THE SYDNEY CAMERA CIRCLE
FORMED 1916
The The Sydney Camera Circle was a Pictorialist photographic society formed in 1916 in Sydney. It was most active before World War II, and was influential on Australian photography for fifty years.
HISTORY
The The Sydney Camera Circle was formed on 28 November 1916 at the Bostock-Little Studio, Phillip Street, Sydney. The founders were Cecil Bostock, Harold Cazneaux, Malcolm McKinnon, James Paton, James S. Stening and William Stewart White. All six signed a manifesto, pledging to advance and promote a Pictorialist photography devoted to Australian sunlight and shadow as opposed to the grays and 'dismal' shadows of European styles. In this ambition they shared the ideals of the Heidelberg School of Australian painters. The group was dominated by amateurs interested in photography as an art form who shared constructive criticism and support at their meetings, exhibiting their work under the name of the The Sydney Camera Circle.
The group continued as an entity until 1978 when membership was dwindling in competition with that of the Australian Photographic Society and the Camera Club of Sydney.
SYDNEY CAMERA CIRCLE |
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| R.G. Allman Member - May 1921 |
Dr Michael L. Armstrong Member - October 1970 to 1971 |
William Barrett Member - 1918 to 1922 |
H. Bedggood Member - 1924 to 1928 |
Robert Sidney Beverley Member - 1962 to 1973 Chairman 1965 - 1973 |
Cecil W. Bostock DOB 1884 - 1939 Member - 1916 to December 1935 Foundation Member |
| R.E. Donald Brown Member - 1949 to 1978 Chairman 1974 - 1978 |
William G. Buckle DOB 1894 - 1947 Member - 1930s to 1940s |
Eric Keast Burke Member - 1940s to 1967 |
Harold Pierce Cazneaux DOB 1878 - 1953 Member - 1916 to 1953 Foundation Member First President 1922 President 1923, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1930 |
Dr Arthur Ernest Fraser Chaffer DOB 1900 - 24th June 1963 Member - 1928 - June 1963 |
Nell Chaffer DOB 1905 - 1990 Member - 1963 to 1978 |
| Cliford Stuart Christian Member - March 1957 to June 1967 |
Kenneth Clifford Member - October 1963 to 3rd June 1968 Resigned 3rd June 1968 |
Dr K. Courtney Member - 12th March 1969 Joined 12th March 1969 |
Frank D. Collins DOB 1883 - 12th June 1954 Member - 1940 to 1954 |
Olive Edith Cotton DOB 1911 - 2003 Member - 1939 to * |
Dr Kevin Courtney Member - 1969 to 1971 |
| Q. Davis Member - * to May 1960 |
Norman Cathcart Deck DOB 29th May 1882 - 1980 October 1921 to 1978 Honorary Member August 1972 to 1978 Honorary Life Member |
Robert E. Dickinson Member - 1971 |
H.D. Dircks DOB 1887 - July 1962 Member - 1940s to 1961 |
Arthur Eades Member - 1918 to 1920 |
Stanley William Eutropoe DOB 1891 - 1983 Member - 1917 to 1978 |
| Arthur William Christopher Ford DOB 26th November 1889 - 1st September 1965 Member - 1917 to 1922 Member - November 1963 to September 1965 Honorary Life Member February 1964 - September 1965 |
D. Fraser Member - May 1921 to 1937 |
A.W.W. Gale DOB 1903 - 19th May 1969 Member - October 1940 to 1969 |
Harold Richard Gazzard DOB ** - 10th August 1976 Member - November 1962 to August 1976 |
George L. Graves Member - 1966 to 1971 Joined November 1966 |
Nell Griffin Member - 1974 to 1978 |
| Laurence Le Guay DOB 1917 - 1990 Member - 1940 to 1953 |
Charles Haseron Member - 1918 to 1921 |
Kenneth Dudley Hastings Member - October 1949 to 1966 |
E.B. Hawkes Member - February 1932 to July 1936 |
Douglas Raleigh Hill Member - November 1924 to 1938 |
James Hoey Member - February 1956 to 1978 |
| Robert Holcombe Member - 1918 to 1921 |
Kiichiro Ishida Member - April 1921 to December 1923 |
Cyril V. Jackson Member - 1949 to 1973 |
Harry Powell James DOB ** - 12th June 1973 Member - 1935 to June 1973 |
Laurence R. James Member - June 1966 to June 1967 Joined June 1966 |
Harold N. Jones DOB ** - 9th January 1970 Member - 1928 to January 1970 |
| Ken Kirkness Member - 1971 to ** |
Charles Francis Laseron DOB 1887 - 1959 Member - 1920 to November 1921 |
Peter Lawrence DOB 1882 - 1970 Member - 1925 to 1928 |
Ronald A. Lloyd Member - 1967 Joined 9th August 1967 |
Monte (Charles Robert Montague) Luke DOB 1885 - 3rd November 1962 Member - 1921 to November 1962 |
J.G. McColl April 1923 to 1931 Associate Member |
| Roy A. MacDonell DOB ** - 1973 Member - April 1971 to 1973 |
Malcolm McKinnon Member - 1916 to 1920 Foundation Member |
Henri Marie Joseph Mallard DOB November 1884 - 21st January 1967 Member - 1917 to January 1967 Retail Manager - Harringtons Photographic Merchants |
J.G. McColl Member to 1928 1924 Hon. Secretary |
John William Metcalfe DOB 1883 - 6th September 1955 Member - March 1925 to 1955 |
Mrs A.G. (Florence) Milson DOB 1897 - 1924 Member - 1920 to 1921 FIRST LADY MEMBER |
| William Heath Moffitt DOB 1888 - 1948 Member - June 1927 to 1938 |
George James Morris DOB 1884 - 5th August 1959 Member - April 1925 to 1938 Hon.Secretary and Treasurer 1925 - 1936 |
Robert Nasmyth Member - 1949 to March 1972 |
James Paton DOB ** - 9th March 1950 Member - 1916 to 1938 Foundation Member 1919 Hon. Secretary |
John L. Phillips Member - 9th August 1967 to 1978 |
Edgar N. Poole DOB ** - 29th June 1965 Member - 1917 to 1932 |
| R.D. Roddenby Member - April 1971 to ** |
Richard Vaughton Simpson DOB ** - December 1967 Member - 1928 to 1967 |
James Sydney Stening DOB 1870 - 16th September 1953 Member - 1916 to 1920 Foundation Member |
Aleck Stern Member - March 1973 to 1978 |
Sydney Ure Smith DOB 1887 - 1949 May 1921 to 1949 Associate Member |
Charles E. Wakeford DOB ** - August 1968 Member - 1917 to March 1965 Honorary Life Member March 1965 - 1968 |
| Charles F. Walton Member - 1940s to 1950s |
D'Arcy J. Webster DOB ** - 1951 Member - 1918 to 1932 1922 Hon. Secretary and Treasurer |
William Stewart White DOB c1890 - 7th January 1932 Member - 1916 to 1932 Foundation Member |
John Williams DOB 1933 Member - 1971 to ** |
Kurt Winkler Member - October 1973 to 1978 |
John L. Wray Member - 1950s to 1960s |
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1921: 14th to 28th February: at the invitation of Henri Mallard, 115 prints were displayed at the Kodak Salon, Sydney with sales totaling £70.
1921: February: Scottish Photographic Federation Salon, Dundee included 60 prints from the The Sydney Camera Circle.
1921: July: London Salon shows 9 prints by 8 members of the Circle.
1921: October: Melbourne Arts and Crafts exhibition shows 50 photographs by the members. Kodak Melbourne shows the work in their windows.
1922: Colonial Competition: The Sydney Camera Circle takes first place with medals awarded to Henri Mallard and Florence Milson by the Amateur Photographer and Photography.
1979: 12th June to 8th July: Art Gallery of New South Wales "Australian Pictorial Photography", S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney.
1984: 14th January to 1st April: Art Gallery of NSW "The The Sydney Camera Circle: The Early Years, 1916 - 1938".
CECIL WESTMORELAND BOSTOCK
1884–1939
Was born in England. He emigrated to New South Wales, Australia, with his parents in 1888. His father, George Bostock, was a bookbinder who died a few years later in 1892.
Bostock had an important influence on the development of photography in Australia, initiating a response to the strong sunlight. He presided over the transition from Pictorialism to Modernism and was a mentor to several famous Australian photographers: notably Harold Cazneaux and Max Dupain
EARLY LIFE
Cecil was first apprenticed as an electrical fitter in the Waverley Tramway Workshop. He left home around 1901 as his mother was not pleased with his decision at that time to become an artist. In 1916 he became secretary of the Photographic Society of New South Wales, and a foundation member of the The Sydney Camera Circle. In addition he became a member of the Commercial Artists Association of New South Wales, implying he worked as a photographer.
WORLD WAR I
Bostock served in the Australian Imperial Forces from 1917-1920. His Unit was the Field Artillery Brigade, May 1917 Reinforcements, which embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A28 Miltiades on 2 August 1917.
He served as a gunner where he made his only image of the war "Day breaks-cold-shrieking-bloody".
He was discharged from the army in February 1920 in Sydney, and soon after married an English girl he had met in London whilst stationed there for six months in 1919. In London, Bostock joined the Royal Photographic Society and socialized in photography circles. He also held a one-man show of his watercolors of war scenes at the Adelphi Gallery in 1920.
The Sydney Camera Circle On 28th November 1916, a group of six photographers met at Bostock's 'Little Studio in Phillip Street' to form the Pictorialist "The Sydney Camera Circle". This initially included Cecil Bostock, James Stening, W.S. White, Malcolm McKinnon and James Paton, and they were later joined by Henri Mallard.
A "manifesto" was drawn up by Cecil and signed by all six attendees who pledged "to work and to advance pictorial photography and to show our own Australia in terms of sunlight rather than those of greyness and dismal shadows". This established what was known as the 'sunshine school' of photography. The style of pictorialism practiced by Australians was "concerned with the play of light, sunshine and shadow, and the attention to nature and the landscape, and had an affinity with the Heidelberg School of painters".
During the war Harold Cazneaux used Bostock's Phillip St. studio in Denman Chambers while Bostock was away. 'The Circle' records show that meetings continued to be held in Bostock's studio until 1921.
The Sydney Camera Circle (1920's - 40's):
In 2002 a photography exhibit was held at the Shoto Museum of Art in Tokyo and the Members listed by Yuri Mitsuda, Curator in the Exhibition Catalog were: Cecil Westmoreland Bostock, Harold Pierce Cazneaux, Monte Luke (Charles Montague Luke), Henri Marie Joseph Mallard, D'Archy J. Webster, Charles E. Wakeford, William Stewart White, James E. Paton, Arthur William Christopher Ford, and Kiichiro (or Kihei) ISHIDA. Olive Cotton joined the Circle in 1939 as the first female member.
PROFESSIONAL WORK
From 1920 Bostock worked as a professional photographer. He opened commercial photography studios in various city locations in Sydney. His studio soon became notable for colorful and decorative work in the new field of advertising, illustration, and graphic design. Max Dupain started his career in Bostock's studio, and worked there from 1930-34. Dupain worked as Bostock's assistant and was given an invaluable grounding in studio lighting, large format camera usage and the usage of black & white film and processing.
WORK AS A PICTORIALIST
His photographs, on the other hand, used the techniques of pictorialism. However, as time went on, Bostock used the soft-focus, and painterly printing processes, such as bromoil, so characteristic of the era less than in his earlier years as a photographer. His work became more austere and less manipulated, than the work of other pictorialist colleagues.
In 1917, Bostock produced an album titled: "A Portfolio Of Art Photographs" in which were mounted ten small photographs. This was a limited edition of 25 copies. These met with mixed reviews, reflecting the new trends in photography towards modernism.
LATER LIFE
Just prior to his death from cancer, Bostock was instrumental in forming The Contemporary Camera Groupe, which was designed to unite artists and photographers. 'The Groupe' held a first and only exhibition in December 1938, for which Bostock designed the catalog. He had previously edited and designed the catalogs for the Australian Salon exhibitions in 1924 and 1926. The logo and 'Declaration' of the Sydney Camera Circle were also his work. Bostock, who was a skilled craftsman and bookbinder, also bound various albums for 'The Circle'.
In his later years, Bostock's work turned toward big prints, glossy surfaces and geometric pattern which were becoming fashionable with young photographers in the late 1930s.
In 1934, he was largely responsible for the illustrations for The Book Of The Anzac Memorial N.S.W. (1934).
Bostock's work and studio pieces were scattered after his death, but a few examples are held by Australian National libraries and Museums.
In 2005 an exhibition of his work was held at the Lady Denman Maritime Museum on the south coast of NSW.
PUBLICATIONS BY BOSTOCK
A portfolio of art photographs by Cecil W. Bostock: Publisher: Sydney: C.W. Bostock, 1917.
"Cameragraphs" of the year 1924: a souvenir of the first exhibition of the Australian Salon of Photography.
"Cameragraphs" of the year 1926: selections from the second exhibition of the Australian Salon of Photography.
Catalog of an exhibition of camera pictures held in Farmer's Exhibition Hall 22 April to 3 May, inclusive, 1924: officially opened by the Hon. Sir William Cullen, K.C.M.G. on Tuesday, 22 April 1924.
HAROLD PIERCE CAZNEAUX
30th March 1878 – 19th June 1953
Was an Australian pictorialist photographer; a pioneer whose style had an indelible impact on the development of Australian photographic history. In 1916, he was a founding member of the Pictorialist Sydney Camera Circle. As a regular participator in national and international exhibitions, Cazneaux was unfaltering in his desire to contribute to the discussion about the photography of his times. He created some of the most memorable images of the early twentieth century.
BIOGRAPHY
Harold Pierce Cazneaux was born in Wellington, New Zealand on 30th March 1878. His father Pierce Mott Cazneaux was an English-born photographer and his mother Emily Florence was a colorist, miniature painter and photographer from Sydney. In the 1890s the family moved to Adelaide and Harold started to working in his father's studio and attended H.P. Gill's evening classes at the School of Design, Painting and Technical Arts.
In 1904 he decided to move to Sydney where he took up a position with one of Sydney's oldest photo studios, Freeman and Co. Clearly he was good at the job as he was later appointed the firm's manager and chief operator. At the same time he honed his photographic skills documenting the architecture of old Sydney and in 1907 exhibited the Photographic Society of New South Wales. In 1909 he held the first one-man exhibition in Australia.
Cazneaux's prints were exhibited in solo shows in the windows of the Kodak Salon, Sydney, as well as international shows organized by the London Salon of Photography (1911 to 1952), and later included in the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain's annual salons. In 1914 he won Kodak's "Happy Moment" competition, and the £100 prize money went to a deposit for his future home.
He was a founder of the The Sydney Camera Circle whose Pictorialist "manifesto" was drawn up and signed on 28th November 1916 by a group of six photographers: Cecil Bostock, James Stening, W.S. White, Malcolm McKinnon and James Paton, later joined by Henri Mallard. This group pledged "to work and to advance pictorial photography and to show our own Australia in terms of sunlight rather than those of greyness and dismal shadows".
In 1921 he was elected a member of the London Salon and in 1937 he was the first Australian to be conferred an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society. Beyond his photographic oeuvre, Cazneaux was also a prolific writer. As a correspondent for Photograms of the Year (UK) for more than twenty years, he was the international voice of Australian photography. He was official photographer for Sydney Ure Smith’s lifestyle magazine The Home from 1920 to 1941, and was commissioned to produce images for a number of Ure Smith’s publications, including Sydney Surfing (1929), The Bridge Book (1930), The Sydney Book (1931) and The Australian Native Bear Book (1932).
The use of light was a defining characteristic of Cazneaux’s later work and in 1916 he and others formed the The Sydney Camera Circle, establishing the so-called ‘Sunshine School' of photography. The Circle was created for a number of important reasons: it embraced the particularities of Australian light and landscape, and was a move away from the English-inspired darker imagery dominating photographic practice at that time.
Cazneaux's work was championed for decades by the editor of The Home magazine, Sydney Ure Smith.
The National Library of Australia is the home of the principal archive of Cazneaux prints and negatives, thanks to the generosity of the Cazneaux family. The Art Gallery of New South Wales also has a fine collection of Cazneaux’s work, and was the first Australian museum to hold a major exhibition of his work in 1975.
The exhibition Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in June and July 2008 included more than 100 of his iconic images, exploring the breadth and depth of his work such as landscape, portraits, the harbour and the city.
An exhibition of his photographs, called "Thoroughly modern Sydney: 1920s and 30s glamor and style" was held at the Museum of Sydney, in Sydney in August–October 2006. It was assembled largely from images he took for the Australian magazine "Home", though it also included new prints from previously unpublished negatives. The subject ranged across "all that was fashionable and new" at that time, covering architecture, art and interior design, and also including many portraits of Australians then active in those fields.
He married Winifred, and had five daughters, including Joan and Rainbow and a son, Harold, who died aged 21 at Tobruk in 1941. The entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith is his grandson.
Cazneaux lived for much of his life in the Sydney suburb of Roseville. His home, a Federation cottage called Ambleside, is located in Dudley Avenue, but was sadly neglected as of 2012.
One of Cazneaux's most famous images was taken in 1937, of a solitary river red gum tree, near Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The title he gave to the photograph was "The Spirit of Endurance", for the qualities he felt epitomized the tree's survival in a harsh environment.
The tree still stands and, known as "The Cazneaux Tree", is a notable landmark within the Flinders Ranges National Park, classified as number 239 on the National Trust of South Australia's Register of Significant Trees.
image 1: The War Memorial, Newington College, Sydney, New South Wales, designed by William Hardy Wilson
image 2: Sydney city, photographic print by Harold Cazeneaux, about 1920, State Library of New South Wales, PXD 8061-39 a2057032h
image 3: William Hardy Wilson at Purulia, Warrawee, New South Wales, 1921
EMILY FLORENCE CAZNEAU (née BENTLEY)
14th May 1855 – 24th March 1892
Emily Florence Cazneau was an Australian born New Zealand artist and professional photographer. Cazneau originally worked in Sydney at the Freeman Brothers photographic studio as a colourist and miniature painter. She moved to Wellington in the early 1870's, establishing a professional photographic studio with her husband.
Cazneau took photographs of the Mount Tarawera eruption. She also lectured at the Exhibition Building in Wellington using lantern slides made from her negatives.
She continued to operate the studio until 1890 when she moved to Adelaide. An example of her work is in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The National Library of New Zealand also holds examples of her work.
FAMILY
Cazneau met her husband Pierce Mott Cazneau while working at Freemans Brother. She married him on 23rd December 1876. She went on to give birth to her son Harold on 30th March 1878 in Wellington.
Portrait of Emily Florence Cazneau (née Bentley)
Sydney, ca. 1870s by Pierce Mott Cazneau
Source: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-144116044/view
JAMES SYDNEY STENING
1870 – 16th September 1953
James Sydney Stening was an Australian photographer who was born in 1870 in Sydney. He was then later trained to be a jeweler. Stening's first employment was with Fairfax and Roberts Jewellers, which he decided to stay with until retirement in his older age.
PHOTOGRAPHY
In the early 1890s Stening started practising photography. A few years later in 1894, he was one of the founding members of the Photographic Society of New South Wales, then later in 1916 he became involved with the The Sydney Camera Circle. Also, in 1909, Stening assisted Harold Cazneaux with him arguably making Cazneaux's first exhibition possible. Stening also was involved with the Ashfield District Camera Club which consisted of his friends Norman Deck, Henri Mallard and Frank Hurley. His style of photography was focused on finely detailed landscapes which he gained inspiration from off Norman Deck, with a liking more to the tones of platinum printing papers. Stening occasionally delved into impressionistic soft-focus photographs printed on bromide paper. In an exhibition in 1907 at the Art Gallery of NSW which included Stening's work, one of the comments made by the reviewer was ‘what wonderful strides have been made in the art of the camera, when manipulated by an artist, and how closely the modern photographer is getting to pure pictorial representation' 1920, he chose to leave all photographic societies. Despite this, Stening took on new technology in the form of a 35mm Leica camera which was released in 1925, continuing his photography practise for a some time after this. The Art Gallery of New South Wales later received a donation of his negatives from Norman Deck.
COLLECTIONS
Stening's work is featured in the National Gallery of Australia, and also in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
EXHIBITIONS
Shortening Shadows, Bracken Time, Born to Toil, Days Work Nearly Done and The Edge of the Common featured in an exhibition by the Photographic Society of New South Wales in 1903.
The Stock Route, The Pioneer, A Summer Fantasy, White Sails, The King's Highway, The Turpentines, Harvesting the Golden Grain, Eucalypts, Morning, Bringing Them In, E'en Shades, and Born to Toil featured in an exhibition by the Photographic Society of New South Wales in 1917.
The Stock Route, and A Summer Fantasy were featured in an exhibition by the Photographic Society of New South Wales in 1922.
The Edge of The Common was featured in the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney from 12th June 1979 to 8th July 1979, The Victorian College of the Arts Gallery in Southbank from 8th August 1979 to 31st August 1979, Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide from 1st December 1979 to 30th January 1980, and in Soft Shadows and Sharp Lines: Australian photography from Cazneaux to Dupain, Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney from 30th September 2002 to 17th November 2002.
Untitled (Treescape) was featured in the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney from 12th June 1979 to 8th July 1979, The Victorian College of the Arts Gallery in Southbank from 8th August 1979 to 31st August 1979, and in the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide from 1st December 1979 to 30th January 1980.
image 1: On the Edge of the Common by James S. Stening circa 1900
image 2: Droving Cattle by James S. Stening circa 1903-1910
ERIC KEAST BURKE
16th January 1896 – 31st March 1974
Photograph of Sapper Eric Keast Burke, taken at the site of the old Babylon Railway Station.
He served in the 1st Australian Wireless Signal Squadron, Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force from 1917-1920 and this photograph was taken during this time.
Eric Burke was a New Zealand-born photographer and journalist.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Burke was born at Christchurch, New Zealand. He was the only child of Walter Ernest Burke, and his wife Amy Eliza Mary, nee Thompson. He went to Sydney with his family in March 1904 and was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School and the University of Sydney where he studied economics.
WAR SERVICE
During World War I, after a year in the Signal Corps, Australian Military Forces, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. He embarked for the Middle East in December 1917 and served as a sapper with the 1st Australian Wireless Signal Squadron, Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force. He was discharged on 28 January 1920 on his return to Sydney.
During World War II he served as a captain in the Volunteer Defence Corps, and worked in intelligence.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND RESEARCH
In 1922 he became associate-editor, under his father, of the Australasian Photo-Review. He exhibited his work in Australia, Europe, London and the United States of America, and in 1938 was elected an associate of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain for a portfolio of male figure studies. That year he was appointed Australian chairman of Kodak International Salons of Photography.
He edited the Australasian Photo-Review from 1946 until the journal folded in 1956 when he was employed as advertising manager for the Kodak Company.
Recognizing the significance of photography to Australian history, in 1943 Burke published a series of articles on early photographers, among them William Jevons, John Lindt and Charles Kerry. His wife, Iris, became his valued research assistant. Keast provided his expertise to Jack Cato through regular correspondence as the latter was researching for his The Story of the Camera in Australia, published in 1955.
In 1952 Burke located the Holtermann Collection of wet-plate negatives and recommended its donation to the Mitchell Library in Sydney. In a shed in Chatswood, New South Wales, glass plates created by Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss were ranged in 'neat stacks of cedar boxes of various dimensions, each with slotted fittings which held the large negatives in perfect preservation'. The negatives disclosed 'every detail of the lives of our gold-fields pioneers'.
Burke lectured on the collection, prepared exhibitions and presented a television series, 'Peeps into the Past with Keast Burke', for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. As consultant in photography to the National Library of Australia, Canberra, he ensured the preservation of historic photographs.
He retired in 1960.
LATER LIFE
Burke was editor and art director of Australian Popular Photography from 1961 to 1969, a contributor to the Australian Dictionary of Biography and a frequent judge of photographic competitions. His interests included bush walking, native flora and fauna, genetics, maps and map-making, amateur radio, architecture and engineering.
Eric Keast Burke died on 31st March 1974 in Concord Repatriation General Hospital and was cremated. On 23rd November 1925 he had married Iris Lily Daniell and was survived by her, a daughter and three sons.
WORKS
Burke, Keast; Australian and New Zealand Wireless Signal Squadron History. Committee (1927), With horse and morse in Mesopotamia: the story of Anzacs in Asia, A. and N.Z. Wireless Signal Squadron History. Committee, retrieved 15th July 2014.
Burke, Keast (1932), Achievement: a collection of unusual studies of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, McPherson's Pty. Ltd, retrieved 15th July 2014.
Burke, Keast (1973), Gold and silver: an album of Hill End and Gulgong photographs from the Holtermann Collection, Heinemann, ISBN 978-0-85561-005-0.
OLIVE EDITH COTTON
11th July 1911 – 27th September 2003
Photograph of Olive Cotton at the beach, taken by Max Dupain
Olive Cotton was a pioneering Australian modernist female photographer of the 1930s and 1940s working in Sydney. Cotton became a national "name" with a retrospective and touring exhibition 50 years later in 1985. A book of her life and work, published by the National Library of Australia, came out in 1995. Cotton captured her childhood friend Max Dupain from the sidelines at photoshoots, e.g. "Fashion shot, Cronulla Sandhills, circa 1937" and made several portraits of him. Dupain was Cotton's first husband.
The prestigious Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture was set up in her honor and funded by Cotton’s family and held at the Tweed regional gallery in New South Wales.
EARLY LIFE
Olive Edith Cotton was born on 11th July 1911, the eldest child in an artistic, intellectual family. Her parents, Leo and Florence (née Channon) provided a musical background along with political and social awareness. Her mother was a painter and pianist while Leo was a geologist, who took photographs on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic in 1907. The Cotton family and their five children lived in the then bushland suburb of Hornsby in Sydney's north. An uncle, Frank Cotton was a professor of physiology and her grandfather, also Frank Cotton, was a Member of Parliament in the first Labor Caucus.
Given a Kodak No.0 Box Brownie camera at the age of 11, Cotton with the help of her father made the home laundry into a darkroom "with the enlarger plugged into the ironing light". Here Cotton processed film and printed her first black and white images. While on holidays with her family at Newport Beach in 1924, Cotton met Max Dupain and they became friends, sharing a passion for photography. The photograph "She-oaks" (1928) was taken at Bungan Beach headland in this period.
Cotton attended the Methodist Ladies College, Burwood in Sydney from 1921 to 1929, gained a scholarship and went on to complete a B.A. at the University of Sydney in 1933, majoring in English and Mathematics; she also studied music and was an accomplished pianist with a particular fondness for Chopin's Nocturnes.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Cotton joined the The Sydney Camera Circle and the Photographic Society of New South Wales, gaining instruction and encouragement from important photographers such as Harold Cazneaux.
She exhibited her first photograph, "Dusk", at the Photographic Society of New South Wales Interstate Exhibition of 1932. She exhibited quite frequently, her photography was personal in feeling with an appreciation of certain qualities of light in the surroundings. After university she pursued photography by joining Dupain at his new studio, 24 Bond Street, Sydney. Her contemporaries included Damien Parer, Geoff Powell, the model Jean Lorraine and photographer Olga Sharpe, who frequented the studio.
In Australia during the 1930s clients assumed a man would be the photographer. Cotton wryly referred to herself as "the assistant". However whenever possible Cotton photographed visiting celebrities or interesting objects in the studio, even capturing Dupain working in her piece, "Fashion shot, Cronulla Sandhills, circa 1937" and made portraits of him. The publisher Sydney Ure Smith gave her many commissions, and regarded her as one of the best photographers of the 1930s and 1940s.
During the 1930s Cotton developed mastery using the 'Pictorial' style of photography popular at the time and also incorporated a very modern style approach.
The Commonwealth Bank's staff magazine Bank Notes featured Cotton's more non-commercial photographs as illustrations.
SIGNATURE PHOTOGRAPHS
image 1: TEA CUP BALLET, 1935
image 2: ONLY TO TASTE THE WARMTH, THE LIGHT, THE WIND, 1939
Tea cup ballet (1935) was photographed in the studio after Cotton had bought some inexpensive china from Woolworth's to replace the old chipped studio crockery. In it she used a technique of back lighting to cast bold shadows towards the viewer to express a dance theme between the shapes of the tea cups, their saucers and their shadows. It was exhibited locally at the time and in the London Salon of Photography in 1935. It has become Cotton's signature image and was acknowledged on a stamp commemorating 150 years of photography in Australia in 1991. Tea cup ballet features on the cover of the book Olive Cotton: Photographer published by the National Library of Australia in 1995.
Shasta Daisies (1937) and The Budapest String Quartet (c. 1937) were included in the Victorian Salon of Photography exhibition of 1937.
In 1939 Cotton married her longtime friend Max Dupain. They separated in 1941 and were divorced in 1944.
Cotton received numerous commissions in 1945, including photographs of winter and spring flowers for Helen Blaxland's book Flower Pieces, which also included some images by Dupain. Sydney Ure Smith was an advocate of her work, and she did many commissions for his various art publications.
In mid-1947 Cotton went to live in the bush 35km from Cowra, New South Wales, with her new husband Ross McInerney. They lived in a tent for the first three years, then moving to a small farm where their two children grew up. She taught Mathematics at Cowra High School for five years until 1964 when she opened a small photographic studio in the town, taking many portraits, wedding photographs, etc., for people in the surrounding district, where her work became well-known and much appreciated, although she was as yet unknown on the postwar city art scene until 1985.
EXHIBITIONS
Among others, her work was shown in the following exhibitions:
1938 Commemorative Salon of Photography exhibition held by the Photographic Society of New South Wales as part of the Australian 150th anniversary celebrations.
1938 Group show with the Contemporary Camera Groupe at David Jones Gallery, Sydney.
1981 Australian Women Photographers 1890-1950 touring exhibition, curated by Jenni Mather, Christine Gillespie and Barbara Hall.
1985 Olive Cotton Photographs 1924-1984 retrospective held at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, touring numerous regional galleries in NSW, Victoria and Queensland throughout 1986.
DEATH
Cotton died on 28th September 2003, aged 92.
COLLECTIONS
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Camping trips on Culburra Beach, NSW, 1937, Max Dupain and Olive Cotton, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, SAFE/PXA 195
Shots of flowers, poppies, ca. 1946, photographed by Olive Cotton, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ON 559/Box 23/nos. 226-236
Cherry blossom, ca. 1946, photographed by Olive Cotton, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ON 559/Box 23/nos. 237-246, PXA 2141/no. 746
Photographs taken for Greta Lofberg, December 1938, photographed by Olive Cotton, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, ON 559/Box 30/nos. 907-933
Interview with Olive Cotton, 19th July 1997, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, MLOH 808 Item 05
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Waverley City Council Collection, Melbourne
Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Victoria
LAURENCE CRADDOCK LE GUAY
25th December 1916 – 2nd February 1990
Laurence (Laurie) Craddock Le Guay, was an Australian fashion photographer.
BIOGRAPHY
Laurence Craddock Le Guay was born on 25th December 1916 at Chatswood Sydney, of locally born parents Charles Sidney Le Guay, company secretary, and Doris Alma Le Guay, née Usher.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Le Guay’s schoolboy hobby of photography was encouraged by Harold Cazneaux and from 1935, at age eighteen, he worked as an assistant at Dayne portrait studio, before opening his own studio in Martin Place in 1937, to concentrate on illustrative and fashion photography. He joined the Pictorialist The Sydney Camera Circle in 1940 and exhibited with them at various national and international photographic salons. He began producing photo-montage work of a more Surrealist style around the contemporary theme of the Machine Age and incorporating the heroic nude, most significant being The Progenitors (1938). Many of these became illustrations in the newly founded Man: The Australian magazine for men. Consequently, in November 1938 he was invited by Max Dupain and Olive Cotton to join them in forming the Contemporary Camera Groupe with others including Douglas Annand, Harold Cazneaux, Damien Parer, Cecil Bostock and Russell Roberts. The Groupe proclaimed themselves as Modernist, seceding from Pictorialism, and the youngest members were, like Le Guay, commercial photographers. They were inspired by a new image of the body, Australian in that it referred to sun-worshiping beach culture, health and vitality.
WAR SERVICE AND LATER FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY
ONE OF LE GUAY'S PHOTOGRAFIES ON TOULON, AFTER ITS BATTLE.
Le Guay enlisted with the Royal Australian Air Force in 1940, serving as a photographer in the Mediterranean (1941–43) and the Middle East (1943–45). Demobilized in Sydney in January 1946, Le Guay founded Contemporary Photography, the first Australian photographic magazine not published by a photo supply firm, and taught photography. He set up studio that year in George Street, then in the old Smith's Weekly building, moving, in 1947, to a partnership with John Nisbett on Castlereagh Street. They were among the first in Australia to use outdoor locations for fashion photography.
In 1947-48, after producing a film on Sydney Harbour Bridge, he joined the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition, and also photographed for the Australian Geographical Society, with one photograph shot in New Guinea included by Edward Steichen in The Family of Man exhibition in New York in 1955, which toured the world to reach the largest audience of any photographic exhibition since.
Le Guay continued to be a significant international, and Sydney's leading, fashion photographer throughout the 50s and 60s, rivaling Athol Shmith in Melbourne. The Le Guay/Nisbett studio was joined in 1961 by David Mist. Born in London, Mist trained and worked in the UK, so augmented his partners acquired European élan, and further enlivened the burgeoning local industry.
CONTRIBUTIONS AS WRITER AND EDITOR
Le Guay closed his studio on Castlereagh Street, Sydney in 1970, to concentrate on publishing books on his photography, editing Australian Photography magazine publications: Australian Photography 76 (1977) and Australian Photography - a contemporary view (1978), giving lectures, and also taking up deepwater sailing.
He died on 2nd February 1990 survived by Ann Warmington, whom he had married 22nd July 1948 and divorced in 1967, and one daughter.
PUBLICATIONS
Le Guay, Laurence (1949). A Portfolio of Australian photography. H.J. Edwards, Sydney
Le Guay, Laurence & Slessor, Kenneth, 1901-1971 (1966). Sydney Harbour. Angus & Robertson, Sydney
Le Guay, Laurence & Falkiner, Suzanne (1980). Australian Aborigines : Shadows in a landscape (1st ed). Globe Publishing, Sydney.
Le Guay, Laurence (1975). Sailing free: around the world with a blue water Australian. Ure Smith, Sydney
Le Guay, Laurence (1976). Australian photography 1976. Globe, Sydney
Le Guay, Laurence (1978). Australian photography: a contemporary view. J.H. Coleman, Globe Publishing, Sydney
CHARLES ROBERT MONTAGUE LUKE
1885, Geelong, Victoria - 1962 Sydney
Monte joined the Sydney Camera Circle in 1921 and meetings were henceforth held in his studio until at least the late thirties.
1928 awarded FRPS - Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
Monte Luke will always be remembered as the man who captured the people of his city, their life and times, through a camera lens. From the early 1920s to the Great Depression, World War Two and into the nineteen-fifties, Monte led from the front as the Sydney photographic studio that carried his name focused on the famous and not-so-famous, the rich and poor, sportsmen and business chiefs, artists and actors.
Charles Robert Montague Luke, who would become known to one and all as Monte, was born in Geelong, Victoria, in 1885. His father, Edmund Thomas Luke, was a pioneer newspaper photographer in Melbourne and passed the skills of the trade on to his son. Monte’s first job was as a messenger and mixer of chemical compounds for the well known suppliers of photographic equipment, Baker & Rouse.
He married a Ballarat girl, Elsie Speed, who would later take over management of his studio. After being appointed official photographer for then theatrical kings J.C. Williamson Ltd, he made three silent movies for them.
In 1919 Monte went into partnership with the Falk Studio, which was located within the historic Strand Arcade in Sydney. The Falk Studio was then well-established as one of Sydney’s most renowned photographic studios, having been commissioned to take the official portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York when the royal couple came to Australia for the Federation celebrations of 1901.
Soon Monte set up his own business, also situated in the Strand, in the old studios of another well-known Sydney photographer L.W. Appleby. He specialized in social portraits and weddings and also gained recognition for his work in advertising.
Monte was invited to join the influential Sydney Camera Circle in 1921 and many meetings of this elite group of photographers, which had been formed in 1916 with the objective of promoting a distinctive Australian style of pictorial photography, were held in his Studio. Two of the most prominent founding members of the Sydney Camera Circle were Harold Cazneaux – often described as the father of modern Australian photography – and Cecil Bostock, later the tutor of Max Dupain, who would go on to international acclaim for his black and white Sydney beach scenes, landscapes and architectural studies.
The Sydney Camera Circle moved local photography beyond the low-toned British style of print that was then the norm by introducing, as the visionary Cazneaux put it, "truly Australian sunshine effects". Monte embraced this new direction and his light-filled landscapes took their place alongside his striking portraits as his signature. A lavish book of these landscapes, was published in the 1930s and the photographs were exhibited in the United States and Europe, winning a string of prizes.
While his good friend Harold Cazneaux chronicled the changing face of Sydney, Monte recorded the faces of its people. He also accompanied another friend, Walter Burley Griffin, on the acclaimed architect’s journey to survey the site which is today Canberra, the national capital. Monte recorded that historic mission with what was even then regarded as an "old" movie camera.
In a way, he was following his father’s footsteps, for in 1902 Edmund Luke had accompanied the Senate delegation that toured various sites in New South Wales and Victoria, trying to determine where Australia’s new capital should be situated. A number of Edmund’s photographs of that expedition are held by the National Library in Canberra, including photographs of the senators at various sites around what is the ACT, from Lake George in the north to Dalgety in the south.
HENRI MARIE JOSEPH MALLARD
9th February 1884 – 21st January 1967
Henri Mallard, was an Australian photographer.
Born in Balmain (Sydney, Australia) of French parents, he came to photography via the industry. Using his French connections, and accent (which was strong owing to his home education), he secured a position in 1900 with Harrington (later Kodak Pty. Ltd.) as a sales representative to the French consulate. He remained with the company, becoming general manager, until 1952. With ready access to equipment and materials he was an enthusiastic amateur exhibitor by 1904.
IN THE PHOTOGRAPHIC COMMUNITY
He used his business and connections to support other photographers; he was influential on fellow Sydney-sider Frank Hurley, encouraging the budding photographer's interest in the medium and in 1911 recommending Hurley for the position of official photographer to Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic expedition, ahead of himself; moving to Harrington's Melbourne office in 1913, he opened the showrooms to exhibitions, including that of John Kauffmann in 1914.
He was a strong advocate for art photography; on his return to Sydney (1916) he joined (in 1917) The Sydney Camera Circle whose "manifesto" had been drawn up and signed on 28th November 1916 by the founding group of six photographers; Harold Cazneaux, Cecil Bostock, James Stening, W.S. White, Malcolm McKinnon and James Paton. They pledged "to work and to advance pictorial photography and to show our own Australia in terms of sunlight rather than those of greyness and dismal shadows". He also contributed lectures and technical demonstrations to the Photographic Society of New South Wales.
SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE
He is best known for his documentation of the Australian icon Sydney Harbour Bridge between the late 1920s to the early 1930s. Photographing from precarious vantage points on the bridge itself, sometimes a hundred metres above Sydney Harbour, his work sets the construction against the harbour and the growing city and uses the figures of the workers to represent the scale of this Depression-era engineering feat. His pictures and film of the Bridge were an intentional historical document and the project was self-generated. Between 1930 and 1932, he produced hundreds of stills and film footage.
Prior to his project to document the Bridge, Mallard worked in the Pictorialist style prevailing in the Photographic Society of New South Wales, and though Modernist in composition and design, many of the Bridge images are printed in bromoil. By comparison, Harold Cazneaux's contemporaneous photographs, taken from around the base of the bridge, retain a romantic Pictorialism.
RECOGNITION
In 1976 the Australian Centre for Photography commissioned David Moore (1927–2003) to make an archive of gelatin silver prints from the collection of Mallard's glass negatives and these were published in association with Sun Books in 1978.
“Here we have the documentary photograph, radical enough in its context, the social document, a large slice of Sydney's evolution and an example to all of us who think of future generations in terms of historical narration".
Written by Max Dupain
MRS A.G. (FLORENCE) MILSON
active 1919 to 1924
Florence Milson was the wife of Alfred G. Milson of Milson’s Point, Sydney, and was highly regarded by Harold Cazneaux, from whom she received lessons in 1919.
Presumably it was Cazneaux who nominated Mrs Milson in 1920 as the first (and only) lady member of the Sydney Camera Circle. By 1921 the circle minute book records that Mrs Milson was “deemed to have resigned for personal reasons”, although she continued exhibiting locally and in overseas salons until around 1924.
Mrs Milson made a visit to England around 1923 and was encouraged by F.J. Mortimer, the editor of The Amateur Photographer, with whose help she organized an exhibition of overseas pictorialists work for showing in Sydney and Melbourne in 1924.
Unfortunately, only a few of Mrs Milson’s photographs are known to have survived. Mrs Milson evidently gave up photography shortly after sending the pictorial exhibition to Australia.
above text based on Gael Newton's book, Silver & Grey, published by Angus and Roberston, Australia 1980
Florence Milson was awarded a silver medal by the Amateur Photographer and Photography in the 1920 Colonial competition.
SYDNEY GEORGE URE SMITH OBE
9th January 1887 – 11th October 1949
Sydney Ure Smith was an Australian arts publisher, artist and promoter who "did more than any other Australian to publicize Australian art at home and overseas".
Unlike most of his contemporaries, he seldom submitted his own art work for publication. He published some of his own work in limited edition books such as Old Sydney (1911) and Old Colonial By-Ways (1928), prompted by his passion for preserving historic buildings.
EARLY LIFE
He was born in London in 1887 and arrived in Australia with his parents later that same year. His father (d. 1919) was manager of the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne and later of the Hotel Australia, Sydney for over 20 years. His parents adopted the form "Ure Smith": his mother (d. 1931) was born Catherine Ure, but formally their surname remained Smith.
He was educated at Queen's College, Melbourne and then at Sydney Grammar School. He studied pencil and ink drawing at the Julian Ashton Art School (1902–07) and then learnt the techniques of etching from Eirene Mort. At age 19 he helped Harry Julius and Albert Collins found the commercial art studio that later became Smith and Julius.
He died after several years of ill health and was survived by a son from his second marriage, Sydney George 'Sam' Ure Smith (died 19th November 2013) and a daughter, Dorothy Hemphill (died 15th March 2009).
BUSINESS
Artistic expression to him was never more than a pleasant pastime; his real passion lay in harnessing technology to reproduce the works of others. In 1916 he founded a syndicate with Bertram Stevens and Charles Lloyd Jones to publish Art in Australia, and in the same year he founded the commercial art studio and advertising firm Smith and Julius with Harry Julius, specializing in high quality artwork for prestigious clients such as Dunlop and Berlei. They employed such prominent Sydney artists as James Muir Auld, Fred Britton, Frank Burdett, Harold Cazneaux, Albert Collins (who was a director from 1916–51), Roy de Maistre, Adrian Feint, George Frederick Lawrence, Percival Leason, John Passmore, Lloyd Rees, Bill Sparrow and Roland Wakelin. After 1923 he ceased active involvement with the company.
He founded magazine The Home, published monthly from February 1920–42, in the mould of Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Vanity Fair.
He founded Ure Smith Pty. Ltd. in 1939, initially to publish Australian National Journal (quarterly, 1939–47). He edited books on J.J. Hilder, Arthur Streeton, Blamire Young, Hans Heysen, Norman Lindsay, Elioth Gruner, Margaret Preston, George Lambert, Douglas Annand, Francis Lymburner and William Dobell.
He published Present Day Art in Australia (his son Sam Ure Smith produced a similar book, Present Day Art and Australia). He also published the Australian Art Annual and a number of book series including the Walkabout Pocketbooks and the Ure Smith Miniature Series.
PUBLIC LIFE
He led a furiously active public life: he was a foundation member (with Gayfield Shaw, Lionel Lindsay, John Shirlow, Eirene Mort, David Barker, Albert Henry Fullwood, John Barclay Godson, and Bruce Robertson) of the Australian Painter-Etchers Society in 1920 and almost certainly was instrumental in founding its daughter organization, the Australian Print Collectors Club in 1925.
He was president of the New South Wales Society of Artists in the period 1921–47. He was a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales 1927–47 (and vice-president 1943–47, supporting the controversial 1943 Archibald Prize going to William Dobell for his portrait of Joshua Smith).
He was on the Advisory Committee for Applied Art (1925-31), a member of the Australian War Memorial art committee and a trustee of the New South Wales government traveling scholarship committee.
From 1937 was a foundation member and vice-president of the Australian Academy of Art. He was chairman of the committees for the cultural section of the Australian pavilions at New York World's Fair (1939) and the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition (1939-40). He was on the organizing committee for the Art of Australia exhibition that toured North America (1941-45). He was one of the founders of the Empire-United States of America Art Trust, and a council member of the Australian Limited Editions Society. He was a frequent guest on radio programs.
RECOGNITION
He was awarded the New South Wales Society of Artists medal in 1931. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1937.
PERSONAL LIFE
He married a fellow art student Viola Austral Quaife, a granddaughter of Rev. Barzillai Quaife in 1909. His second wife was Ethel Bickley.