1953
THE CAZNEAUX STORY
BY
JACK CATO
BEING THE BIOGRAPHY OF
HAROLD CAZNEAUX HON. FRPS
(1878 - 19th June 1953)
It seems to be natural for us to form in our minds a physical picture of a man that in some way approximates to his works and that picture is nearly always wrong. And if you know Caz only by his work and place in Australian photography you will naturally make the same mistake; you will picture a great commanding figure.
Yet Caz is not very big nor is his voice very loud. He is by nature modest, quiet, gentle and self-effacing. There are many pictures of him in old camera circle groups. He is always somewhere at the back and usually seen in profile. Here he looks the type of person concerning whom one would ask “And who is the nice looking young man at the back?” Truly, size and voice contribute nothing to a man’s mental stature, to his happiness in his work, his genius, or his strength of character. That Caz has all these qualities in full measure you will find as we tell of his fine inspiring career, his reputation in the great salons and something of his ceaseless enthusiasm and unselfish devotion to the cause of the camera in this country.
I will begin with two estimates of his work. One by a world authority and the other by Caz himself. They give us, on the one hand, an appraisal of his merits and on the other a clue to his character. In "Photograms of the Year" for 1911, H. Snowden Ward, then foremost critic of the London Salons wrote, “In one stride Harold Cazneaux comes from the position of a very good man indeed to rank with the few outstanding workers of the world in pictorial photography ... I place him with the dozen or more of the pioneers from whom one can expect anything of note”. Now read what he wrote me about himself when I was trying to extract out of him a few old tributes. “I would like you to quote this stuff with some reserve. Personally, do not think I’m as clever or as famous as many claim I am. Many a time I see other men’s work around me which I silently acknowledge as the work of masters and I get a great thrill out of it. Some of them have told me they have to thank me for the inspiration; if that is so, I am glad”.
And yet, wrapped up in this small and modest parcel that is Caz is a strength of mind and a force of character that have spurred him to fight, all his life, for the expression of his own personality in the direction he instinctively believed to be right and have given him that streak of individuality that is the keynote of his life and of his work.
He gave notice of this latter quality quite early. Though he was christened Harold Cazneau, he found fault with both names and changed them. An ancestor once crossed the 'x' from the end of the family name; when Caz heard of it he promptly put it back again. Then he discarded the Harold and with a fine sense of brevity became ‘Caz’. Nothing could be more personal or individual for surely no one else in the world can lay claim to those three letters.
All his long life he has been a professional photographer and yet he has never had formal business premises; he has never owned a studio camera and he has never been a member of a professional photographers association. In fact, all his ways and his whole career have been a revolt against the traditional approach.
Half a century ago he declared himself on the side of the amateurs. They became his friends and his sole associates. His social clubs were amateur camera clubs, especially, the Sydney Camera Circle. And it was amongst them that he became, for this country, the chief spokesman of the pictorial movement that aimed to destroy the conventional portrait - formula which, in those days, meant the depicting of most sitters in the same manner; he insisted that in future every subject be treated as a new, separate and individual study. Caz is not really a professional at all. He’s the supreme amateur; the amateur as my dictionary defines it — one that cultivates any study or art from taste and attachment. It is derived from the Latin amator meaning lover.
Caz is a photographer because he loves photography and the longer he has lived with it the more enamored of it he has become; at seventy-four he has lost not a whit of his young enthusiasm. That photography supported him to a degree of comfort has been entirely incidental, for had the art achieved half as much it would still have been an enchantment to him.
Before dealing with him in detail let me start with a quick psychological background of the Caz whose life I know so well and rank so highly.
First then, picture a babe born to the smell of the ether that dissolved the collodion for the wet plates in his father’s studio. Photography was in his blood from the beginning, for his mother was also a skilled camera worker, so Caz was brought up and nurtured in this atmosphere.
Next, when he had started work (it was with a studio), he saw the first exhibition in this country of the work of the 'Pictorial Movement' and he at once decided to dedicate his life to the cult. From that day he began experimenting and soon a cheap box camera was accompanying him to and from his work. Each day he chose a different route; by the docks, by the slums or by the main streets; getting the light and the long shadows of early morning and the evening; and recording the customs and manners and the dress of his day. That was a foretaste of things to come, previewing Caz in “Old Sydney”, Caz and his Candid Camera, Caz and the Documentary; all of it thirty years ahead of his time.
Unfortunately, the man who is far ahead of his time is in for plenty of grief until the world catches up and understands him. To this law Caz was no exception, for soon we see him as Caz the young studio operator surrounded by all those painted back grounds and artificial props that still remained, a hangover as it were, from the wet-plate days. Here was hardly any kind of outlet for growing ideas of advanced pictorialism.
Then we find 'Caz' smoldering in revolt; happily married and with a young family but miserably unhappy in his work. Denied the self-expression that meant life to him, he was dying of frustration. When his spirit could stand it no longer, neither could his body. It was called a nervous breakdown. For a long time he lay in bed; then his recovery was speeded by one fixed idea, that he was finished with tradition and that, for better or for worse, the rest of his life would be devoted to doing his work in his own way.
By the time he had fully recovered his resources seemed to be at a low ebb, but a helping hand was forthcoming. A friendly professional, with an 'amateur' outlook very much akin to his own, generously offered him the use of his rooms. Here from old negatives made in his spare time over the years, he prepared and placed on view an exhibition of his work. The happy outcome was that the critics praised it to the skies. Sydney Ure Smith — a fine Australian with a big program of artistic publications in mind and one that needed a cameraman with a new outlook noted the newspaper reviews. He came and saw and was conquered. He offered Caz all the camera work for this new venture. Thus Caz found his ideal patron and at long last, his heart’s desire: a man who wanted him to express himself in his own way in his work.
He was now his own man. He was cultivating his art from taste, from love of the study. He was the Prince of Amateurs.
Harold Cazneaux was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on March 30th, 1878. Old records tell of his family moving from its native France to Boston, U.S.A., in the middle of the 18th century. Early in the 19th Century two great-uncles and his grandfather returned to England, one of them to become a master ship-builder in Liverpool; another to preach in Trinity Chapel, London and his grandfather, Edward Lancelot Cazneaux, 1810-1856, to study at the Royal Academy of Arts and become a successful portrait and landscape painter.
Lancelot Cazneaux died at the age of 46 and his widow, acting on the advice of her brother who was a sea-captain in the Australian coastal trade, came out to this country with her five sons in the ship "Great Britain" in 1856. She invested her money in sheep at Eden on Twofold Bay and when this proved a failure she moved to Sydney and supported herself as a concert pianist and a teacher of music.
Her third son, Pierce Mott Cazneaux, who became Caz’s father, was born at Liverpool, England in 1849. He came under the spell of photography when he was very young and started his career as a boy at Freeman’s Studio in George Street, Sydney. Here Mott eventually became chief operator and here it was that he met the young lady who became his wife and the mother of Caz. She was Emily Florence Bently, an expert colorist and a miniature painter. Apart from her own considerable talents, Florence also brought a tradition of the arts into the family. Her grandfather Tom Bently was a black-and-white artist who specialized in character studies. He came out to Sydney in 1839 and during the tedious voyage cemented a life-long friendship with a young companion named Henry Parkes who had a flair for picturesque phrases. One of them — “There’s a scarlet thread of kinship runs through us all” — probably did more than any thing to give us Federation and to earn for Parkes the title of “The Father of his Country”.
Freeman’s Studio was then probably the leading house of portraiture in Australia, so both of Caz’s parents must have worked to a very high standard. Towards the end of the 1870’s Mott Cazneaux moved to Wellington, New Zealand, and opened a partnership studio called Cazneaux and Connelly. Soon Florence joined him and they were married. Later on they opened, in the same city, a studio of their own where both of them operated.
Caz remembers a day when riding with his mother in a horse drawn tram, that before him on a frosted window was a studio advertisement of a lady standing beside a camera with the shutter bulb in her hand. “Mummie!” exclaimed Caz, “that’s you, isn’t it?” and he was right. Florence Cazneaux took many pictures of the Mt. Tarawera eruption showing the tragic destruction of the Pink-and-White Terraces. These negatives were made into lantern slides, and Florence gave a public lecture on them at the Exhibition Building in Wellington.
In the early 1890’s the Cazneaux family returned to Australia where Mott first managed Duryea’s studio, and later Hammer and Co., of Adelaide. Mott is still remembered by many old pupils for his ingenious methods of controlling light for portraiture. Mr. J.J. Rouse said that Mott Cazneaux was the most consistently good operator of his day. Mott was also a cellist, a fine musician who played in numerous orchestras; his home was a center of interest in the theatre and in music. He was a man of great personal charm.
And it was here, with his father at Hammer’s Studio in Adelaide, that Caz began his photographic career soon after his eighteenth birthday. Throughout all his early years his hobby had been drawing and sketching and with this artist’s flair for brush and pencil he soon became expert in retouching, coloring and working-up enlargements. In the evenings he attended art classes at the Adelaide School of Design under that fine master H.P. Gill, who has taught so many of our leading painters.
This period of Caz’s life was one of content. He was training and preparing for the future, though he does not seem to have had any wild enthusiasm regarding it. Then, in 1898, a young Adelaide architect named John Kauffman returned from studying in Europe, bringing with him a series of pictures by H.P. Robinson, Horsley Hinton and other outstanding members of the new Pictorial Movement — these he soon placed on public exhibition. Caz went to see the pictures out of idle curiosity. They held him spellbound and left him inspired. Here was a new beauty beyond anything Caz had ever dreamed of in terms of photography. That the camera could really be used for such creative work was a revelation. He came away like a convert from a revival meeting, with one fixed idea in his mind and one that never left it. That to this cult of self-expression he would devote his energies.
To have carried that pledge into immediate practice would have meant starting on his own in his own studio dedicated to pictorial portraiture. Before that could be done there were more than minor problems, such as finance, to be dealt with and it must be admitted that anyone who had offered to lend money for that type of venture, at that time, would have been considered exceedingly soft in the head, for although the people who made this nation possessed many great qualities, a cultivated comprehension of the arts was the least of them. Men would have to shave off their beards and women widen their horizons in the world of business before such revolutionary behavior could be successful.
To better his financial position Caz left Adelaide to work for Freeman’s Studio in Sydney, where, after some years, he gained the position of chief operator that his father had held years before. He remained at Freeman’s for fourteen years, adding his own refinements to the studio formula, but still being a part of it. He had, however, one form of escape to the self-expression of his dreams and that was with his own small camera and his little darkroom at home. Escape to week-ends spent in the mountains, in the bush and around the harbour; escape to a large circle of friends who would gladly sit as models and, above all, escape to fraternity with fellow enthusiasts devoted to the same cult, men like Cecil Bostock, Monte Luke, Norman Deck, James Paton and a host of others. It was in 1904, while he was at Freeman’s that Caz really started his pictorial career, his equipment consisting of a quarter plate box camera. It was the beginning of his “Old Sydney” period. In 1906 he married and set up a home where he could have his own darkroom and experiment on nights with such processes as carbon and bromoil. Still honoring the family tradition Caz took his wife from Hammer’s Studio in Adelaide. The next year he exhibited his first carbons at the Members Exhibition of the Photographic Society of New South Wales. It was at this exhibition that Sir Lionel Lindsay displayed some fine color bromoils for which he was awarded a medal. He was now working as though inspired; he had already a mastery of his technique and a clear vision of his goal. He was never one for specialization; all was grist to his mill.
BREAKING WAVE
(1904)
He was now confirmed in his belief that whether the subject was portrait, seascape, landscape or still life, the camera, sensitively handled, could deal with them pictorially.
By 1909 Caz had produced so many pictures that the Council of the Photographic Society urged him to stage a “One-Man Show” at its rooms in Hamilton Street, Sydney. The rooms were specially furnished for the purpose and Caz hung seventy-five large prints of all types of subjects. As he could not afford to frame them he bound each one in passe-partout style.
This was Australia’s first “One-Man Show”. A well-printed catalog was presented to each visitor. The show was one of the milestones in the history of Photography in Australia — it is no exaggeration to say that it caused something of an artistic riot. It lifted photography to a new plane. The press, the critics and the artists acclaimed it. Here, for the first time, they wrote of “The Art of Photography” .... The great artistic possibilities of photography .... and so on ... . and so on ... .
RAZZLE DAZZLE
(1910)
In one bound “The nice looking young man at the back” found himself projected into the full glare of the limelight. He became the acknowledged leader. Almost every night was taken up lecturing, teaching, demonstrating and acting as selector or judge or writing . . writing . . writing hundreds and hundreds of letters to whoever cared to claim his time and his brains over a problem and all of it without any fee. Thus was Caz sublimating the success he was too modest to wear himself by helping others attain their personal goals. But to lecture and to teach is to state a case and to argue it. It develops the critical faculty. Soon he began to find fault with his own work . . with all the work of the Australian pictorialists; “Were they showing any real progress? Were they not still slavishly following the lead of the European School from which came their first inspiration? Were not their pictures too gloomy; too set to a minor key? Were they doing anything to develop a National School of pictorialism? — one that would interpret something of the bright light and the spaciousness of this new country?”
In private, Caz is a great talker and his theories reached the ears of a group of ready listeners. In 1916 six of them decided to found a Sydney Camera Circle pledged to advance the art of Australian Pictorial Photography. The occasion represented yet another mile stone.
WAITING FOR DADDY TO COME HOME
(1914)
Throughout the four years after his first “One-Man Show” Caz was not only doing all the work I have just outlined, but he was sending prints abroad to all the important salons (and earning a golden reputation) and at the same time, holding the position of manager and operator at Freeman’s Studio. It was also at this time he won the Kodak competition for “An Album of Twelve Subjects depicting Happy Moments”. The one hundred pounds prize which he gained was used as a deposit on the home at Roseville, where he was able to set up a studio and workroom and where he has lived ever since.
Late in 1917 came his breakdown in health of which I have already written. In 1918 he was well again, but his only assets consisted of a home and a mortgage, a wife and six children (five daughters and a son) and something else, which was a deep seated feeling that the next few years were destined to prove the turning point of his life.
By good fortune, it had so happened that a year or two previously, in November 1916, to be exact, there had
“met together by mutual consent, a little band of photographers, earnest workers, lovers of Art and the Beautiful, who by reason of their love for the Art have constituted an Association, with the advancement of Pictorialism ...”
It was the foundation of the Sydney Camera Circle and it was one of the circle members, Cecil Bostock, who offered to make available his rooms. Caz accepted the offer with enthusiasm and immediately set quietly to work laying the foundations for his great future.
RAINY DAY TO ORDER
(1922)
At first sight business prospects were grim, for there was no obvious market for artistic photography. And yet, by a happy coincidence, it was in the same month in which Caz opened his studio that Sydney Ure Smith and his partner Bertram Stevens were making the final arrangements to publish the highest quality publications ever produced in this country. They not only wanted such work . . . they wanted and they needed Caz. They offered him the position of official photographer to “The Home” and the allied “Art in Australia” publications. It was a perfect marriage of interests.
And so he began his own career, using a quarter-plate reflex camera to take pictures of society women in their homes, of their children and of their gardens. He received a reproduction fee for each print, retaining the rights of private orders. These pictures, published in the monthly editions of “The Home”, quickly brought his natural unconventional work before all the well-to-do people of Sydney and private appointments began to roll in. It was all magnificent advertising; any established studio would have paid thousands for the exclusive rights to these beautifully produced magazines.
Just as he was getting settled, Denman Chambers was sold and reconstructed and he had to leave. So his house in Roseville now became “The Studio” and from here he has worked ever since. Within the next ten years the mortgage was paid off and a Buick car occupied the garage. His daughters were now assisting him in the finishing rooms. Spencer Shier, a prominent Melbourne studio man, one of the great army of photographers which has visited Caz to see his unconventional methods of work, rightly referred to them as “The Cazneaux Family of Photographers”.
On studying his record over the next twenty years one marvels how he was able to accomplish so much. But then he is naturally quick and alert; he is able to sum the latent possibilities of a subject at a glance; he was never one to waste films, for when he makes an exposure it is a good one. He has never used an exposure meter nor has he ever measured chemicals ... a spoonful of this and a pour from the bottle of that — a11 backed by judgment and long experience — is his method. (It was also the method of Dr. Julian Smith but hardly one to be recommended to beginners).
The moment that Caz was released from working in a studio and was free to express himself through the medium of the camera he began to give evidence of his love of the outdoors. That, in my opinion, was the real reason for his former frustration; Caz, from the first, was surely meant to be an outdoor worker.
In the joy of his new freedom he might be said to have been sun struck. In all his new pictures the sun streamed through windows, across lush lawns, through suspended vines, or through the foliage of trees and shrubs, to pour a pattern of light across his subjects. It was a strange change of face for a man who had previously sought clouds in his landscapes. How a dull day must have been a bane to him!
The first issue of “The Home” (Vol. 1, No. 1) carried his “Bamboo Blind” (a picture of his daughter Beryl) as its frontispiece. It was a new motif in portraiture. Underneath it the Editors wrote — “Quaint and arresting is the photographic child pictured by Cazneaux, in which the bars of sunlight seem to touch the little face with the effect of a bold pastelist’s crayon. Camera lovers will thank Mr. Cazneaux for his happy inspiration and will be tempted forth in search of other novel effects of lighting by which to record the features that delight them most. There are limitations indeed in the art of the photograph, but enterprise and originality go far to break them down”. The Editors prophecy came true. The “Bamboo Blind” indeed inspired a host of imitators as a study of later “Photograms” will prove. Still glorying in the play of sunlight he next produced “Pergola Pattern”, “Sun Spots and Shadows”, “The New Sunshade", “Little Ann in Australia”, “The Wheel of Youth” and scores of private portraits which filled “The Home” with the magic of sunshine.
And so we come to the full flowering of his association and friendship with Sydney Ure Smith O.B.E., friendship that became a deep and abiding one; that brought them together o’nights around the fire discussing, planning and working out schemes for new and novel series of camera subjects. First came a series of character portraits of the artists, Norman Lindsay, George Lambert, Norman Carter, Hans Heysen (all these men were Caz’s personal friends) and a great many other art personalities.
Many of our Governors and numerous distinguished visitors to Australia were photographed in the rooms and gardens of Government House, Sydney.
Then came a series of musicians and actors and actresses, Arundel Orchard, Alfred Hill, Oscar Asche, Somerset Maughan, L. Merrick, Pavlova and her Company, Marie Burke, Nellie Stuart, the Menuhin Sisters, Marie Tempest (in a garden beside the Harbour), Dame Nellie Melba (this, she said, was her favorite portrait), but why start a list, for there was hardly an important person or distinguished visitor of the day whom Caz did not photograph. Many series of stage pictures were made in the lanes beside the theatres using mats, curtains and props nailed against the walls and many studies of well-known men were taken in Ure Smith’s private office.
For another “The Home” series, Adrian Feint, Roy De Mestre and George Lambert painted backgrounds for a set of portraits, under the caption “New Idea Portraits”. Many of these were exhibited in overseas salons. These artists were to co-operate with Caz in making the pictures but, as it turned out, they became his assistants. No other cameraman can claim to have the services of so many and such famous painters.
There followed "Art in Australia" books that were entirely illustrated by Caz. "The Koala Bear Books", "The Sydney Bridge Book", "The Canberra Book", "The Frensham Book" (100 pictures of life in a college for girls) and the special "Home Annuals" — with them, his continuing work in the "Art in Australia" quarterly. Caz compiled "The Red Cross Presentation Book", the album of "Sydney Harbour Pictures" as presented to the Prince of Wales, and "The Special Jubilee Book of B.H.P."; this latter job took many months and to complete it Caz traveled to Melbourne, Newcastle, Whyalla, Iron Knob and far out in the central desert. For this series of pictures the whole of the vast steel works at Newcastle were cleaned up from top to bottom — that was worthwhile, for those photographs introduced a new era of industrial photography. Then he did "The University of Sydney Appeal Book"; here he was allowed to roam at will and take the lectures and demonstrations, arranging groups of students and professors exactly as he wished.
MAISIE GAY
(1926 - 1930)
To complete this section of the record would require a couple of pages, but reference must be made to "Domestic Architecture in Australia", "Sydney Surfing" and "Australia Beautiful" (1917- 1931).
The two "Koala Books" attracted world-wide attention and six of the pictures were attractively reproduced in an important German magazine. One of the koala subjects was also used very extensively for overseas travel publicity.
So greatly had Caz’s work for "The Home" heightened the interest of the public in good photography, that the Editors decided on a photographic competition open to anyone professional or amateur in Australia. Caz was eligible to enter as he was still a free-lance, never having been on "The Home" staff. Sir John Longstaff, Mr. Macdonald (then Director of the National Art Gallery) and a number of other artists were the judges. Caz had little difficulty in gaining the principal awards.
A year or two back we saw a charming new little book of Ure Smith’s entitled "Treescapes" illustrated by Caz. In the introduction Arthur Streeton says “The prints by Mr. Cazneaux put all our paintings in the shade. His choice of subject, his splendid instinct for design and light and shade certainly put him as an artist above almost all our painters. No one has represented trees in any way comparable with those in his prints. He is a landscape man of the first water. He has a great gift”.
FRED BLUETT AND HIS DONKEY
(1926 - 1930)
There are many tributes to Caz in that book. But you can’t spoil him, for superimposed on his romantic and poetic nature — that can burst forth into lyrics at the beauty of a tree blossoming in his garden, or the purple shadows in the Flinders Range — he has a realistic sense of values that keeps him very sane. When he read Streeton’s tribute he wrote me . . . “It’s too good, I don’t believe it, and I’m not going to believe it”.
Caz has never published an autobiography or a book of his work, but his published writings and illustrations would fill many volumes, while his private letters, aimed at helping and inspiring other enthusiasts would, if bound, form a considerable shelf - full in themselves. To-day he still writes for Photograms and The A.P.-R.
Throughout all these busy years his contributions to Australian and overseas salons never ceased, nor did his interest lag in the direction of raising local pictorial standards. It brought a great but tardy reward. In 1938 he received his greatest surprise - an official notification that the full Council of the Royal Photographic Society had conferred on him their “Honorary Fellowship” for long services rendered to pictorial photography. That was one happening in Caz’s long and shy career that stirred up some latent touch of pride. It really thrilled him.
1941 was a sad year, for Caz’s only son Harold, an engineer, died during the siege of Tobruk and was buried there. This was a tragic blow; with young Harold at the wheel of his car Caz had driven over so much of our continent and there were future plans to take car and camera to many distant places. Soon afterwards a daughter lost her husband in the Coral Sea battle.
CAMP FIRE
(1923)
Six members of the family were in different services. Of this period Caz speaks especially of the kindness of Spencer Shier and of Dr. Julian Smith.
Caz has had a full and wonderful life, he’s a kindly modest soul who never made an enemy or lost a friend. He has known struggle and tragedy and loss, but has also known great achievement. He never made a fortune because he could sell only a part of every print, for there was so much of the joy of them that remained with him. That pleasure was his; it had no market value. It was his rich delight in the play of sunlight on a lovely face or landscape. It was the magic box that took him to breathe the salt of the sea and the exalting incense of the bush. And it brought him home on thousands of evenings pawing the ground with excitement while his day’s work developed and then sent him to sleep with a smile because he knew it was good . . .
PROPS FOR THE MINE
(In the 1930’s)
Presenting
"MILESTONES”
A representative selection from the
PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
of
HAROLD CAZNEAUX HON. FRPS
THE BAMBOO BLIND
(Bromide, 1915/1916)
This picture always remains fresh and alive in my memory. The arrangement was not built up; I happened to be on the spot when the idea came to me that a picture was possible. In five or so minutes the Pressman Reflex was brought out and the exposures made. Several positions were tried out but this one seems to have become the favorite for its wide appeal. By the way, it is a good plan to copy good original pictorial photographs — one then has a more lasting record. H.C.
OLD SOUTH ROAD, MITTAGONG
(Bromoil, 1918)
THE COAL DUMP
(Bromoil from box-camera negative, 1908)
THE HORSE-FERRY AT MILSON’S POINT
(Chlorobromide, 1910)
THE SHIP'S CAT
(Composite Bromide, 1912/1918)
WOOL TEAM, CIRCULAR QUAY
(Chlorohromide, 1912/1918)
THE ELEPHANT RIDE
(Bromide, 1917/1918)
OLD-TIME MERRY-GO-ROUND
(Bromoil, 1911)
WHEEL OF YOUTH
(Chlorobromide, 1934)
ORANGES AND LEMONS
(Chlorobromide, 1934)
PORTRAIT IN SUNSHINE
(Chlorobromide, 1931)
ANNA PAVLOVA
(Chlorobromide, 1926)
THE CHILD AND THE FLOWER
(Chlorobromide, 1938/1940)
DAWN ON A RAINY DAY
(Chlorobromide, 1910)
NORMAN CARTER
(Bromide, 1924)
GEORGE LAMBERT
(Chlorobromide, 1920's)
STEAM AND SUNSHINE
(Bromide, 1935)
POURING STEEL
(Bromide, 1935)
VETERAN GUMS
(Bromoil, 1930's)
THE SPIRIT OF ENDURANCE
(Bromoil, 1936)
TOIL
(Bromoil, 1937)
LAKESIDE AT NARRABEEN
(Bromoil, 1920's)
SHEEP TRACKS
(Bromoil, 1937)
LANDSCAPE AT RAPID BAY
(Bromoil, 1936)
AUTUMN SUNSHINE
(Chlorobromide, 1939)
EVENING SHADOWS ON THE FLINDERS RANGES
(Chlorobromide, 1938)
THESUS AND THE MINOTAUR ARCHIBALD MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN
THE RAILWAY BUILDING, WYNYARD
(Chlorobromide, 1938/1941)
CIRCULAR QUAY WEST AND THE HARBOUR BRIDGE
(Bromoil, c. 1932)
THE BRIDGE BY MOONLIGHT
(Kodura, 1930)
DEPARTURE
(Bromide, 1936)
NATION’S TRIBUTE TO
HAROLD CAZNEAUX HON. FRPS
This great occasion was held as scheduled at the Assembly Hall on October 27, and proved to be, in the well-chosen words of a contemporary, “a photographic evening of rare charm and inspiration . . . To many in the near-capacity audience, the events of the evening must have been something of a revelation. Although all were undoubtedly familiar with Cazneaux’s more recent work and were well aware of his stature as one of the world’s best cameramen, it is probable that few quite realized the extent to which he has contributed to the development of photography in this country through his own pictures, through his published articles and through his unselfish efforts in assisting younger workers — all this over a period of nearly fifty years”.
Our genial Chairman, Mr. Jack Cato FRPS, performed his duties admirably, handling the tribute with a light touch that successfully avoided any fear of embarrassment on the part of our distinguished guest, Mr. Harold Cazneaux Hon. FRPS. His address was mainly along historical lines, a topic that has been covered at some length elsewhere in this issue.
Mr. H.N. Jones ARPS, Hon.Secretary, Sydney Camera Circle, opened the proceedings with a word of welcome to the visitors, with special reference to those who had come great distances.
The out-of-town visitors list included:
J. Crosbie - Sunraysia Camera Club
C.S. Christian and A.C. Redpath - Canberra Photographic Society
MacDonald - Brisbane Camera Club
Member of the Orange Camera Club
Wal Fitness - Photographic Society of Papua
A car-load from Goulburn led by R.J. Steele
M. Farrawell from Taylor’s Arm, via Macksville, N.S.W.
It appeared that, owing to week-end transport difficulties, the last-named enthusiast had made the journey to Sydney on the previous Saturday night.
The ‘Milestones’ showing with its novel synchronized tape commentary, proved to be an excellent method of handling the assignment and this was confirmed by the rapt attention afforded this feature by the great audience.
Mr. H.N. Jones next read extracts from the flood of international, national and local messages of tribute. Organizations represented in this section of the program were as follows:
UNITED KINGDOM:
Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain
The London Salon of Photography
'Photograms of the Year', London
NEW SOUTH WALES (SYDNEY):
The Sydney Camera Circle
Photographic Society of New South Wales
Camera Club of Sydney
Manly Camera Club
Y.M.C.A. Camera Circle
Kingsgrove Photographic Club
St. George Photographic Society
The Professional Photographers Association of N.S.W.
N.S.W. Police Photographic Club
Northern Suburbs Camera Club
Railways Institute Photographic Association
NEW SOUTH WALES (COUNTRY):
Canberra Photographic Society
Newcastle Photographic Society
Orange City Camera Club
Goulburn Photographic Group
Quirindi Camera Club
VICTORIA:
Victorian Salon of Photography
Melbourne Camera Club
Photographic Society of Victoria
The Institute of Photographic Technology
Institute of Victorian Photographers
Preston Photographic Club
Sale Camera Club
SOUTH AUSTRALIA:
Adelaide Camera Club
COMMONWEALTH:
The Australian Portfolio Photographic Society
Space does not permit of our publishing the full text of the many tributes but there is one which we must print in full, it is that cabled by the Royal Photographic Society:
“THE PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF COUNCIL OF THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY WISH ME TO CONVEY GREETINGS TO ALL PRESENT AT THE SPECIAL MEETING ON 27th OCTOBER IN HONOR OF MR. HAROLD CAZNEAUX, AND TO ASK YOU TO EXPRESS TO HIM THEIR DEEP APPRECIATION OF THE OUTSTANDING SERVICES WHICH HE HAS RENDERED FOR SO MANY YEARS TO PHOTOGRAPHY AND TO THE SOCIETY AS HONORARY FELLOW AND AS OVERSEAS CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF COUNCIL FOR AUSTRALIA. WE WISH HIM GOOD HEALTH AND VIGOUR SO THAT HE MAY CONTINUE HIS DEVOTED WORK AND WE THANK HIM SINCERELY FOR ALL HE HAS DONE.
HALLETT, SECRETARY,
ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
GREAT BRITAIN”
The presentation was then made to our guest. This consisted of a silver salver inscribed as follows:
Presented to
Harold Cazneaux
“Caz”
as a tribute to
His Lifelong Service to Photography
by the
The Sydney Camera Circle
and
Photographic Societies of Australia
Assembly Hall, Sydney 27th October 1952
This duty was handled by Mr. Henri Mallard whereupon ‘Caz’ responded most delightfully on his own behalf: “It is really inspiring, my friends, thanks again for what has been done. Yes, I am fortunate indeed . . . such wonderful friends”.