DORIS CONSTANCE BARNES
BORN 18th January 1894 - Kent Town, South Australia
DIED 18th November 1994 - Outer Adelaide, South Australia
OCCUPATION
Photographer
SUMMARY
Doris Barnes was an award winning amateur photographer who practised photography throughout her life, active from the 1910s to the 1990s. Her photographs were predominantly created in the Pictorialist style. She was a life member of the Adelaide Camera Club, exhibited in Adelaide and interstate, as well as in London. The Art Gallery of South Australia acquired some of her portraits as early as 1940.
DETAILS
Doris Barnes was born on 18th January 1894 at Kent Town, Adelaide, South Australia. Her father was John William Barnes and her mother was Annie Eliza May. Doris had two brothers and seven sisters. In 1897 her parents built a house in St. Peters, where she lived for 63 years. It was in this house that she eventually cared for her elderly mother up until her death.
Barnes came from a creative family, with her brother Gustave Barnes studying art and music in England. Gustave did 'fine oil paintings, watercolors and etchings', eventually becoming Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Another brother, Lawrence Barnes, was also a painter. Her father, John William Barnes had been a designer and 'modeler in plaster and cement'. John passed away when Doris was only 13.
Doris Barnes left school at the age of 15 and began working for the Stump and Co. Photographic Studios. She worked as a receptionist for a couple of years, while at the same time picking up photographic skills by observing the photographer and retoucher as they worked. Her brother Gus gave Barnes her first camera in 1910 when she was 16 years old. This was when her lifelong interest in photography began.
She went on to work for the Commonwealth Public Service and remained in this employment until her retirement. However, she was to be a keen amateur photographer throughout her life. Barnes became a life member of the Adelaide Camera Club and took part in many of their exhibitions, winning a bronze medal for her work in 1940, as well as many others over the years, and was mentioned in their catalogs. During the 1920s-1930s she participated in interstate exhibitions and won various medals and certificates. In 1937 she was awarded a bronze plaque for Amateur Photography at The Inter-colonial Exhibition of Overseas Photographers, London.
Her photographs captured the romanticism of the Australian bush, the sea, and rural life; her photographs also included some portrait and landscape work.
As early as 1940 the Art Gallery of South Australia had purchased three of her portrait studies for inclusion in their photography collection.
In 1960 Barnes, along with her surviving siblings, offered their house to the Resthaven Home for the Aged, and ended up moving to the 'Resthaven' village, situated in outer Adelaide.
Doris Constance Barnes died on the 18th November 1994, aged 100.
COLLECTIONS
Art Gallery of South Australia photographic collection
State Library of South Australia
EVENTS
c. 1915 to c. 1990 - Active as amateur photographer. Location: Adelaide, South Australia.
1920 to 1930 Exhibition - Doris Barnes work featured in interstate exhibitions.
1935 Exhibition - Doris Barnes work featured in the Adelaide Camera Club exhibition.
1937 Exhibition - Doris Barnes work featured in the Inter-colonial Exhibition of Overseas Photographers. Location: London, England.
1940 Exhibition - Doris Barnes work featured in the Adelaide Camera Club exhibition.
1981 Exhibition - Doris Barnes work featured in the Australian Women Photographers 1840-1950 exhibition. Location: George Paton Gallery, Melbourne.
Saturday 7th September 1935Page 20 - The Mail (Adelaide SA)
WOMEN'S WORK WITH THE CAMERAThree women members of the Adelaide Camera Club were among exhibitors in the club show held this week. Two of them, Miss Doris Barnes and Miss Irene Viney, won certificates of merit for their work. Few women here make a serious study of photography although it is a field in which many women abroad have won distinction. Dorothy Wilding, whose studies of the Duke and Duchess of Kent at the time of their engagement were used all over the world, is one outstanding example. She began her career, it is said, with one small camera and plenty of initiative and now she is among the foremost photographers of royalty. Another London woman photographer with an interesting job is Pamela Murray, whose enterprising little camera snaps fashionable London women at play for smart magazines. In Germany, women are rivaling men in outdoor photography and studio work.
The South Australian Camera Club has five women members: Miss DORIS C. BARNES, Miss E. IRENE VINEY, Miss KATRINE M. McASKILL (who is also exhibiting in the show), Miss LOUTTIT and Miss CHENNELL — all of whom have turned out most interesting work. It is a most absorbing hobby, they tell you, but an expensive one if only done for amusement.
Miss Doris C. Barnes has won numerous certificates for her work, her most important award being a bronze plaque won in an international amateur photographic exhibition in London. The photograph which carried off the plaque is her favorite of any she has taken, the study of a yacht at Grange, selected as the best from the 12 films she took in one afternoon. Many visitors to the exhibition this week paused before her photograph, of the child and the smug-looking cat. It was taken by chance on a visit to Clarendon when Miss Doris C. Barnes was looking about for attractive subjects for her camera. Suddenly she turned and saw the child coming triumphantly along with the Persian which she had just picked up in a paddock — so neither cat nor child realized they were being snapped.
One of Miss Doris C. Barnes most interesting possessions is a diary which she kept on a motoring journey from Sydney to Port Augusta and which is entirely illustrated with her photographs. She does all her own developing, printing and enlarging and has made some most artistic studies by combining two or three photographs. In one outdoor scene, for instance, she has put a flock of sheep photographed at Mount Barker on to a hilly pass, snapped at Port Pirie and finished the composite with clouds from another of her photographs.
Miss Viney has a little box camera which is often used still, although it first did duty during the war and was used consistently for years afterwards. She has just begun to do her own enlarging work and to experiment with the possibilities of her photographs. A few years ago, on a trip abroad, she traveled with her camera and brought back more than 600 pictures, several of which she enlarged specially for the show. She and Miss Louttit, who was a fellow-traveler, photographed many interesting spots — including several which were supposed to be debarred from the photographer. One "prohibited" photograph shows the beautiful interior of the church of Santa Maria Delle Grazie and another the room where the Locarno pact was signed. Making movies for a private record is one of Miss Viney's hobbies, but one that is decidedly not economical. Each film of 100 ft., she said, which runs for four to five minutes, works out at from 23/6 to 32/6. Among her films are some excellent shots of the Duke's visit and the children's display on the Adelaide Oval.
Saturday 9th November 1935 The Australian Women's Weekly
HER PHOTOGRAPHY HAS WON RENOWN OVERSEAS
Miss Doris Barnes, of the Adelaide Camera Club, has more than Australian awards to her credit, for her artistic photographs have gained her a bronze plaque and several certificates from the Royal Photographic Society in London during the last few years. Examples of her work have been hung in the Victorian Salon and three are in the Adelaide Art Gallery.
One of the first women members of the Camera Club, she also belonged to the now non existent Adelaide Photographic Society, to which Kauffman added such lustre and she was the club's librarian for many years. Although she prefers portraiture. Miss Barnes has taken some beautiful land and sea studies on her holiday tours through Australia and Tasmania.
WHEN DAYLIGHT COMES - c. 1932
Gift of MISS DORIS BARNES in 1984 to the
NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA
Wednesday 21st August 1940Page 6 - News (Adelaide SA)
WOMAN'S AWARD FOR PHOTOGRAPHYMiss Doris Barnes, of Sixth avenue, St. Peters, who won a bronze plaque in the photographic exhibition by the Adelaide Camera Club, has won six similar plaques. She also holds a bronze plaque won at the Inter-colonial exhibition of Overseas Photographers. Three of her portrait studies are in the photographic section at the Art Gallery. She has been a keen photographer for 20 years. Like most keen photographers she does all her own printing and developing and has a dark room at her home. She has been made a Life Member of the Adelaide Camera Club, is interested in all kinds of photography and has dabbled in seascapes, landscapes and portraiture.
PLEASE
Doris C. Barnes c. 1929
A COQUETTE
Doris C. Barnes 1928
EVENING GLOW
Doris C. Barnes c. 1940
MAJESTY
Doris C. Barnes c. 1940
SENTINELS
Doris C. Barnes 1935
THE CLOSE OF DAY
Doris C. Barnes 1926
