Title
Winter showers
circa 1920
Artist
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Details
- Other Title
- Clearing showers
- Date
- circa 1920
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- bromoil photograph
- Dimensions
- 18.7 x 23.9 cm image/sheet
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Gift of the Cazneaux family 1975
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 148.1975
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Harold Cazneaux
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
Winter shadows is a softly focussed classically pictoralist photograph printed through the bromoil technique. A bromoil print is created through an intervention in the printing process when a gelatin silver photograph is bleached and fixed, then soaked in water. A greasy ink is then applied and gradually built up to the required density 1. The vague outline of the shrubs and long grasses is typical of the impressionist orientation of pictorialism 2. The manipulation of light within the frame has resulted in the rain appearing to stream through the clouds in a luminous sheet.
Harold Cazneaux was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1878. His parents, Pierce Mott Cazneau and Emma Florence (née Bentley) worked in commercial studios in New Zealand before returning to settle permanently in Adelaide during the early 1890s. At the age of 18 Cazneaux went to work alongside his father at Hammer & Co studio as a retoucher. He moved to Sydney in 1904 to join the larger portrait firm, Freeman’s quickly ascending to the position of ‘chief operator’ (as camera portraitists were known). Studio work was highly formulaic, with little scope for creativity. Cazneaux used his time walking to and from work to experiment with pictorialist aesthetics 3. The Photographic Society of New South Wales organised an exhibition of Cazneaux’s photographs in 1909, the first such solo exhibition of its kind in Australia. In 1916 he and fellow pictorialist photographer, Cecil Bostock founded the Sydney Camera Circle. The group was particularly interested in the how pictorialism could be adapted to and extended within an Australian context. The mechanised, standardised and frenetic pace of Freeman’s increasingly took its toll on Cazneaux’s creativity and health, and he resigned in 1917. He moved with his wife and daughters to the Sydney suburb of Roseville, and in 1920 he was employed as the official photographer for The Home magazine. This new position let him work in a varied indoor and outdoor environments. In 1938 Cazneaux was awarded an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of London. He continued to work until his death in 1953.
1. Baldwin G 1991, ‘Looking at photographs: a guide to technical terms’, J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles pp 11-12
2. Miller S 2007, ‘Chapter 4: Australian Pictorialism’ in, ‘Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection Handbook’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney p 72
3. Newton G 1988, ‘Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988’, Australian National Gallery, Canberra p 85 -
Bibliography
Referenced in 1 publication
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Helen Ennis and Phillip Adams, Harold Cazneaux: the quiet observer, Canberra, circa 1994.
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