his book Deutsche Arbeit, a survey of German industry, was published in 1930. Whether Hopp6 had any influence on Australian photographers' awareness of new trends in German photography is not known. For Hopp6's approach to photography see Ian Jeffrey's commentary in Cities and Industry: Camera Pictures by E. 0. Hoppj (York: Impressions Gallery, 1978).
  32. Inscribed invitation held by the Cazneaux family, Sydney. Hopp6's exhibition was reviewed in the A.P.-R. (15 May 1930), the big prints were described as being'in accordance with the spirit of the times - they are close up, vigorous, dynamic', p.225
  33. E. 0. Hoppé, The Fifth Continent (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1931).
  34. Dupain's evolution from romantic Pictorialist to passionate Modernist is traced in Gael Newton, Max Dupain, op. cit.
  35. Despite Bostock's defence of his work, Dupain remembers Bostock as a perfectionist in craft and technique but lacking in emotion, letter to the author, 1986. Bostock's works and activities show his support for an art photography not necessarily as romantic or soft in focus as the general run of Pictorialists.
  36. See Dupain's stylistic evolution in 47 the plates in Gael Newton, Max Dupain, op. cit.
  37. Moore's work appeared quite regularly in the Home and Art in Australia publications from the late twenties.
  38. See Newport Quarry (1932), Gael Newton, Max Dupain, op. cit., pl.5.
  39. Ibid., pls8-1 1.
  40. The influence of this theory on Australian artists is discussed by Ren6e Free in the exhibition catalogue Crowley, Balson Fizelle and Hinder (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1968).
  41. See illustrations in S. Napier, ed. The Book of the Anzac Memorial, NSW (Sydney: Beacon Press, 1934).
  42. The negatives were retained by the company but cannot be located. Cazneaux exhibited prints of his BHP work regularly in the thirties and forties. See reproduction in Max Dupain and Alec Bolton, Cazneaux: Photographs by Harold Cazneaux 1878-1953, op. cit., pp. 18, 50, 51.
  43. Art in Australia: A New Vision ofAustralian Landscape, 3rd series, no. 17, (September 1926).
  44. See J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History, op. cit., pp.252-63.
  45. Examples of Joyner's desert landscapes are held by the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. For reproductions 52 see jean Waterhouse and Alison Carroll, Real Visions: The Life and Work off. A. Joyner, South Australian Photographer 1863-1945, op. cit.
  46. Cattle Tracks is held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and the National Library of Australia, Canberra, reproduced Gael Newton, Australian Pictorial Photography: A Survey of Art Photography from 1898-1938, op. cit. A large collection of Eaton's works, including an almost abstract landscape, The Hand of Man (c. 1939), is held by the National Library, Canberra.
  47. Cazneaux was one of seven artists who commented on their most Australian pictures, Australian National journal (May 194 1) p. 25. His words could be applied equally well to his own position: 'The passing of the years has left it scarred and marked by the elements ... unconquered, it speaks to us of a spirit of endurance. Although aged, its widespread limbs speak of a vitality that will carry on for many more years'. Cazneaux's son died at Tobruk in September and the phrase from the above passage proved appropriate as a new title for the picture.
  48. Fenton's reviews through to the mid thirties remained ambivalent about the new developments despite an original enthusiasm for the brilliant technique of commercial photography.
  49. Ambrose Pratt, 'The Art of John Kauffmann', Manuscripts: A Miscellany ofArt and Letters, no. 7 (November 1933): pp.31-4. Pratt was listed at the top of the article as author of Magical Malaya and The Lore of The Lyre Bird.
  50. An advertisement for Prestige hosiery, the Home, p. 7 1.
  51. Cazneaux's letters to Jack Cato spoke of Kauffmann's bitterness at being expected to submit his work to salons when he should have been invited to exhibit, letter c. June 1951 headed 'Some Later Thoughts', ms. held by the Cazneaux family, copy held in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra. Cazneaux was recalling his meeting with Kauffmann in Melbourne in 1934.
  52. Leslie H. Beer, The Art of John Kauffmann (Melbourne: Alexander McCubbin, 19 19). Beer's claim that the book was 'the first publication, devoted to artistic photography, published in Australia', seems to be true in terms of monographs. The edition was limited to 500 copies and contained twenty half-tone illustrations. It was not until 1948 when Sydney Ure Smith published Max Dupain Photographs and Alex Murray's Album (c.1948) that equivalent monographs on other photographers appeared. The other claims to priority in introducing Pictorialism and having had the first one-man show in 19 10 are less accurate.
  53. For an account of this movement's impact on photography see, Ute Eskildsen, 'Photography and the Neue Sachlichkeit Movement' in David Mellor, ed. Germany the New Photography 1927-33, op. cit., pp.101-12.
  54. For the significance of transcendental theories see Norbert Lynton, 'The New Age: Primal Work and Mystic Nights' in Towards A New Art: Essays on the Background of Abstract Art 1910-20 (London: Tate Gallery, 1980), pp.9-21, and Mike Weaver's discussion of photographic imagism in his William Carlos Williams: The American Background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp.55-8.
  55. F. J. Mortimer, ed., The Photograms of the Year 1932, quoted by Fenton in A.P.-R (March 1933): pp.124-5. See also Fenton's review of the exhibition 'The Modern Spirit' A.P.-R (April 1932): p.174.
  56. A quote from Charles Borup in London, cited in A.P.-R. (May 1932): p.241. See also Keast Burke on the 'New Photography' in the December issue, p.582 and the recommendation of Das Deutsche Lichtbild annual of 1930 which included the editorial comment that'photography extends far beyond the bounds of orthodox pictorial work - a department which ... seems to have come to a standstill, A.P.-R. (February 1931), p.81.
  57. G. H. Saxon Mills, 'Modern Photography, its Development, Scope and Possibilities' in C. Holme, ed. Modern Photography 1931; Special Autumn edition of The Studio (1931), p.14. Dupain's portfolio in Art in Australia Christmas Number (November 1935): p.40, carried the same quote cited by Dupain.
  58. G.H. Saxon Mills, Modern Photography (193 1), ibid., p. 10.
  59. A recollection by Poignant told to the author, see Gael Newton, Axel Poignant Photographs 1922-1980 (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1982), p.3 (of biography). August Knapp (1874-1943) was an optometrist. The illustration of his work on p. 111 shows an awareness of modern photography in its treatment of the metal turner. For Knapp, see n.2 this chapter.
  60. 'Interstate Exhibition of Pictorial Photography' A.P.-R. (October 1932): pp.477-84. MacDonald railed about how 'Freakish, crazy photography had flourished in certain countries in ratio to their feverish and hysterical state of mind. It had been so in Germany'. Harold Cazneaux's review in the same issue made reference to 'modern art, which had made much headway with photographers of late'. p.478.
  61. Undated press clipping Harold Cazneaux estate, Cazneaux family, Sydney.
  62. See 'The Melbourne Centenary, Fifth International Exhibition of the Victorian Salon of Photography: A Special Review by H. Cazneaux', A.P.-R. (December 1934): p.581. Cazneaux travelled to Melbourne to judge the Pictorial section and met up with Kauffmann.
  63. 'Comments on the Exhibition by H. Cazneaux' A.P.-R. (February 1930): p.65. This was an exhibition originated by KODAK including photographs by staff in offices across the world and bromoils by Dr Emil Mayer. Australian exhibitions were held at the KODAK gallery and showrooms in Sydney.
  64. Art and Reason was published by Tilney from 1925-48. Tilney wrote critical reports of Circle members' work shown in London. The Sydney Camera Circle Collection was subsequently donated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney in 1977. The author holds a file of notes for a biography of F. C. Tilney.
  65. See the Home (October 1935): pp.38-9 and Art in Australia (15 November 1935): p.40.
  66. Exhibition invitation and advertisement, Art Gallery of New South Wales Library for the Commemorative Salon of Photography. Australia's 150th Anniversary Celebrations 23 March 9/1pril, 1938.
  67. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 March 1938.
  68. Letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March 1938. See also Dupain's second letter of 7 April.
  69. Letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March 1938. See also 3, 24 March and 1, 2, 6 April for other correspondence on this debate.
  70. Letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 April 1938.
  71. Exhibition of Photographic Studies Contemporary Camera Groupe, David Jones Gallery, November 1938.
  72. Advertisement and invitation for the Contemporary Camera Groupe exhibition, held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
  73. A print of this subject is held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
  74. No. 7 in Dupain's group of exhibits was titled 'Between the Idea and the Reality, Falls the Shadow'. Dupain's interest in literature is dealt with in Gael Newton, Max Dupain, op. cit.
  75. A collection of Armand's graphic work and the booklets for the New York World's Fair is held by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
  76. See letter c. March 195 1, p.8. Ms no. 7 Cazneaux family, Sydney, copy held by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra. However, 1939 was also a time in which Pictorialism seemed at its most vigorous with a large Sydney Camera Circle exhibition in Sydney in April and an international show by the Victorian Salon of Photography drew ten thousand visitors. see Harold Cazneaux's report to the Photograms of the Year 1940, p. 14.
  77. The article appeared in the August issue. For biographical details see Gael Newton, Silver and Grey, op. cit., and p1.7. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and the National Library of Australia, Canberra hold collections of Moffitt's bromoils.
  78. Harold Cazneaux's letter to Keast Burke c.June 1952, ms held by the Cazneaux family, Sydney. Copy held by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra. Letter begins 'Dear Mr Burke, I thank you for the copies of theA.P.-R. concerning the late W. H. Moffitt's subject matter'.

 

 

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