Axel Poignant
(England, Australia, England 1906–1986)
- Title
- Narrana and sons pause while hunting
- Other titles:
- A rest during the hunt
Narrana and sons resting while out hunting, Liverpool River Arnhem Land - Year
- 1952
printed 1981 - Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- gelatin silver photograph
- Dimensions
-
30.3 x 40.1cm image; 37.8 x 50.5cm sheet
- Signature & date
- Signed and dated l.r., sheet pencil "Axel Poignant - 1981". Dated l.c., sheet pencil "...1952".
- Credit
- Purchased 1978
- Accession number
- 181.1978
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
Though not born in Australia, Axel Poignant's work is largely about the 'Outback', its flora and fauna and the traditions of Australian and Indigenous identity. Poignant was born in Yorkshire in 1906 to a Swedish father and English mother, and arrived in Australia in 1926 seeking work and adventure. After tough early years of unemployment and homelessness, he eventually settled in Perth and found work as a portrait photographer, before taking to the road and the bush in search of new subjects. Poignant became fascinated with the photo-essay as a means of adding real humanity to the medium, and much of his work is in this form. The close relationships he developed with Aborigines on his travels are recorded in compassionate portraits of these people and their lives - the low angles and closely cropped frames appear more natural and relaxed than the stark compositions of earlier ethnographic photography.
- Bibliography (2)
-
Gael Newton (Australia) (Author), Silver and Grey - Fifty Years of Australian Photography 1900-1950, 1980. plate no. 97
Gael Newton (Australia) (Author), Edmund Capon (England; Australia, b.1940) (Author), Hal Missingham (Australia, b.1906, d.1994) (Author), Axel Poignant Retrospective, Domain, 1982. cat.no. 58
- Exhibition history (4)
-
Axel Poignant: photographs 1922-1980, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 17 Jul 1982–29 Aug 1982.
A changing relationship: Aboriginal themes in Australian art, c.1938-1988, S.H. Ervin Gallery, 08 Jun 1988–31 Jul 1988.
Four Photographers, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 02 Jun 1990–19 Aug 1990.
We Are Family, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 15 Oct 1994–20 Nov 1994.
