Title
Washing pattern, Woolloomooloo
circa 1910-1915
Artist
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Details
- Date
- circa 1910-1915
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- bromoil photograph
- Dimensions
- 25.4 x 15.0 cm image/sheet
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Gift of the Cazneaux family 1975
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 156.1975
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Harold Cazneaux
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
In a 1910 article on urban photography for the journal ‘Australasian Photo-Review’, Cazneaux regretted the neglect of the city as a subject by his fellow photographers: ‘in a big city we have the humour and pathos of life, the ease or struggle for existence.’1 Sydney’s streets and lanes, harbour and markets were a recurrent subject of his work. Unlike his artist friends Lionel Lindsay and Sydney Ure Smith, who at the same time were recording picturesque elements of old Sydney in etchings and drawings, Cazneaux’s photographs are rarely documentary or topographical. As with ‘Washing pattern, Woolloomooloo’, they are frequently about light and form. Cazneaux believed, with other artists of his generation, that it was light which would eventually characterise a distinctive national art.
1. Cazneaux H 1910, ‘In and about the city with a hand-camera’, ‘Australasian Photo-Review’, 22 Aug p 426
© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007
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Exhibition history
Shown in 9 exhibitions
Project 7 - Harold Cazneaux: 1878 - 1953 (1975), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 Aug 1975–28 Sep 1975
Harold Cazneaux, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 Dec 1989–11 Mar 1990
Souvenirs of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 14 Mar 1992–10 May 1992
Critic's Choice, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 Apr 1994–10 Jul 1994
We Are Family, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 Oct 1994–20 Nov 1994
Soft Shadows and Sharp Lines: Australian photography from Cazneaux to Dupain, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 Sep 2002–17 Nov 2002
Modernism/Japonism in photography 1920s-1940s: Ishida Kiichiro and the Sydney Camera Circle, Museum of Sydney, Sydney, 20 Dec 2003–25 Apr 2004
Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 05 Jun 2008–10 Aug 2008
Local Rhythms and Actions, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 04 Jun 2022–08 Jan 2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 6 publications
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Natasha Bullock (Curator), Soft shadows and sharp lines: Australian photography from Cazneaux to Dupain, Sydney, 2002. no catalogue numbers
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Natasha Bullock, Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, Sydney, 2008.
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Philip Geeves and Gael Newton, Philip Geeves presents Cazneaux's Sydney 1904-1934, Sydney, 1980, 42, 43 (illus.).
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Robert McFarlane, Critic's Choice, Sydney, 1994.
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Steven Miller, Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, 'Australian pictorialism', pg.71-91, Sydney, 2007, 82 (illus.).
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Gael Newton, Project 7: Harold Cazneaux 1878 - 1953, Sydney, 1975. cat.no. 7
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