OLIVE
COTTON
1911 [deceased
2003]
Olive
Edith Cotton was born in Sydney and became interested in photography
while still at school. She joined the Photographic
Society of New South
Wales around 1928 and continued her photography during 1930—33
whilst studying at Sydney University for a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Cotton
majored in Mathematics and English but chose to work in photography.
and joined Max Dupain’s newly established studio in Bond
Street in 1934.
Dupain
and Cotton were childhood friends and married in 1939. By
this time Cotton had moved out of the pictorial soft focus style
of her
early work (plate 11, trees and Wire 1930) into the still life
studies with geometric shapes and dramatic lighting characteristic
of the
late
1930s,
as in plates
61 (Tea Cup Ballet, c1937) and 62 (Glasses, c.1937).
In
1938 Cotton was a member of the Contemporary Camera Groupe exhibition
which sought
a more
modern
photography than
that practised
by the pictorialists.
In
1941, following her separation from Dupain, Cotton taught Mathematics
at Frensham School. Mittagong. She was
later commissioned to illustrate
a book on the Sturt craft workshops. During Dupain’s war
service she returned to run his studio and experimented with
murals and decorative
applications of photo-montage.
In
1944 Cotton re-married and in 1946 moved to Koorawatha, to her husband’s
property.
Between
1959 and 1963 Cotton taught Mathematics in Cowra.
In
1964 she opened a small portrait studio in Cowra.
above
text
based on Gaël Newton's Silver & Grey
Angus and Roberston, Australia 1980