CHAPTER
8
AMATEURS
AND THE PORTRAIT AND VIEWS TRADE IN THE 1890s— I920s
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The
last generation
The
amateur Pictorialists were not alone in introducing fashionable
soft-focus
effects to their portraits, some professionals
also
responded. H.Walter Barnett (1862—1934) was born in
Melbourne and apprenticed to Stewart’s, a Melbourne portrait
studio in 1875, where he formed a lifetime friendship with
Tom Roberts,
who was working there as a studio assistant. Barnett was trained
as a camera operator and reputedly never engaged in the printing
side of the work. He established a studio with a partner, Riis,
in Hobart in 1880—1882 then gained experience in overseas
studios before setting up the Falk studio in Sydney in 1885.
He travelled frequently to keep up with new techniques and
Falk studio was able to monopolise society and theatre portraiture.
In 1898 Barnett moved to London where he established a fashionable
studio in Hyde Park. By May 1899 he became the first and only
Australian to be elected to The Linked Ring Brotherhood(1).
Barnett’s
1892 portrait of Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales,
shows some of the new softness used to dramatic
effect. Barnett, if not a printer, as photohistorian Jack
Cato claims(2) had a flair for male portraiture in addition
to his
great success as a society portraitist in London. He moved
to Dieppe, France, in 1916 where he continued making portraits,
including a very fine series of the characters around the
town, such as The old locksmith. These exploited the effective
use
of lighting evident in his 1890s work(3).
Professional
photographers in the l880s and l890s began to respond to the
more elaborate
pictures, particularly the
genre tableaux
being shown at the amateur exhibitions. J. Brooks Thornley
(w.1898-1900)
who was camera operator for Barnett at Falk Studio in Sydney,
produced several genre pieces with themes such as “Jealousy”(4).
James
Taylor (1846-1917) of Adelaide, sold a number of
narrative tableaux featuring staged battles between whites
and Aboriginals, as well as a studio tableau showing
Constables Willshire
and Wurmbrand with native police in the camp at Alice Springs This
image commemorated the capture in 1887, of some Aboriginals
by these constables. The Port Augusta Despatch of 24 January
1888 described Taylor’s tableau as a ‘picturesque
cabinet' which transcended its ‘predecessors in
artistic finish and intrinsic interest’. The truth
of the events depicted depended on the viewpoint of the
spectator,
missionaries
for example, regarded Willshire as a ruthless murderer(5).
Commissioned
series of photographs of industrial projects also acquired
an extra dimension of glamour and drama.
J. Duncan
Pierce (w.1887) made a series of views of the BHP
plant in 1887(6) that
included ambitious underground shots of the miners
at work. Electric lighting and flash powder made low-light
subjects
possible around
the turn of the century, and many leading studios tackled
interior scenes.
Theatre
companies were a particularly popular subject for photographers
taking flashlight portraits,
adding
to the
already considerable
market for portraits of theatrical performers, the ‘pop
stars’ of their day. Barnett specialised in
theatrical personalities.
The
Queensland Railways Department also commissioned
an extensive series of photographs, covering the
rebuilding of the Indooroopilly
Bridge in 1893. The photographs were possibly taken
by Government Photographer CES Fryer (w.c. 1880s-1900)(7). The mammoth plate albumen prints are very rich
and give more prominence
to the workers than is common in such official
work. This may have
been due to the unusual nature of some of their
activities for which they used diving suits.
There
were probably several hundred amateur photographers
in the 1890s associated with the various societies
and others who were unaffiliated and were interested
chiefly
in creating
chronicles
of their families. Although thousands of women
were employed in the mass production of portraits
in the
city studios,
the
surviving bodies of amateur work before the early
twentieth century are predominantly by men(8).
Photographic
societies around the country organised exhibitions so that
amateurs could have the opportunity
of displaying
their work. In 1895 members of the South Australian
Photographic Society were represented in the
South Australian Chamber
of
Manufacturers
Exhibition of Art and Industry. This show was
significant for its mixed hanging of photographs and traditional
works of art.
One exhibitor of prints and stereographs was
H.H.
Tilbrook (1848-1937),
founder of the Northern Argus newspaper in South
Australia. Tilbrook was not allied with the ‘fuzzy
wuzzies’ of the
turn of the century but his late platinotype
prints had a distinctive style(9).
Judge
Ernest Docker (1839-1923), President of the New
South Wales Photographic Society from 1894-1907,
(whose father had experimented with the calotype
in 1850) had reported on
photography in Australia to the British Journal
of Photography in the 1870s.
He found his forte as a stereophotographer
from the 1890s, making hundreds of views on
his excursions
and travels(10).
In
Queensland, Walter Hume (1840-1921)
recorded his family and activities on their
Darling Downs property(11). While
in Sydney, A.W.Allen (1862-1941)
had also begun his long photographic reportage
of his family. His
series of albums dating from 1899 through
to the 1920s are one of the earliest to
have the flavour
of
the informal ‘snapshot’ without
the poor quality that often limits the
appeals of family photographs(12).
In
Tasmania the leading amateurs in the
Northern Tasmanian Society were Frank
Styant Browne
(1854-1938) and A.Harold Masters
(1874-1951), who were both long-serving
members. Browne was a chemist and followed
the developments of overseas Pictorialists
without adopting the soft-focus or overt
stylisation of their
examples(13). He
was particularly interested in technical
advances and with Masters,
an architect and teacher, made the first
X-ray photographs in Tasmania in 1896
and in 1897 Styant Browne
was
one of the earliest demonstrators of
colour photography in Australia(14).
The
professional studio photographers
may have viewed the massive democratisation
of photography
in the
1890s with
disdain but
they would hardly have felt there was
any
competition. The studios were turning
out even more portraits
and views than
ever for
the same reasons as prompted the growth
in amateur output; the dry plate, the
concentration of people
in the cities,
and the
opening up of a views trade associated
with
tourism. Each major city had a few
studios providing the
bulk of views
from their
state but the best known of the new
generation of masters of the genre at the turn of
the century were;
J.W.Beattie in
Tasmania, and Charles Kerry and Henry
King of Sydney(15). Born within a few
years of each other in the late 1850s,
their careers began in the late 1880s,
paralleling
the growth
of Pictorialism, then
dwindled by the First World War which
brought an end to
the views trade.
Scottish-born
John Beattie (1859-1930) arrived in
Tasmania with his parents in 1878(16). The dry plate arrived at the same
time and by 1879 Beattie was on an
expedition to Lake St Clair taking
dry plate views, the first of the
region and some of
the earliest in Australia(17).
He
joined the Anson Brothers studio, established in 1878 when
Henry,
Richard
and Joshua
Anson bought out
Samuel
Clifford’s
studio in Hobart. Beattie in turn
bought out the Ansons in 1891.
He was dedicated both to the history
of Tasmania and to the promotion
of its scenic wonders. Beattie
trekked
into regions which had not been
photographed, or were unlikely
to be visited by
tourists
due to the ruggedness of the terrain,
bringing back images which created
a public image of the island’s
great wilderness beauty. After
1896 Beattie had the status of
an official
photographer
to the Tasmanian Government and
was a member of the Tourist Association,
producing a number of illustrated
guides to the
country.
He
was most comfortable with direct
landscape photography, with a
good range of tone
and simple compositions.
He avoided the
genre tableaux that animated
many of Caires photographs and the mythologies
of the
bushmen which they
supported. Despite
his
government activities Beattie,
like Caire, was not just in the
business
of making
views. In
1907 Beattie
declared
the
strip
of land reserved on either side
of the Gordon River ‘totally
inadequate to protect the river
... all the hillsides immediately
fronting the river should be
reserved’(18). The Tasmanian Wilderness Society
in the 1980s shares this view
and uses photography
as a vehicle to promote the preservation
of the environment.