|
Clovelly Beach 1964
John F Williams (Australian 1933–2016)
 |
| Silver gelatin print© John Williams estate |
When John Williams asked me to write an essay for his 2004 monograph Line Zero, one of the images that had special meaning for me was this one of Clovelly Beach. This was largely due to my own background growing up in Manly in the 1960s under the care of my mother Joy and grandmother Lauraine Clark known by a moniker 'Ging’. This was the title I gave her as a child trying to say Granny.
Neither Mum or Ging actually swam that much. There was the occasional dip but they did like going to the beach. My teenage life was equally nonathletic. I worked on my tan like all the girls and did not take to surfing or surfboards. When I look at the photo, I can imagine I could be the young girl in the foreground. I accompanied mum and Ging on various occasions but also spent entire summer holidays on the beach all day as it was a way of seeing or seeking boyfriends.
It is hard today for younger viewers to understand that it was quite something for these older women to feel so comfortable going to the beach displaying older flesh and in practical costumes that didn’t sag and dried quickly. I can feel the texture of the fabrics now as well as the smells of ocean and sun lotion, although these lotions were not then splashed around as the sun cancer scare was not so prominent.
What is now forgotten is that in the late 1950s–1960s, most older ladies did not deport themselves quite as happily and casually or prominently as these women. I remember mum and Ging agonising over whether a new costume was ‘appropriate’. Neither ever considered a two piece. A friend of mum’s once sat excruciating self conscious in her new sateen bikini which barely had a few inches of middle flesh exposed.
Women at this age back then had more time to themselves having left their child rearing days behind and probably not doing the level of nanna duties that have become common now. Already some in this group might have lost their husbands. Actuarial tables tell us that when men retired at 65 in the post war decades they often only lived another five years or so. There was still a lingering sense in my observation, that women having a good time by themselves like this group without men or children was somehow indulgent. It is not hard to imagine many thinking that surely they should have been doing something useful!
All the accessories in this group are familiar such as the cheap nylon bags, hats, towels and rubber surf plane. These may be still around but back in the 1960s they were new. I am not suggesting there weren’t women in modern costumes much earlier than this and that some were not active swimmers but in my little conservative and sometime mildly progressive female household, we were very much guided by self-imposed imagined conventions of what to wear and do at the beach.
The photographer John Williams seemed a bit taken aback by my identification with this picture. For me, and for the many Australians who are blessed to live on one of our beautiful coasts, the experience of beach life is unforgettable and unrivalled physically and socially. Better writers than me have written exquisitely on this topic. Life on the beach was a joy that set all worries and anxieties back in perspective.
Like other Australian documentary art photographers of the post war years, John worked a lot outdoors and the beach was a given hunting ground. But he was sensitive in his approach to photography outdoors and was being influenced by new attitudes to personal documentary then emerging in Australia. I think in seeing these women as a subject in the mid 1960s, John was a little ahead of his time and departed from earlier conventions that showed women without actually thinking much about them as other than set stereotypes.
John was an older photographer at the start of the photo boom here in the 1970s and became a teacher and leader because of his decades of extra experience and thinking about photography. Like so many that knew John, I enjoyed his company and conversations.
A print of Clovelly 1964 used to live with us, but sadly no longer. I may revisit that decision one day and seek out another.
Gael Newton AM, May 2025
A copy of Clovelly 1964 is held in the Art Gallery of South Australia.
John died in Hobart in July 2016
My piece for Line Zero - click here
Click here for more on John Williams
more Essays and Articles by Gael Newton AM
|