SUBLIME SOULS & SYMPHONIES:
Australian PhotoTexts 1926–1966,  Eric Riddler 1993

Introduction to this thesis |   table of contents  |   1926-1966 chronology of photo-books

Chapter 1  |   Chapter 2   |   Chapter 3  |   Chapter 4   |    Chapter 5  |   Chapter 6   |   Chapter 7  |   Chapter 8   |    Conclusion

CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY

1.1 The History of a History

In the overall history of Australian photography, the phototext has often been overlooked by writers, aiming to variously portray the history of photographs and photographers. Because of their largely commercial basis, phototexts are generally a footnote to the oeuvre of particular photographers. There has been much research into the history of Australian photography. The first attempt to write on the subject was Cato's The Story of the Camera in Australia, published in 1955. It was a pioneering investigation of the field and all subsequent histories have paid homage to Cato's research. Starting with the earliest professional photographers of the 1840s, Cato recalls the major photographers. Chapters are devoted to groups of photographers in a loosely chronological order, although the regional histories are separate.

There are several shortcomings. Cato documents photographers as participants in specific movements or their parochial importance. One example of this is John Kauffmann as a South Australian photographer despite a long residence in Melbourne. Similarly, Frank Hurley is featured as an explorer-photographer while his Camera Study series, which was contemporary to Cato's research, are advertised more than they are critically analysed.

After referring to Hurley's project to produce a series of books covering Australia, Cato says "several of these beautiful books are already on the market".¹  Cato placed his emphasis on those photographers who emerged before 1941, which was the centenary of the first photograph taken in Australia. This leaves out almost fifteen years of photographic development. Fortunately the majority of the younger photographers that Cato includes were involved in publishing but there is a comparative scarcity of relevant biographical detail.²

Between 1955 and 1980 there was little textual work done on photographic history in Australia. Allen G. Gray's Camera in Australia of 1970 and Laurence Le Guay's 1976 annual of Australian Photography incorporated brief historical sections in their pictorial content.³

Gael Newton's Silver and Grey (1980) and Masterpieces of Australian Photography by Josef Lebovic and Joanne Cahill (1989) are both extensively illustrative works, intended as pictorial histories.4 Silver and Grey documents the first half of the Twentieth Century. It is an product of the Art Gallery of New South Wales's efforts to acquire extensive photographic collections during the seventies. Each image has a page to itself. The most extensively reproduced photographers are Max Dupain and Harold Cazneaux with fifteen and thirteen images respectively, in accordance with their presence in the Gallery's collection at the time. Their popularity acts as a drawcard for any gallery's collection. Several other important photographers of the era are generously represented: Laurence Le Guay and Athol Shmith are accorded seven images each. Photographers such as Frank Hurley and Jack Cato, who were not well represented in the Gallery's collection at the time, have very little work featured in Silver and Grey. The object of the book, reflected in both its text and images, is to document the changing mainstream of photography from the traditional pictorialists to the photo-journalists through the later pictorialists and modernists. This is achieved through examples of the styles in the possession of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Masterpieces of Australian Photography is a catalogue for a commercial gallery which moved to include photography sales from its established market as a print dealership. It differs from Silver and Grey by treating its imagery as potential private investment rather than work from a public display. It is a catalogue of commercial availability as much as it is a volume of Australian history. In the introduction Lebovic states that... I have chosen, from among many hundreds of images at my disposal, examples of the most important and desirable photography one can find on the market that are of a quality comparable to those held in institutions.5 Like Silver and Grey it maintains a chronological approach but it divides this chronology into periods rather than movements whereby the pictorialists and modernists are treated as contemporaries, for instance. Because of its intended readership of photographic collectors, Masterpieces of Australian Photography has the best provenance lists in its captions of all the photographic histories. It also gives a broader example of the photograph buying public's taste and the availability of many photographers' work. From this it is possible to divine the relevance of photographs taken for publication half a century ago in the commercial gallery scene of the late eighties. An example is the section on Jack Cato. Despite many years as a photographer, his Melbourne of 1949 is judged the source of his best work.6

Australia's Bicentennial year, 1988, saw two major publications on Australian photography appear. The exhibition catalogue for Shades of Light by Gael Newton (on purpose) and Picturing Ausiralia by Anne-Marie Willis (by chance) emerged in time for the "celebration of the nation" and all the nationalistic spirit that went with it.⁷

Shades of Light, as can be expected from an Australian National Gallery exhibition, featured images from many public collections. Recent work was largely from its own extensive collection. This was supplemented by the large range of photographic images collected by Australia's other museums and galleries. The extent of such collections allowed Shades of Light to be a highly comprehensive documentation of photography in Australia.

Shades of Light does not limit itself to the important names in the industry. Some amateur work is given a high profile, especially in the section on early colour photography, where rich amateurs' experimentation with the Autochrome process is shown. These amateurs paved the way for the colour photography published later, when Kodachrome and Ektachrome were released from wartime restrictions.

Carefully dividing the exhibition and catalogue into displays of movements and technologies, Shades of Light has a clearer chronology than Masterpieces of Australian Photography. The text highlights the industry, the presentation of photography as it progressed through time, and the importance of salons, societies and journals in contemporary photography movements. Willis's Picturing Australia gives an insight into the history of photography as a history of Australia's self-image. Whereas Newton's Shades of Light looked at the various photographic movements in relation to the technologies and techniques that were relevant to the time, Picturing Australia places the images in the context of Australia's social, economic and political situations. Without the restrictions of a print's availability (no matter how comprehensive Public Collections may be, some important images may only be known through reproduction) Willis shows many illustrations from publications, allowing participation by photographers and images which would be considered obscure in an exhibition context. Picturing Australia had "began... as a research project towards what was to be an exhibition on nineteenth-century Australian photography".8 There are photographic history books which deal with specific topics. Barbara Hall and Jenni Mathers' Australian Women Photographers 1840-1960 (1986) is the most relevant of these.9   Photographs by women are usually published in 'salon' based books rather than in the commissioned photo-essay styled books. Olive Cotton's contribution to Helen Blaxland's 1946 Flower Pieces is the one of the few times when a woman shares credit as a book's principal photographer (with Max Dupain). Australian Women Photographers 1840-1960 balances the role of each gender as seen in retrospect. Unfortunately the researchers overlooked some of the 'salon' style books such as Ziegler's Australian Photography 1957.10 The following chapters will endeavour to portray a history of the publication of what may be termed 'creative photography' in Australia, it does not purport to be a definitive history of photographic publishing or a comprehensive who's who, although it is important to credit the contributors, however minor, wherever possible. The chapters will also attempt to reflect the growth of Australia in its documentation of the changing photographic industry.

1. Jack Cato, The Story oftlie Camera in Australia, Georgian House, 1955, p 142
2. ibid. This is perhaps most evident in the case of George 'Airspy' Hansom whose biography concentrates on his father's achievement (the Hansom Cab) rather than his own aerial photography.
3. Allen G. Gray, Camera in Australia, A. H. & A. V. Reed, Sydney, 1970. Laurence Lc Guay, Australian Photography, 1976, Globe, Sydney, 1975.
4. Gael Newton, Silver and Grey, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1980. Josef Lebovic, Masterpieces of Australian Photography, Josef Lebovic Gallery, Sydney, 1989
5. Lebovic, 1989, ibid, np.
6. Of course, Lebovic's book is limited by the potential availability of original prints from the negatives. Thus a photographer, like Athol Shmith, who did not preserve his negatives, may not have the same current commercial impact as, Max Dupain, whose files occasionally reveal an interesting old image for the first time
7. Gael Newton, Shades of Light, The Australian National Gallery, Canberra, with Collins and Kodak, 1980. Anne Marie Willis, Picturing Australia, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1988.
8. Willis, 1988. ibid, p 1.
9. Barbara Hall and Jenni Mathers, Australian Women Photographers 1840-1960, Greenhouse, Melbourne, 1986.
10. The winner of the Gold Medal in Australian Photography 1957 was Muriel Jackson. She is absent from the text of Australian Women Photograpliers 1840-1960.

Exta Note:  A number of magazine and journal articles deal with issues relevant to this thesis. The most important of these is Ann Stephen's 'Mass Produced Photography in Australia During the Inter-War Years' from Art Network 9, Autumn 1983. This article details the role of the 'middlemen', the designers' work in making photographs part of the era's aesthetic. Douglas Annand's work with Dupain's photographs for Ziegler's Soul of a City is used as one of the examples. Geoff Batchen's 'Creative Actuality, The Photography of Max Dupain' from Art Monthly Australia 45, November 1991 poses the question of whether a photograph should be judged in the context of the time it was taken or the time it was first presented to the public. As several notable images as seen today were out-takes from images taken for publication, the debate is crucial. Helen Grace's 'Reviewing Max Dupain', Art Network 9, discusses his attitudes as a reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald in the early Eighties. Dupain's critical stance is intransigent enough for Grace's arguments to be relevant to Dupain's written contributions to several 'salon' style books of thirty or so years previously.

1.2 The Classics

Max Dupain's Australia and the earlier use of some of the images. Max Dupain's popularity as an image maker of Australia has greatly increased since the mid seventies. What was once avant garde has become a valuable history and nostalgia collection. In 1986 Viking brought out an anthology of Max Dupain's photographs called Max Dupain's Australia. It contained images selected by Dupain himself, rather than by a curator. Dupain has become the main example of a popular photographer in terms of famous imagery and demand for original prints. The photographs often come from commissions for book illustrations but are now in demand from collectors of photography as images in their own right. Geoff Batchen, in his article 'Creative Actuality, The Photography of Max Dupain', discusses the history of Dupain's famous photograph.1 The sunbaker, 1937.   The sunbaker is now Dupain's most recognised image, but it was about a decade old before the first version was printed in the Ure Smith anthology, Max Dupain, in 1948. The image which appeared in this book is taken from a different negative to the now famous image, which emerged in the 1970s from a retrospective of Dupain's work held at the recently opened Australian Centre for Photography. This begs the question "When is a photograph made?"2

The question can be asked of Max Dupain's Australia. It is inevitable that many images originally published in phototexts would be found in this book, such was the prolific nature of Dupain's contribution. Most of these are images printed as they appeared (albeit uncropped) in the phototexts. There are, however, occasions where Dupain's 1986 selection differs from the original publication. Rush Hour in Kings Cross, 1938, for example, is taken the same evening from the same viewpoint (from a flat belonging to relatives of photographer/cinematographer Damien Parer) as an image in the 1940 edition of Soul of a City.

The image printed in 1940 is technically much clearer, the traffic seems to have been at an almost complete standstill, the movement was to the side. The image Dupain selected in 1986 shows blurred city-bound trams moving through The Cross, against the flow of barely moving east-bound cars. In his caption Dupain talks of the effect of movement caused by foreshortening and the chance exposure time. The dynamic effect of the movement which attracted Dupain's (and the viewer's) attention in the 1980s was possibly regarded as an unsuitable lack of clarity in a book designed to display the details of Sydney's lifestyle of 1940.

Rush hour, Kings Cross, 1938 (State Library of NSW)		Kings Cross, 1938, as printed in Soul of the City

The same could be said of Central Station, 1939. A similar image appears in the 1946 edition of This is Australia. The 1946 image is used to illustrate Sydney's transport system, in its immediate post-war peak, at the time it was just an image of travellers changing from trains onto buses and trams, part of everyday life in the days of petrol rationing. In 1986 a slightly different image was selected by Dupain. In the caption Dupain says that the photograph illustrates the discomfort of the trams.

Central Station, 1939		Central Station 1939, published 1986, Max Dupain's Australia

Another difference is the photograph Twilight, Sydney, from AWA Tower, circa 1940s. The image he is referring to appeared in a couple of phototexts, notably Australian Photography 1947. The image in Max Dupain's Australia is not only printed in reverse but clearly visible along the misplaced Circular Quay is a stream of light denoting traffic on the Cahill Expressway, opened in 1958. In part due to a careless error in the printing, the later image takes on the identity of the earlier.

	Sydney By Night, as published in Australian Photography 1947
	This caption is as in the 1986 publication as mentioned above: Twighlight, Sydney, from the AWA Tower, circa 1940s as stated in the text above this image is reversed it is dated incorrectly as 1940s it should be 1959, see image below.
	Twighlight Sydney from the AWA Tower, 1959 this is correctly dated - and is published correctly oriented

The tone of nostalgia which dominates Max Dupain's Australia is in some respects its undoing. Off-Beat, I960, is an example of this. Three traffic policemen are walking along George Street reading the afternoon papers. The caption describes the subjects' faces as reflecting the "leisureliness of the period" but the headlines read of traffic chaos that morning with an even worse situation expected that evening. Such details of the editorial were not visible in the image's original appearance in Soul of a City's 1962 edition, but The Daily Mirror's headline "CHAOS!" was quite obvious. It is not leisure that makes this photograph so interesting but two of the officers' apparent disinterest in the coming traffic jam, studying the sports page for details, it would seem, of the latest cricket team. It should be noted that Gallery exhibitions of Dupain's work often represent work as originally published, albeit in glass cases which only allow a few images to be displayed. Two exhibitions of his work during 1991 did so, an exhibition of Sydney images at the State Library of New South Wales's Dixon Gallery displayed some of Ziegler's Soul of a City pages and the major retrospective at the Australian National Gallery displayed Dupain's early magazine work for Sydney Ure Smith.

1. Geoff Batchen, 'Creative Actuality, The Photography of Max Dupain', Art Monthly Australia 45, November 1991.
2. ibid.

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Introduction to this thesis |   table of contents  |   1926-1966 chronology of photo-books

Chapter 1  |   Chapter 2   |   Chapter 3  |   Chapter 4   |    Chapter 5  |   Chapter 6   |   Chapter 7  |   Chapter 8   |    Conclusion

Based on the original thesis submitted as part of the requirement of the Masters of Arts - University of Sydney.
This is the 2021 online verson of Eric Riddler's 1993 thesis.
For this 2021 version extra images and links have been added to the text that align with photographs/topics being mentioned.