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 TWO: PUBLISHERS

2.1 Sydney Ure Smith

The views trade in photography had published books since the late Nineteenth Century and Pictorialist photographers had been anthologised by the end of the 1910s.¹
In the 1920s Sydney Ure Smith's journals Art in Australia and Tlie Home pioneered the use of creative photography in photographic promotions.

Sydney Ure Smith was the most influential publisher working in the Australian arts industry from the First World War until his death in 1949. Sydney Ure Smith's interest in creative photography emerged in 1917 when he reviewed the Exhibition of Pictorial Photography by the Photographic Society of New South Wales for the journal Australasian Photo-Review.²

He was reviewing the exhibition from an "artist's point of view".³ Harold Cazneaux and Max Dupain in particular were to benefit from Ure Smith's publishing ventures. A study of Ure Smith's influence on Australian art has been written by Nancy Underhill.⁴ Although a conservative artist himself, with personal reservations about Modernism and outright opposition to abstraction, he used his publishing interests and trusteeship at the National Art Gallery of New South Wales to promoted Modernist work.

His opinion on the pictorialist aesthetic of faked tonelessness was critical. "I believe that the prejudice the artist retains against the photograph is accounted for by the prevalence, for some time past, of the "faked" print."⁵ He followed this by reporting on the early attempts at modernism, being experimented with by Cazneaux in particular.

I understand that one of the latest developments in the art of the camera is to retain the true photographic quality in a print, and, if what one hears is true, the day of the retouched print is at an end. This is a sound, healthy idea, and I hope it is true.⁶

Harold Cazneaux, The Bamboo Blind 1915	Advertising for the Sydney number of Art in Australia in the preceding issue March 1927

Harold Cazneaux's photography appeared in The Home from the frontispiece of the first issue in 1920.[above]   This photograph,The Bamboo Blind, was reviewed by Ure Smith in the 1917 Australasian Photo-Review article, "a subject seen with the eye of an artist."⁷  The tenth number of Art in Australia, produced in 1921, coincided with the centenary of Governor Lachlan Macquarie's departure from office. Because of Macquarie's role as a patron of the arts of the colony, such as Greenway's architecture and John Lewin's paintings, Art in Australia dedicated the issue to the Macquarie era and titled it The Macquarie Book.

One of the significant parts of The Macquarie Book was the use of a series of Cazneaux photographs of Greenway's architecture. These appeared amongst images from Macquarie's era (1810-1821) and watercolours by John D. Moore (father of photographer David Moore), showing the major buildings of the era as they would have appeared on completion.

Cazneaux's relationship with the Ure Smith publishing group was to be a continuing one, he continued to contribute to The Home with landscapes and society portraits. In 1927 Ure Smith devoted an issue of Art in Australia to Sydney.jabove-centre]   A series of Cazneaux's photographs appeared at the end of this issue.

1927 saw the introduction of Australia Beautiful, The Home Pictorial Annual. Started as a mainly pictorial production, Australia Beautiful, The Home Picioriai Annual became broader in its subject matter. In 1932 it became simply The Home Annual.⁸  In the late 1920s Ure Smith also produced several photographic booklets. Many used Harold Cazneaux's work, the pictorial content taken from articles which had appeared in The Home or Art in Australia's Sydney number. Canberra, Sydney Harbour and Australia appeared in 1928 and Sydney Surfing the following year. Canberra and Sydney Surfing were the most substantial, the others had a small selection of photographs. The books about Sydney, as with the Sydney Number of Art in Australia, featured the writing of Jean Curlewis.⁹

In the early thirties Art in Australia Limited produced several books devoted to photographs of Australian cities. Called The Sydney Book, The Melbourne Book and The Brisbane Book, the first two updated the special numbers of Art in Australia. The iatter used newer photographs from official sources, differing from the mainly pictoriaiist images of the Southern cities.

Ure Smith's use of Cazneaux's photography continued. The Bridge Book, 1930, used his work exclusively. The Second Bridge Book and Sydney Bridge Celebrations, of 1931 and 1932 respectively, featured his work. The Australian Native Bear Book appeared in 1930, reprinted the following year. The Frensham Book, 1934, although intended as a souvenir for students of the Southern Highlands Girls' School, contains photographs of general interest, particularly the Mediterranean styled buildings.

The Home had used the photography of Harold Cazneaux as a drawcard from the beginning. In 1935 Ure Smith began to promote the photography of Max Dupain, both in The Home and through a feature in Art in Australia. Although Dupain's first books were to be published by Oswald Ziegier starting with Soul of a City in 1940, it was Ure Smith's anthology of 1948 that launched Dupain as a major name in Australian photography.

Art in Australia Limited had been absorbed by John Fairfax & Sons in 1934 but Sydney Ure Smith worked with the company for a further four years. Unhappy with the direction that Fairfax was taking his journals, Ure Smith resigned and founded Ure Smith Publications.

Until the 1948 the Max Dupain anthology, Ure Smith did not produce many photographic books. His Australia National Journal, produced during the Second World War and for several years afterwards, incorporated photography in its illustrations. Several of the Ure Smith Miniature series, begun in 1949, just prior to his death, and produced for two years afterwards, feature a strong photographic content, sometimes using images that had appeared in previous Ure Smith publications.

In the years immediately after Sam Ure Smith inherited the company it produced such photographic volumes as AustralianTreescapes, Sydney Beaches, Portrait of Sydney and Portrait of Melbourne. Ure Smith Limited revived the ideas behind Art in Australia in 1963, calling the new journal Art and Australia. Art and Australia was among those art journals which documented the rise of fine art photography during the 1970s.

1. Cecil Bostock produced an anthology called Portfolio of Art Photograplis in Sydney in 1917 and Leslie Beer wrote a monograph, The Art of John Kauffmann, Alexander McCubbin, Melbourne, 1919.
2. Sydney Ure Smith, 'Some Notes on the Exhibits', The Australasian Plioto-Review, Volume 24, Number 12, December 15,1917.
3. ibid, p 660.
4. Nancy D. H. Underhill, Making Australian Art 1916-1949, Sydney Ure Smith, Patron and Publisher, Oxford, Melbourne, 1991.
5. ibid, he continues, "By faked prints, I mean muzzy, indeterminate attempts at tone; tone so faked and altered that in the end no values exist. The result is, then, unreal, and therefore unconvincing."
6. ibid, Pp 660-663.
7. ibid.
8. Some of the ideas behind The Home Annual were revived by Ure Smith with annual Australia Week-End Books based on his last journal, Australia National Journal. Limited in their illustrative content by Wartime austerity measures, the Australia Week-End Books were chiefly literary. Only the fifth, from 1946, used photographs.
9. Books from 1928 which did not feature Cazneaux's photography were Glimpses of Victoria, Inland Australia and The Great Barrier Reef. The latter included several images by Frank Hurley.

2.2 Oswald Leopold Ziegler

In the early twenties an advertising agent in Adelaide, Otto Ziegler, entered the views trade by publishing little pictorial souvenirs of South Australian resorts and agricultural centres. By the end of the decade his journalist son Oswald Leopold Ziegler had followed suit and began publishing similar souvenirs for The Mail Newspapers. Oswald's efforts were larger, and established his use of photography and text as the basis for books and booklets promoting resorts and agricultural centres in the Eastern states the subsequent decades.

unknown photographer. Wheat-all-wheat, from Oswald Zeigler’s early South Australian promotions, Review of the Lower North of South Australia, The Land of the Golden Grain, 1928. This image, in a different context (The National Handbook of Australian Industries, 1934) is discussed in Anne Marie Willis’s Illusions of Identity, 1993

By the early thirties Oswald Ziegler was in Melbourne, producing large commemorative volumes for Victoria and Melbournes' centenaries of 1934 and 1936 respectively. The 1934 books retold the story of Victoria's foundation and showcased the architectural grandeur of modem Melbourne. The 1936 volume was a photographic record of the various celebrations and decorations throughout the state. The photographic content was prolific but not particularly creative.

The design by recent immigrant Gert Sellheim in an Art Deco vein was rather avant garde for its time and purpose. The designs of these books were to launch a long-term creative collaboration between Ziegler and Sellheim.

Despite the Depression, Australia celebrated the successive centenaries of Victoria, Melbourne and the sesqui-centenary of the settlement of Sydney in 1934, 1936 and 1938 respectively. Publications for these events gained a significant visual contribution from creative photographers. However, South Australia, where Zeigler's career had begun, produced little in the way of illustrated commemorations when the state celebrated its centenary in 1936.

100 Years in Victoria was produced by Oswald Ziegler in 1934. Using contemporary images of Victoria combined with drawings based on early images from the LaTrobe Library, 100 Years in Victoria set the standard for the 1930s anniversary book. In 1936 Ziegler produced an illustrated record of both the Melbournian and Victorian celebrations. Victorian and Melbourne Centenary Celebrations 1934-1935 was designed by Gert Sellheim, an Estonian recently arrived from Germany. Sellheim's design at this time was heavily influenced by the Art Deco movement.

In March 1937 Ziegler produced a booklet for the Diamond Jubilee of The Municipality of Manly, in Sydney's Northern Beaches region.¹ This was the start of Ziegler's career path of Municipal promotions of New South Welsh towns and local government areas. These books, although they often used a major photographer like Max Dupain, were commercially oriented, were meant to promote the region to potential settlers and investors rather than showcase Australian photography. Ziegler was none-the-less supportive of the industry, going on to produce the Australian Photography 'annuals' in 1947 and 1957.

In the Sesqui-centennial year of 1938 he produced a massive patriotic tome, 750 Years, Australia 1788-1938, as well as programs and booklets connected with Sydney and New South Wales' celebrations. 750 Years, Australia 1788-1938 was the first of several large patriotic promotions as well as similar volumes dedicated to New Zealand, South East Asia and the Commonwealth of Nations.²

One of the results of the Sesqui-centenary was an interesting magazine-like brochure, Romance in Paradise. The photographs come from various sources, tourist bureaux and Frank Hurley are credited, other photographs are not. The design, also uncredited, is probably Gert Sellheim's work, its modernity contrasting with the simplicity of most images and the pictorialism of others. Much of Sellheim and Zieglers' output of this era would have to work around the contrasting styles of photography. Reg Perrier's photographs of Goulburn in the 1946 publication Goulburn, Queen City of the South and H. Chargois's images in Alhury of 1949 are the most visible of these. Those books are discussed below.

Frank Hurley, cover illustration for Oswald Zeigler's Blue Mountains, 1939	Soul of the City	Newcastle 150 Years

Another Ziegler publication, Blue Mountains, was published in 1939.[above] Like Romance in Paradise, it was in the style of a fashion magazine, Blue Mountains celebrated the Golden Jubilee of Katoomba Municipality. The coverage was not limited to that township, all the councils on the Mountains were given a chance to show their tourist facilities. This time the local industry was given advertising space. Romance in this particular paradise required the right gas heating and Kodak film from the right pharmacy. If one wanted Hollywood romance, Katoomba boasted two cinemas. The book is a record of the Blue Mountains' tourist industry between the wars aimed at the intending tourist.

The photographers credited with the images in Blue Mountains are Frank Hurley (the cover image is one of his montages) and a local photographer, Miriam Strickland Chisholm (1901-1979). Hurley's Blue Mountains' photographs continued to appear in his Camera Study days while Chisholm's work can be found in other local promotions. Her work is based on local knowledge, the small waterfalls and the like, whilst Hurley's is based on the powerful landscapes of the Jamieson Valley. Throughout the book images are printed in a deep indigo colour, an indication of later Ziegler books that would use colour themes relating to the subject.

Unlike Gert Sellheim and the Pictorialist School, Douglas Annand and Max Dupain's styles were compatible. This emerges in Ziegler's first major photographic work, Soul of a City. Produced for The City of Sydney in 1940, it was Dupain's first book as principal photographer and the first attempt to follow the overseas trend towards the photo-text, such as Walker Evans's American Photographs.

Douglas Annand's layout follows the passage of a day in Sydney.³ Less intrusive on the image shape than Sellheim, Annand arranged the images beside drawings of the sun as it makes its stylised journey across the sky. Although there are scenes of working life, many images are recreational. This was partly the result of Dupain's commitment to his studio during the working week, Soul of a City being a weekend project.⁴

The Second World War limited the output of books but with the cessation of hostilities Ziegler was back in action, helping various towns and shires get a slice of the Post-War Immigration pie as well as the benefits of the expansion of industrial investment. The Snowy Mountains Scheme was promoted with the booklet Water for the Thirsty Inland. Australia's war record played an important part of the patriotic tome, the 1946 edition of This is Australia.

Between 1946 and 1952 Ziegler's output of books and booklets for New South Welsh regional centres followed a pattern. This pattern included a principal photographer (often Max Dupain) and design work by Gert Sellheim involving odd shapes of pastel colour echoed by the cropping of the photographs. Unlike the promotional books of the thirties, aimed at the tourist, these were arranged to promote various civic amenities and the region's lifestyle, followed by a section advertising the local businesses which had sponsored the publication. Several of Ziegler's works up to 1963 continued this pattern, to some extent.

Newcastle, 150 Years was part of Ziegler's involvement in that city's sesqui-centenary celebrations in 1947. Another Ziegler book to feature the work of Max Dupain as principal photographer, Newcastle, 150 Years was accompanied by a little schoolchildren's' booklet called This is my Home. Sellheim's dust jacket design for Newcastle, 150 Years is a montage of industrial photographs in a russet colour with the title in red.

Brisbane, Queensland's Capital was published in 1947 and again in 1949. Although Brisbane is anything but a New South Welsh provincial centre, two of the books Ziegler produced for Brisbane (the other being Brisbane, City in the Sun in 1957) closely resemble his southern productions.

By the late 1950s Ziegler was producing many kinds of books, from simple illustrated promotions for Penfold's Wines to a huge book about Brisbane's centenary. Ziegler continued to produce books for regional centres until 1963.

After this the company became more concerned with the larger promotional books, their smaller books were mainly centred on Sydney, especially at the time of the Opera House's completion. A book commemorating the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth's reign in 1977, EIIR25 Years, was the last Oswald Ziegler book.

1. Oswald L. Ziegler, Diamond Jubilee of Manly, Official Programme and Souvenir, Manly Municipal Diamond Jubilee Celebration Committee, Sydney, 1937.
2. Oswald L. Ziegler, NewZealand, New Zealand Newspapers, 1967, Ttie World and South East Asia, Oswald Ziegler Enterprises, 1972 and EIIR, 25 Years,
   Oswald Ziegler Publications, 1977.
3. For a debate on the issue of attribution when a designer reworks a photographer's imagery,
   see Ann Stephen, 'Mass-Reproduced Photography in the Inter-War Years', Art Network, Sydney, Number 9, Autumn 1983, Pp 40-45.
4. Max Dupain interviewed by Peter Ross, Sunday Afternoon, A.B.C. Television, Sydney, 9/9/1990.
5. This chapter is largely based on Eric Riddler, ibid. 1990.

See previous thesis on Oswald Zeigler - click here

 

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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.