Harold Cazneaux

(New Zealand, Australia 1878–1953)

Title

Peace after war and memories

Year

1918

Media category

Photograph

Materials used

gelatin silver photograph

Dimensions

26.4 x 32.4cm image/sheet; 35.3 x 40.8cm card

Signature & date

Not signed. Not dated.

Credit

Gift of the Cazneaux family 1975

Accession number

117.1975

Location

Not on display

Further information

The end of the First World War came on (the now deeply embedded) eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The impact of the war on Australians had been enormous. Cazneaux, who was to lose his son in a later conflict, had friends who had served or who had been killed. This mysterious image marks the end of the conflict and is a memento to what had been lost. Unlike the confronting photomontages of Frank Hurley, Australia’s first official war photographer, this photograph is quiet and obvert. A farmer pauses from work, like a labourer from Jean François Millet’s ‘The Angelus’. He appears to read a telegram, perhaps bringing news of peace.1 Sunbeams break through the clouds and give the scene a dramatic, almost cinematic quality, suggestive of biblical promise: ‘and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ This photograph probably had personal connotations for the artist beyond the war. Cazneaux had recently suffered a complete nervous and physical collapse. Although this forced him to quit his job at Freeman’s, it was eventually to bring real equilibrium into his life and make possible a great creative burst of photography throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

1. This figure has been interpreted elsewhere as a soldier-settler

Bibliography (7)

Natasha Bullock (Australia) (Author), Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, 2008.

7079 (Editor), Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, 2007, 70 (illus.), 83 (illus.).

Catherine Speck (Australia) (Author), Painting ghosts: Australian women artists in wartime, Melbourne, 2004, 87 (colour illus.), 87. illus.no. 46; Note: this print is not from the collection of the AGNSW but from the NGA, Canberra.

'The Australian century supplement', The Weekend Australian 17 Mar 2001-18 Mar 2001, 17 Mar 2001-18 Mar 2001, (illus.).

Gael Newton (Australia), Australian Pictorial Photography, Melbourne, 1979, 17. cat.no. 22

Gael Newton (Australia) (Author), Project 7: Harold Cazneaux 1878 - 1953, Sydney, 1975. cat.no. 14

Photograms of the Year 1920 circa 1920, circa 1920, (illus.).

Exhibition history (7)

Jubilee Exhibition of Photographs (1945), Blaxland Gallery, 22 Jan 1945–03 Feb 1945.

Project 7 - Harold Cazneaux: 1878 - 1953 (1975), Art Gallery of New South Wales, 30 Aug 1975–28 Sep 1975.

Australian Pictorial Photography, S.H. Ervin Gallery, 12 Jun 1979–08 Jul 1979.

Australian Pictorial Photography, The Victorian College of the Arts Gallery, 08 Aug 1979–31 Aug 1979.

Australian Pictorial Photography, Art Gallery of South Australia, 01 Dec 1979–30 Jan 1980.

Harold Cazneaux, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 22 Dec 1989–11 Mar 1990.

Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 05 Jun 2008–10 Aug 2008.