photo-web

Australian Women Photographers

the pictorialists

The new Australian professional photographers in the pre-WWI years included a number of women, reflecting the greater independence of women, electoral gains through the suffrage issue and the change in social structures whereby fewer women expected to be kept at home until marriage.

Alice Mills (1870—1929) trained as a colourist in the Johnstone O’Shaunessy studio where she met her future husband, the painter Tom Humphrey (1858—1922), then manager of the studio. They started their own business in 1900. This later operated under her name only, probably from 1902 on when illness affected Thomas’ work. Mills made many portraits of artists, including Tom Roberts, and one of her husband and daughter Mary.

Judith Fletcher (w. 1905—1930) also seems to have had connections with art circles, making a number of por-traits of Arthur Streeton. Fletcher began as an amateur and turned professional in 1908.

The New Zealand born sisters, May (1881—1931) and Mina (1882—1967) Moore had a studio in New Zealand before May set up a studio in Sydney at the Bulletin Building and Mina in Melbourne in the Auditorium Buildings. The sisters relied on a formula known as Rembrandt lighting which left much of the picture in rich dark brown tones and picked out the main profile or features with a pencil of light from one side.

Their work was often stamped with both names, but it was possibly Mina in Melbourne who made the extraordinary portrait of Shirley Huxley with her hair flowing, one of the classics of Australian photography. Its inspired and unusual composition sidestepped the formulas of muse or vamp into which much glamour portraiture polarised in these years.

Mina Moore’s studio was taken over by Ruth Hollick (1882—1977) who had trained at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne in 1902—1903 and like May Moore, who had originally studied art at Elam Art School in Auckland, was attracted to the artistic, literary and theatrical circles of Melbourne. These circles were most likely more receptive to women as professionals. Ruth Hollick retained friendships with students from the National Gallery School: painter, Dora L. Wilson (1883—1946), and photographer, Pegg Clarke (c.1890—1956), who exhibited in salons in addition to running a studio in Melbourne. Dorothy Izard became Hollick’s partner around 1918.

Hollick had a special talent with child photography, still a taxing subject in the 1920s despite technological advances. Her work filled the illustrated magazines of the day including Sydney Ure Smith’s The Home, founded in 1920.

In child and social portraiture Hollick was the Melbourne counterpart to Harold Cazneaux in Sydney who had an appointment as special photographer to The Home. Hollick’s studies were less stylised than many of Cazneaux’s. An ingenious portrait of the young and seemingly affluent Master Quentin Cain of around 1930, equalled the novel compositions which Cazneaux favoured and left a strong sense of the subject.

In the I930s Hollick retired from the city studio and worked from home.

above text based on Gael Newton's Shades of Light