Photographic Exhibitions of Australia     




SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

26th March 1938 - Page 7

ART OF THE CAMERA

It's Amazing Growth

Harold Cazneaux


The photographic art in Australia is comparatively young, but it has made remarkable progress, and is destined to achieve much greater distinction. Until a few years ago Australia was practically unknown in the photographic world, but to-day, at the time of our 150th Anniversary, the work of Australians is recognized in all the noted salons overseas.

The Photographic Society of New South Wales, in association with the Sydney Camera Circle and the Professional Photographers' Association of New South Wales, has organized the Commemorative Salon of Photography, which is now open in the gallery of the Commonwealth Bank building. This important salon, which is officially recognized by the Anniversary Celebrations Council, includes examples of photographic art by amateur and professional workers from all over the world, and illustrates the tremendous advance which photography has made. The beauty of the pictures and the wide range of subject matter render the exhibition of unique interest to the public.

THE VELVET COAT


Photography had not been invented when Governor Phillip landed at Sydney Cove. It is a little over 100 years ago since Daguerre and Fox Talbot worked out the difficult experiments which led to the discovery of photography.

The real development of photography occurred only in our parents' day and there are many old but well-preserved "Daguerreotypes" and even old silver prints still in existence which belonged to them. There came a change-over from the "wet plate" to the "dry plate" and the old and cumbersome process slowly gave way to the new and lighter method. Studios were opened in greater numbers in the cities and spread to country towns. The photographer, garbed in his velvet coat and perhaps a velvet cap was a personage in those days. He worked "by appointment only," and his studio bore the appearance of "back stage" of the old-time theatre, for he had to supply the accessories for his sitters — backgrounds that would provide interiors of mansions, churches, seaside scenes and landscapes. His stock-in-trade included fake terraces, staircases, ship's masts, boats, elaborate furniture and huge clam shells for the baby. Some possessed stuffed birds and animals and children were often specially dressed up to fit in with the photographer's ponderous accessories.

All this passed away. The accessories and velvet coats were sold as junk, heavy cameras and huge old-fashioned lenses were bundled out of the way, and a newer era was ushered in. Young Australians got hold of newer cameras, lighter and more efficient lenses, and simpler studio equipment. Electric light appeared and daylight was considered out of date. The photographer to-day works in a modern studio, he takes your portrait while you are chatting to him, he touches buttons and switches and lights appear from all angles of his studio and he uses thin sensitive films instead of heavy glass plates.

Australia is up to date in photographic matters, although it must still rely upon world centers for high-grade cameras and equipment. For many years, however, quality sensitive film, plates printing papers and much other photographic material have been manufactured in Victoria and New South Wales and eventually we may hope to produce cameras, lenses and other delicate equipment.

AUSTRALIANS FINE WORK


Australia has photographers whose work compares very favorably with that done overseas. It is being accepted and hung in the noted salons of the world, such as the annual show of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and the London Salon of Photography and many foreign salons exhibit Australian pictorial photographs, which become a splendid advertisement for this country.

The amateur photographer has been responsible for a great deal of the progress of artistic photography in Australia. His independent and individual outlook has enabled him to produce pictures without thought of sales and much of the artistic quality apparent in to-day's photography has developed from the amateur's sound and natural outlook. We have throughout Australia many amateur photographic clubs and societies who work purely for the love of advancing artistic photography. The Photographic Society of New South Wales, which is affiliated with the Royal Society, was founded over 40 years ago, and it continues its good work.

Photography is one of the world’s great hobbies and our workers have shared in the international interchange of the best examples of pictorial art.

Commercial and advertising photography, like press photography has undergone a transformation and the old-time inartistic type of cameraman has no value to-day. The new work is exacting and only men and women of the highest artistic ability and photographic technique can hope to succeed.

Photography for the million is a great teacher it compels attention to detail, develops the powers of observation, imagination and patience and brings out latent artistic talent. Above all, it encourages a love of our great Australian outdoors. Whatever is spent on photography as a hobby is returned to the discriminating user tenfold.

A remarkable fact about photography is that while it is capable of being employed by scientists for record and other work, the artist, using the same materials, can produce a picture which will portray a subject arranged with pleasing composition and rendered in beautiful tonal quality, a picture which can be justly looked upon as a work of art. Critics who say that photography is only a mechanical means of producing a picture know little of artistic photographic technique. A first-class photographer who possesses depth of feeling, an eye for artistic selection and a creative mind can give lasting joy to the beholder of his work and elevate photography to the realm of true art.



SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

30th March 1938 - Page 12

ART OF THE CAMERA


In spite of the well-meaning spirit of Mr Cazneaux's article in Saturday's "Herald," the fallacy it contains should be exploded in order that we may see the International Photo Exhibition in its correct perspective.

This exhibition has been used (more than once!) in a foil against which to silhouette the work of Australian photographers and the result of so doing has been the unanimous acclamation of ourselves! This self-deception is shattered, in the first place, by the meagerness of the comparison, namely, that the European contribution is representative of only a particular school of thought—that school, whose only guiding light is the past and preferably that nasty past, the nineteenth century! To believe this sentimentalized pre-Raphaelitism is representative of European photography is like calling the Royal Academy the consummation of European painting.

Great art has always been contemporary in spirit. To-day we feel this surge of aesthetic exploration along abstract lines, the social economic order impinging itself on art, the repudiation of the "truth to nature criterion," and the galvanizing of art and psychology. Our little collection from Europe, if it was really representative, would reflect these elements of modern adventure and research, but it is not; it is a flaccid thing, a gentle narcotic, something, to soothe our tired nerves after a weary day at the office!

To offer this as a criterion to Australian photographers is demoralizing, indeed! We sadly need the creative courage of man nay, the original thought of Professor Moholy Nagy and the dynamic realism of Edward Steichen to revitalize what is now thoroughly stagnant.

MAX DUPAIN

Sydney 28th March 1938




SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1st April 1938 - Page 6

ART OF THE CAMERA


As an admirer of some of the work of Mr Max Dupain. I should be reluctant to reply to his letter in Wednesday's "Herald," but for the fact that it is calculated to deter the public from seeing the salon. This would be a pity, as the public would miss the benefit of what is a very fine exhibition.

In essence, Mr Dupain contends that the salon is a failure, because the school of photography that he favors is inadequately represented. This overlooks the fact that other schools are well represented by work from men of International reputation, and one can see the originals of many of the pictures that have been reproduced in the photographic Press. What surely will strike an impartial observer is the comprehensive character of the exhibition. All types of work, modernist as well as, traditional, appear and almost every visitor should find work that forces admiration. One thing that helps to keep up interest in pictorial photography is that it is progressive and always developing and no better evidence could be obtained than a comparison with the present salon and any exhibition held a few years ago.

The salon has been selected on the basis that a photograph has pictorial interest. One finds it hard to imagine a really good exhibition organized on any other basis. Mr Cazneaux's qualifications as selector are well known, not the least being that, in his own work, he has tried experiments, introduced new ideas, but has never abandoned art principles and common sense for the sake of doing something merely startling.

Mr Dupain's views are those of a minority, an energetic and enthusiastic minority, and he condemns, representing this minority, an exhibition that is a delight and inspiration to the great majority of photographers. I should be the last to depreciate the work done by some modernists, and feel that they are making a real contribution to photography and one of the charms of the salon is the opportunity of comparing work of the modern school with what may be called the classical school. An exhibition, however, in which the pictures were selected according to Mr Dupain's ideas, would be interesting only to a small section; I contend that the salon should interest everybody.

G.H. WILSON

Sydney 30th March 1938




SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1st April 1938 - Page 6

ART OF THE CAMERA


My esteem for Mr Dupain and my appreciation of Mr Cazneaux impel me to attempt to reconcile their apparently divergent opinions.

Mr Cazneaux in judging the Commemorative Salon in every way fulfilled the trust placed in him by the committee He judged not only by his own personal taste but also with a sense of fairness and justice to every contemporary school of photographic thought. That the walls of the salon contain few pictures representative of the schools of Man Ray and Moholy Nagy is not because the majority of their masterpieces lie amongst the piles of the rejected. A judge cannot create he can only select. Those schools went unrepresented either because the supporters lacked the courage of their convictions or else, as I suspect they exist no longer and that because they were based an arid Intellectual formulas utterly lacking in the emotion necessary for art. In fact I understand that at least one of these great prophets has moved on to pastures new.

In his concluding remarks Mr Dupain is nearer the truth. Perhaps it is a fact that outworn pictorial creeds lie too heavily upon us. Perhaps we do lack the courage to tackle the more difficult subjects that are around us on every side, do allow our work to be divorced from workaday struggles and activities. It is a fact that the work of pictorialists throughout the world shows a tendency to divorce itself from any positive relation to daily life. This is regretted but perhaps the explanation is simple and economic. Amateurs are hard-working persons who have only their weekends or holidays for their art and are therefore liable to select their material upon occasions when those dynamic subjects are no longer in evidence.

MEMBER SALON COMMITTEE

Sydney 30th March 1938




SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

2nd April 1938 - Page 8

ART OF THE CAMERA


While Mr Cazneaux’s article was a straightforward statement of fact regarding camera art, Mr Dupain's criticism of it is as incomprehensible as is the work of some of the moderns he attempts to eulogize. One sentence in Mr Dupain’s letter, however, has an amusing side to it and that was his reference to 'the school of thought whose only guiding light was the nasty nineteenth century". Why, ultra-modern photography is but a return to that of the latter end of the nineteenth century, for just as technique was the sole aim of the photographer of that period so is technique the greatest and only asset of the modem photography of to-day.

It must be admitted however, that the photographer of the olden day's produced sensible photographs whereas the ultra-modern cameraman produces photographs that have no sense in them and that no one can understand. Perhaps that is because they "feel the surge of aesthetic exploration along abstract lines”' to use Mr Dupain's words.

Ultra-modern photography, like ultra-modern art, is but the expression of mob evolution and Mr Dupain might be interested to read Mr Norman Lindsay’s opinion of such expression. Speaking of such art and it is equally applicable to ultra-modern photography, he says "Values are dispensed with, color is expressed by a childish symbolism in its primary crudities, and exact form is abhorred. If this procedure stopped short only at the apparently innocent production of bad art on earth it would be no great matter. But when bad art becomes the evidence of formlessness of mind and formlessness of mind is expressed as a condition of life, then it becomes inevitable that disruption in all forms, from war, anarchy and scepticism must overtake existence on earth."

ARTHUR SMITH

Mortdale 30th March 1938




SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

6th April 1938 - Page 11

ART OF THE CAMERA


I gather that Mr Dupain's complaint is that the oversea pictures, in the pictorial section of the exhibition comprise for the most part examples of the "true to nature" or “representational" type and the absence of those magnificent photographic examples of "dynamic realism" of the surge of aesthetic exploration along abstract lines of the impinging of the social economic order on art and of the repudiation of the “truth to nature” criterion (all his expressions) which are to be found in Europe has emasculated the exhibition.

There has been seemingly endless controversy as to whether art should be concerned with the expression of abstract ideas or should be mainly representational or true to nature, but so far from the latter theory being "repudiated" and obsolete. I believe there has been, in some quarters at any rate a reaction in favor of representational methods in art and away from some of the extreme forms of expression.

Surely both attitudes with regard to artistic expression may be right and admirable provided that on the one hand the artist avoids incomprehensibility and on the other eschews mere literalism or imitation and I for one would welcome photographs of the type to which Mr Dupain refers (a little extravagantly, I think) provided they were of the requisite artistic standard. But the expression by photographic means of abstract ideas and the production by those means of imaginative works can only be accomplished generally speaking by elaborate building-up of subject matter to be photographed and clever trickery in printing methods and the results are apt to be crude and forced, lacking in conviction of sincerity. They are the result of an effort to force photography to express something different from that for which it is adapted and that is the representation of natural landscapes, persons and objects. By all means let works of the type so extolled by Mr Dupain be exhibited, my protest is only against his assumption that they are the only kind worth exhibiting.

W.H. MORFITT

Killara 4th April 1938




SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

7th April 1938 - Page 6

ART OF THE CAMERA


I regret that Mr G.H. Wilson and Member of Salon Committee have staged several points of departure from the main theme in their judgment of my letter. I am not directly concerned with disinteresting the public on the contrary, I seek the truth which the great public will invariably discover for itself in time to come. No more am I concerned with Mr Cazneaux's "qualifications as a selector" or his ability in photography as the unwarranted defence of my critics imply I stand or fall as a critic of an exhibition that can mislead and destroy the courage and confidence of young Australian students of photography.

I am informed that "modernist" (meaning radical) works do appear in the exhibition and so symbolize photo progress Unfortunately these few pictures are produced by workers of conventional character who all self-consciously have "gone modern" in desperate defence of their dying egos. Alas Mr Wilson's optimism regarding progress is not valid. If we refer to the souvenirs of the first Australian salons in 1924 and 1926 we see that exactly the same spirit was flowing through the work then as it is today. The fact that for subject matter a piece of modern engineering in the form of a silo has been substituted for a draped figure is not evidence of progress or change of thought, because the reaction of the photographer to his subject is precisely the same in both cases.

My critics lack discrimination. They refer to the amateur salons of the world for the criterion of contemporary work. Do they forget that for every million photographic cheese mites that infest these salons there is probably one sincere leader, only one real source of vitality from which all others are derived. It is to these few we must go, without prejudice or restraint, for comparative values. Our poor unfortunate amateur who "has only his weekends for his art" arouses nothing but scorn in me for his failure to achieve great work. Let him take inspiration from Paul Gauguin, who was a "Sunday painter" until eventually he forsook his career at the age of 40 to devote the rest of his life in rebellion against the ultra-sophisticated art of his period.

MAX DUPAIN

Sydney 4th April 1938




SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

8th April 1938 - Page 8

ART OF THE CAMERA


I believe Mr Dupain means well, for underneath his rather impetuous outburst on the Salon Exhibition, a gleam of real desire is apparent for raising photography to higher levels as an expressive art, despite the "fallacy" which he himself invented and which has exploded harmlessly in his own hands.

It is not for me, as selector and judge of this salon, to enter into a controversy on the merits and demerits of the several schools of thought and vision pertaining to artistic photography, but I would like to say. In connection with this Commemorative Salon, that the public has enjoyed the show and it has proved to have been a genuine attraction. It is "representative" to a high degree of artistic photography as produced today throughout the world and so far it is a "sane" art, but if a few impetuous young workers, influenced by the champions of ultra-modem thought, choose that formula of "aesthetic exploration along abstract lines," then real danger lurks in the fact that, "exploration" is uncertain and the ultimate destination is unknown.

Let us rest content with the sane outlook and progressive spirit that is contained in this present salon. There is room today for all "schools of thought and vision" and the selectors and judges naturally give just consideration to any picture that contains genuine expression of artistic perception and quality no matter to what "school" the work definitely belongs to.

HAROLD CAZNEAUX

Roseville 8th April 1938