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IN A NEW LIGHT: Australian photography 1930s-2000
by:
Helen Ennis
In a new light: Australian photography 1930s-2000 is drawn from the extensive holdings in the National Library of Australia's pictures collection. The exhibition aims to raise public awareness about the photography collection itself, without doubt one of the most important in the country, as well as highlighting the National Librarys role in collecting a diverse range of Australian visual material. However, the exhibition hopes to go further than this, by encouraging viewers to think differently about the intersections of photography and history.
The scope and size of the National Library's photography collection is such that it offers a huge range of narrative possibilities about different aspects of Australian history and society. In a new light: Australian photography 1930s-2000 engages with the history of the modern period through a combination of professional and vernacular photographs. Among the professional photographers represented are Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, David Moore, Axel Poignant, Athol Shmith, Wolfgang Sievers and Ruth Maddison. The vernacular photographs, taken by amateur or unknown photographers, cover a wide range of subjects; from bushwalking to Christmas day celebrations. While such work is far less familiar to contemporary audiences it is significant in its assertion of the value of ordinary, everyday experiences in Australian life.
The exhibition is organized into three main thematic groupings: the built environment, the landscape and human activity.
The focus on the built environment relates to the modernisation of Australia during the twentieth century. The physical realm of the city is dominant, reflecting Australia's position as one of the most urbanised nations on earth. The photographs deal with the different developmental stages of the city as well as changing attitudes to it. In the pre-World War II period the city is represented in relatively romantic terms; for example, by Max Dupain, whose 1939 image of Central Station in Sydney is an abstracted play of light and form. By the 1960s the city emerges as a contested site, afflicted by traffic congestion and pollution. This is strikingly realized in David Moore's photograph of two struggling bike-riders pictured against the industrial backdrop of the NSW city of Newcastle.
The city also emerges as the venue for mass protest. The exhibition includes a number of previously unseen images of demonstrations held in Sydney during the 1966 visit of the American president Lyndon Johnson.
The photographs on display reflect changing views about land and landscape. In the images from the early 1930s, Australia looks like another place; the landscapes are generalized and could conceivably be anywhere in the world. Titles such as Weather of Tartarus (Max Dupain) and Ebb tide (Monte Luke) reinforce this lack of specificity. These highly aestheticised works demonstrate the influences of Japanese art and also of the soft-focus photographic style known as pictorialism.
In the late 1930s photographers began to respond differently to the landscape, creating images that are expansive and filled with light. Harold Cazneaux's famous image, Spirit of endurance, taken in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia signals this change.
In the post-World War II period photographers such as Axel Poignant and Richard Woldendorp were drawn to the vastness and emptiness of the Australian outback; in response they produced grand, exalted images. Other photographers, including Robin V Smith, dealt with the harshness of the outback, presenting it as an alienating and inhospitable environment.
For Peter Dombrovskis, who worked in Tasmania during the 1970s and 1980s, the beauty of the landscape lay in its wildness. His photographs have played an instrumental role in the conservation movement; his Rock Island bend on show in the exhibition was used effectively in the 1983 federal election campaign to prevent the damming of the Franklin River.
Representations of human activity are a key part of the National Library's collection in keeping with the policy to collect visual documents of Australian history and society. In the exhibition human activity is interpreted broadly to encompass work, leisure, and particular Australian rituals.
Commercial uses of the photographic medium can be seen to great advantage in Laurence Le Guay's and Athol Shmith's photographs taken for the fashion and advertising industries in the 1960s. Their work displays an audacious mingling of Australian elements and international influences. The models in their photographs relate to the camera in a less traditionally dreamy way, addressing it directly and in more overtly sexualised terms. In contrast to earlier fashion photographs it is not their feminine perfection that is stressed so much as the particularities of their features and their individuality.
Le Guay and Athol Shmith experimented with their technique, introducing outdoors locations, narrative tableaux and, in Shmith's case, using tone drop-outs and abstracted patterns. The result is a sophisticated and internationally up-to-date sixties look.
In a new light includes some outstanding examples of twentieth century portraiture. Among the influential figures in Australian public life represented are artists (Arthur Boyd and Albert Namatjira); writers (Patrick White, Helen Garner, Kevin Gilbert); musicians (Percy Grainger, Jimmy Barnes, Kylie Minogue); sportsmen and women (Donald Bradman and Cathy Freeman); politicians and many more. However, also featured are portraits of unknown or ordinary individuals that offer a private, more intimate perspective. Thus, the work of professional and studio photographers is shown alongside amateur and snapshot photography.
Seen together these portraits chart some of the major developments in photographic portraiture in recent decades. Portraits from the 1930s by photographers such as Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton and Max Dupain are unique works whose mode of production is formal and deliberate. The prints, made by the photographers themselves, are beautifully controlled. Since the 1960s the demand for celebrity portraiture has burgeoned so that portraitsfor example, of pop and movie starsare now routinely mass produced for the publicity industry.
The category of human activity in the exhibition also includes documentary photographs from the 1930s onwards. These un-manipulated, black and white, sharp focus images of contemporary life are predicated on the notions of objectivity and truth.
In a new light features a small but compelling selection of material related to World War II. The majority of images on display were made for official and propagandist purposes; for government departments such as the Department of Information which employed a number of very talented professional photographers. One of these was Jim Fitzpatrick whose series of photographs for the Department of Information documented aspects of town and rural life in Drouin, Victoria. Fitzpatricks images deal with the lives of ordinary people; they affirm traditional Australian values and make it clear exactly what was at stake during the war years.
In the post-World War II years, photographers such as Axel Poignant, Jeff Carter, David Potts and David Moore were concerned with the definition and representation of what was typically Australian. This led to a focus on a particular kind of Australian imagery that was seen to endorse key Australian values; a pioneering spirit, stoicism, hard work and mateship. Consequently, outback and country areas became the all-important photographic sites and the ordinary men and women who lived and worked there became the prime subjects.
Equipped with a camera and typewriter, Jeff Carter travelled widely around Australia photographing people on the land and itinerant workers. His project was conceived in the spirit of honest reportage; he describes himself as a photographer to the poor and unknown.
More recent documentary work is less national in orientation and more specifically local. Photographers such as Ruth Maddison and Philip Gostelow base their practice in their own communities, photographing what they know well, their own friends, family and milieu.
The photographs on exhibition have been acquired by the National Library primarily as visual records whose roles, in accordance with their subject matter, are quite specific. However, these photographslike all photographsare multi-dimensional. They offer contemporary viewers an array of possibilities that include the opportunity to re-engage with and re-imagine the past; the very recent past of the twentieth century.
In a new light: Australian photography 1930s-2000 will be on show at the National Library of Australia, Canberra from 2 December 2004 until 28 March 2005. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Intersections: photography, history and the National Library of Australia, available in the National Library bookshop. |
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