Tag:max dupain
Olive Cotton (1911-2003) was an Australian photographer known for her poetic and lyrical images of everyday life, landscape, and portraiture.
She was born on 11 July 1911 in Hornsby, Sydney. Her parents were Leo Cotton, a Professor of Geology at Sydney University, and Florence, a painter and pianist. Both of her parents were English immigrants. Her father, in his role as a geologist, took photographs of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic in 1907
Early Life
As a child, Cotton displayed a strong inclination towards art and enjoyed creating drawings and paintings. She was also captivated by the stunning natural scenery that enveloped her family’s farm, which later ignited her interest in photography. At 11 years old, her aunt bestowed upon her a Kodak No.0 Box Brownie camera, which she used to take her first black-and-white photos. Together with her father’s help, they converted their home laundry into a darkroom, where Cotton developed films and produced her earliest photographs.
Cotton attended the Methodist Ladies College in Burwood from 1921 to 1929. During her final year there, she became a member of the Photographic Society of NSW. She enrolled at Sydney University in 1930 and joined the Sydney Camera Club at around the same time. There, she received guidance and instruction from the renowned Pictorialist photographer Harold Cazneaux. While completing her Bachelor of Arts, with a focus on mathematics and English, she continued to pursue photography as an amateur. She graduated in 1934.
Marriage and Family
In mid-1934, she started working with Max Dupain, a photographer, at his studio located at 24 Bond St in Sydney. Although her official position was an “assistant,” she also focused on her own photography projects. Cotton and Dupain had been friends since childhood and used to spend their summer vacations taking pictures at Newport Beach. Their shared interest in photography cemented their friendship, and they eventually got married in 1939 and had two children. However, their marriage was short-lived and ended in separation in 1941. They officially divorced in 1944.
In 1938, Cotton joined the short-lived Contemporary Camera Group. She also tried her hand at fashion photography and worked in the commercial section of the Commemorative Salon, which was organised by the Photographic Society as part of the 150th-anniversary celebrations in Australia. It was during this period that Cotton and Dupain relocated their studio in Sydney to a more spacious one on Clarence Street.
Divorce and solo career
After her divorce in 1941, Cotton found work teaching mathematics at Frensham School, a progressive girl’s school in Mittagong, NSW. When Dupain left Australia to serve in the military from 1942 to 1945, Cotton managed his studio. Cotton received numerous commissions during this time, including creating wartime propaganda photographs for AWA, a wireless manufacturer. She also designed a mural for architect Sam Lipson’s modern house, which unfortunately was destroyed in the 1980s. The original mural measured 182.9 x 76.2 cm.
The only known print of a smaller version of the mural can be found at the National Gallery of Australia. The client had shown interest in ballet figures after seeing a mural created by Max Dupain. The brief for the mural was flexible, and it took Cotton over one hundred hours to complete. Cotton did not intend to make a Surrealist work but focused on using techniques to capture her desired image. Helen Ennis has documented the processes and techniques used by Cotton to create this piece in her entry for Heritage: The National Women’s Art Book.
Remarriage
She married Ross McInerney in 1944, and together, they relocated to Koorawatha, near Cowra. For the first three years of the marriage, they lived in a tent before buying ‘Spring Forest’ a two-room cottage. Later, they moved into the old barracks on the property.
The marriage produced two children. A daughter named Sally, born in 1946 (while they were still in the tent), and a son named Peter in 1948. Cotton quit her job as a professional photographer and returned to teaching.
From 1959 to 1963, Cotton was a mathematics teacher at Cowra High School. In 1964, she established a studio in Cowra where she specialised in professional photography services such as children’s portraits, wedding photography, and landscape photography using a Rolleiflex camera for her work.
Additionally, she ventured into uncharted territory by exploring alternative photographic techniques. These included photograms and camera-less photography, enabling her to craft dreamlike and unconventional visuals.
Later Life
Unfortunately, while at home, Cotton suffered a fall that resulted in a broken leg. She was hospitalized in Orange and later moved to a nursing home. In 2003, Cotton passed away at Cowra Hospital, aged 92, with her husband of 60 years, Ross McInerney, by her side.
Cotton’s photographic works are renowned for their meticulous attention to detail, use of natural light and sensitivity towards her subjects. One of her notable works is “Teacup Ballet,” which has become an iconic representation of Australian photography. The image was featured on the 1991 Australian postage stamp honouring the 150th anniversary of photography in Australia.
Olive Cotton’s work has been recognised through various retrospectives in Australia and globally. The Art Gallery of New South Wales hosted a significant exhibition in 2018 called “Olive Cotton,” displaying over 130 of her photographs. The exhibit featured a diverse range of Cotton’s career, including her experimental works, portraits, still lifes, and surreal images. Many of these works were rare and had never been seen before.
Posthumous Fame
The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra curated an exhibit in 2021 titled “Olive Cotton: A Life in Photography,” showcasing over 100 of her photographs. These delved into the themes of nature, domesticity, and the female perspective in her artistic vision. The exhibit also presented archival materials such as letters, notebooks, and personal photographs, offering a glimpse into Cotton’s life and creative process. In 1995, the National Library of Australia published a book chronicling her life and artistic oeuvre. Many of her works can be viewed at the Art Gallery of NSW
Cotton’s photography has gained global recognition through exhibitions at prestigious venues such as the International Center of Photography in New York and the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. These retrospectives have solidified Cotton’s position in the esteemed group of Australian photographers and introduced her work to a new wave of enthusiasts and academics.
David Moore was an Australian photographer known for his documentary work in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a member of Magnum’s prestigious photographic agency, and his photographs have been widely exhibited and published. Some of his most famous works over a sixty-year career include his photographs of post-war Australia and his portraits of Indigenous Australians.
Early Years
Moore was born in Vaucluse, Sydney, Australia, the second son of Dorothy and architect John Moore. He was educated at Tudor House primary school, Australia’s only preparatory boarding School. At age eleven, he was given a Coronet box camera. His father then gave him a Kodak 1A folding camera, further encouraging his son’s interest in photography.
With the Kodak 1A, he photographed a fellow Geelong Grammar student and future Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, sailing a toy yacht. Moore also used it to make a self-portrait aged 15 while studying at Geelong Grammar School from 1939-1945. After turning eighteen, he enlisted in the Navy and served 18 months as an ordinary seaman on the destroyer HMAS Bataan.
Documentary Photography
Consequently, as he delved into the documentary work of photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, Moore was inspired to capture the reality of his own city. As a result, in 1949, armed with a borrowed speed graphic camera from Dupain, he roamed the streets of Redfern in Sydney’s inner west to capture its essence. While in Redfern, a woman mistook him for a newspaper employee and asked him to take pictures of a gloomy setting in a terrace house typical of the suburban area.
She led him to a bedroom that epitomised the living conditions of many slum dwellers in Sydney. The walls with cracks and stains, a double bed, and a rudimentary baby cradle with a ragged canvas base. After processing the film, Moore was overcome with guilt for invading their lives under false pretences. He even considered destroying the negatives. Some years later, this now iconic photograph of life in a Sydney slum was included in Edward Steichen’s exhibition Family of Man.
A photography career
In 1947 Moore abandoned his architecture studies and decided on photography as his career. He began his professional photographic career in Sydney at Russell Roberts’ studio in 1947. In 1948 he worked with Max Dupain on architectural, commercial and industrial assignments. In 1951 Dupain offered him a junior partnership; however, he declined and decided to move to London.
During the 1950s, Moore became the first Australian photojournalist to work for various international picture magazines. He resided in the UK for seven years and captured photographs while on assignment in Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, and the USA. Several reputable journals, including The Observer, Sports Illustrated, Time-Life, Look, and The New York Times published his work.
Additionally, Moore was one of only two Australian photographers (the other being Laurence LeGuay) to be included in the Family of Man exhibition at MOMA in New York in 1955. The exhibition also included photographers such as Ansel Adams and Margaret Bourke-White. That same year he married Jennifer Flintoff. They had four children before divorcing in 1968.
Returning to Australia
After seven successful years freelancing in London, Moore and his wife Jenny sailed back to Australia in 1957. He opened his studio in North Sydney with designers Gordon Andrews and Harry Williamson, a collaboration lasting 15 years. In 1974 Moore was one of the prime movers in establishing the Australian Centre for Photography in Paddington.
Moore’s photographs have been published in numerous books and are included in many Australian collections, including those of the Australian National Gallery. The New York Museum of Modern Art, Le Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, and the Smithsonian in Washington DC also hold collections of his work.
Like Max Dupain’s 1937 iconic Sunbaker, several of Moore’s works encapsulate a moment in Australia’s ‘growing up. For example, his Migrants arriving in Sydney in 1966 symbolised Australia’s growing multiculturalism. While Prime Minister Holt at Canberra Airport in 1966, submissively bowing to Lyndon B Johnson demonstrated the Holt policy of “All the way, with LBJ” and the Vietnam War.
Soft Flow of Time
“Soft Flow of Time” by David Moore is a celebrated collection of photographs that captures the essence of everyday life in post-war Australia during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is regarded as one of his most notable works. The series evokes a strong sense of nostalgia and emphasises the passing of time. These photographs starkly contrast with the ‘decisive moment’ style promoted by Henri Cartier-Bresson, which was popular among publishers then. As a classic of Australian photography, this collection is considered vital era documentation.
End of an Era
In 20age of seventy-five, Moore passed away due to oesophageal cancer, marking the end of the first era of modern documentary photography in Australia. Shortly after passing, a major retrospective of his life and work opened at the National Gallery of Australia. In honour of his legacy, Moore’s children generously donated many of his works to the State Library of New South Wales. To this day, his daughter Lisa manages his archive and ensures its preservation.
Max Dupain (1911-1992) was an Australian modernist photographer. Dupain is known for his iconic images of the Australian landscape, beach culture, and industrial architecture. His work is considered a significant influence on Australian photography, and he is regarded as one of Australia’s most influential photographers of the 20th century. Dupain’s photographs are characterised by their strong composition, use of light, and emphasis on form and shape. However, he is best known for his photographs of Sydney’s Bondi Beach and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, considered some of the most iconic images of Australian culture.
He was born Maxwell Spencer Dupain on 22 April 1911 in Ashfield, Sydney and was the only child of Sydney-born parents, George Zephirin Dupain and Thomasine Jane (Ena). His father pioneered the physical fitness movement in Australia and founded the Dupain Institute of Physical Education Sydney in 1900.
Early Years
Dupain attended Ashfield Preparatory and Sydney Grammar schools. However, he did not thrive academically and left school without completing the Leaving Certificate (known as Year 11 now). His uncle Clarence Farnsworth, an amateur photographer, gave him his first camera at 13. In 1928 he joined the Photographic Society of New South Wales and presented his early works in the predominant soft-focus Pictorialist style in the society’s exhibitions. Pictorialism is an approach to photography that emphasises the beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality.
His entries in the society’s 1932 Interstate Exhibition of Pictorial Photography garnered praise from the eminent photographer and critic Harold Cazneaux.
Photography Career
In 1930, Dupain began a three-year apprenticeship with photographer Cecil Bostock. He also took evening art classes at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School and East Sydney Technical College. As a result, by 1933, his images emphasised geometric form, outlined and accentuated by sharp hard light rather than the soft romanticised effects favoured by pictorialists. Then, in 1934, with financial support from his family, he opened a small studio with a shared darkroom at 24 Bond Street in Sydney. The timing was exceptionally fortunate as Australia was emerging from the Depression, and the demand for advertising, society, and celebrity photography was growing.
It wasn’t long before Dupain outgrew the small studio and moved to larger premises in the same building. In 1937 he employed Geoffrey Powell, followed by Damien Parer in 1938. Then, in 1934, photographer Olive Edith Cotton joined his studio as a general assistant. They married in 1939 in a Methodist service at her home, but the marriage did not last, and they separated in August 1941 before divorcing in February 1944.
public domain Wikimedia commons
Modernist Photography
The support of publisher Sydney Ure Smith was instrumental in launching Dupain’s career. Smith featured Dupains work in Art in Australia in 1935 and invited him to review J. T. Scoby’s book on surrealist photographer Man Ray for The Home magazine. By the late 1930s, Dupain was established as a leading modernist photographer. One whose work responded to and reflected the realities of contemporary life. Dupain experimented with different techniques, from photomontage to solarisation, developing a style characterised by the dramatic use of light.
public domain Wikimedia Commons
Throughout his career, Dupain’s preferred medium was black and white photography. He photographed widely diverse subjects, from still lifes and landscapes to cityscapes. Dupain was also one of the first Australian photographers to focus on studies of the nude, both male and female and passionately advocated modernist photography.
public domain by Wikimedia commons
Fame and Influence
From the late 1930s, he played an essential role as a commentator in photography magazines and later as a photography critic for the Sydney Morning Herald. He was also a founding member of the Contemporary Camera Groupe (CCG) in 1938. The CCG was formed to counter the prevailing conservatism of Australian photography. His self-declared heroes shaped his Romantic outlook in literature, music, and the arts: Beethoven, Shakespeare, D. H. Lawrence, and Llewellyn Powys. The book Creative Effort by Norman Lindsay was particularly influential.
Art Gallery of South Australia
Dupain also greatly admired the work of photographers Man Ray, George Hoyningen-Huene (whom he met in Sydney in 1937), and Margaret Bourke-White.
War Service
In 1941 his studio partnered with the respected photo-engraving firm Hartland & Hyde Pty Ltd and relocated to Clarence Street, Sydney. From 1942 to 1945, Dupain was seconded in a civilian capacity as a camoufleur (a person skilled in camouflage techniques) with the Royal Australian Air Force. He visited Darwin, New Guinea, and Goodenough Island, off the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea. His work entailed taking photographs revealing the effectiveness of different kinds of camouflage.
Public Domain, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
His wife, Olive Cotton, ran the studio in his absence. In late 1945, Dupain joined the Commonwealth Department of Information and travelled across Australia, taking photographs for the government’s publicity campaign aimed at attracting migrants to post-war Australia.
He took the image “meat queue” during his tenure with the department. Post-wartime, due to shortages, queues were everywhere. For buses, vegetables, fruit and meat. Dupain came across a queue of women at a butcher shop on Pitt Street waiting to exchange coupons for meat.
Post War Years
On 25 November 1946, now divorced from Olive Cotton, Dupain married Diana Palmer Illingworth, a clerk, at the District Registrar’s Office, Chatswood. From 1953 until his death, the couple lived at The Scarp, Castlecrag. Their home was designed by the modernist Australian architect Arthur Baldwinson. Surrounding the house was a native garden cultivated by Dupain.
Public Domain, National Library of Australia
His interest in photography changed in the postwar years, and Dupain took a documentary approach. Although he scorned the “artificiality” of studio work, he continued working in advertising. However, he focused on architectural and industrial photography, establishing close working relationships with eminent architects. Dupain was a reluctant traveller. However, he made one trip to Europe in his lifetime. In 1978, he photographed the Australian Embassy in Paris, designed by leading Australian Architect Harry Seidler.
NGA Exhibition
During the 1970s, Dupain, a retrospective exhibition of his work, was held at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. The collection introduced his now best-known photograph, Sunbaker, to the public. This image became an icon, defining the typical beach culture, the Australian way of life, and the great outdoors. The exhibition brought Dupain greater recognition. He was represented in all significant public collections in Australia, including Dreams Sensuous and Surreal’s exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. His work was considered not only art but to have historical value as it also captured wartime Australia in the 1930s.
Public domain, Wikimedia commons
Later Years
Dupain moved to a new studio in Artamon in 1971, working there for the next twenty years. His second wife described him as a ‘complex character’, as he was not a social person. Instead, Dupain was intense, single-minded, and disciplined. Dupain believed that the viewer must be emotionally and intellectually involved in the images and devoted his life to achieving excellence.
Courtesy National Library of Australia
Dupain became an honorary fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1980 and was appointed OBE for outstanding services to photography in 1981 and AC in 1992. Maxwell Spencer Dupain died, age 81, of heart disease on 27 July 1992 at his home Castlecrag. He was survived by his wife Diana, daughter Danina and son Rex and was cremated in a private service.
Following his death, his archive was divided into two: the art and personal negatives remained with his family, and the commercial negatives were consolidated into the Max Dupain Exhibition Negative Archive. These now reside at the State Library of New South Wales.