Post on 07-Apr-2023
Beginnings: The International Photographic Collection at the National Gallery of Victoria
Dr Marcus Bunyan
This is a story that has never been told. It is the story
of how the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
Australia set up one of the very first photography
departments in a museum in the world in 1967, and
employed one of the first dedicated curators of
photography, only then to fail to purchase classical
black and white masterpieces by international artists
that were being exhibited in Melbourne and sold at
incredibly low prices during the 1970s and early 1980s,
before prices started going through the roof.
The NGV had a golden chance to have one of the greatest
collections of classical photography in the world if only
they had grasped the significance and opportunity
presented to them but as we shall see - due to personal,
political and financial reasons - they dropped the ball.
By the time they realised, prices were already beyond
their reach.
Justifications for the failure include lack of financial
support, the purchasing of non-vintage prints and
especially the dilemma of distance, which is often quoted
as the main hindrance to purchasing. But as I show in
this research essay these masterpieces were already in
1
Australia being shown and sold in commercial photography
galleries in Melbourne at around $150, for example, for a
Paul Strand photograph. As a partial public institution
the NGV needs to take a hard look at this history to
understand what went wrong and how they missed amassing
one of the best collections of classical photography in
the world.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
May 2015
AbstractThis research paper investigates the formation of the
international photographic collection at the National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.
KeywordsPhotographs, photography, 19th century photography, early
Australian photography, Australian photography,
international photography collection, National Gallery of
Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria photography
department, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National
Gallery of Australia, Melbourne, photographic
collections, curator.
2
George Baron Goodman, d. 1851
[Dr William Bland]
c. 1845
Daguerreotype (ninth plate daguerreotype in Wharton case) 7.5 x 6.3
cm
© State Library of New South Wales collection
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the purpose of
academic research
Introduction
Invented by Louis Daguerre in 1839, the daguerreotype - a
plate of copper coated in silver, sensitised to light by
being exposed to halogen fumes - was the first publicly
announced photographic process and the first to come into
3
widespread use. The first photograph taken in Australia
was a daguerreotype, a view of Bridge Street (now lost)
taken by a visiting naval captain, Captain Augustin Lucas
in 1841.1 The oldest surviving extant photograph in
Australia is a daguerreotype portrait of Dr William Bland
by George Barron Goodman taken in 1845 (see image above).
This daguerreotype is now in the State Library of New
South Wales collection.2
After these small beginnings, explored in Gael Newton’s
excellent book Shades of Light,3 the Melbourne Public Library
(later to become the State Library of Victoria) launched
the Museum of Art in 1861 and the Picture Gallery in
1864, later to be unified into the National Gallery in
1870, a repository for all public art collections, the
gallery being housed in the same building as the Library.4
The Pictures Collection (including paintings, drawings,
prints, cartoons, photographs and sculpture) was started
in 1859.5 The collection of photographs by the Library had
both moral and educative functions. Photographs of
European high culture reminded the colonists of links to
the motherland, of aspirations to high ideals, especially
in conservative Melbourne.6 Photographs of distant lands,
such as Linnaeus Tripe’s Views of Burma, document other
‘Oriental’ cultures.7 Photographs of settlement and the
development of Melbourne recorded what was familiar in an
unknown landscape. “Documentation of both the familiar and the
unknown intersected with the scientific desire for categorisation and
4
classification.”8
It is not the purview of this essay to dwell on the
development of photography in Australia during
intervening years between the 1860s - 1960s, but suffice
it to say that the collecting of photographs at the State
Library of Victoria continued the archiving of Australian
identity and place through the ability “to define the self, claim
the nation and occupy the world.”9 Australian photographic
practice followed the development of international
movements in photography in these years: art and commerce
from the 1860s - 1890s, Pictorialism from the 1900s -
1930s, Modernism in the 1930s - 1940s and documentary
photography from the 1940s - 1960s. The development of
Australian photography was heavily reliant on the forms
of international photography. Analysis of these years can
be found in Gael Newton’s book Shades of Light: Photography and
Australia 1839 - 198810 and Isobel Crombie’s book Second sight:
Australian photography in the National Gallery of Victoria.11
In 1959 the epic The Family of Man exhibition, curated by the
renowned photographer Edward Steichen from the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, toured Sydney, Melbourne and
Adelaide to massive crowds. Featuring 503 photographs by
273 famous and unknown photographers from 68 countries
this exhibition offered a portrait of the human
condition: birth, love, war, famine and the universality
of human experience all documented by the camera’s lens.12
5
In Melbourne the exhibition was shown in a car dealer’s
showroom (yes, really!) and was visited by photographers
such as Jack Cato, Robert McFarlane, Graham McCarter.13
The photographs in the exhibition, accompanied by text,
were printed “onto large panels up to mural size [and] gave The Family
of Man works an unprecedented impact, even given the role illustrated
magazines had played through most of the century.”14 This loss of the
aura of the original, the authenticity of the vintage
print, a print produced by the artist around the time of
the exposure of the negative, would have important
implications for the collection of international
photographs in the fledgling National Gallery of Victoria
photographic collection (even though Walter Benjamin saw
all photography as destroying the authenticity of the
original through its ability to reproduce an image ad
nauseum).15
As Benjamin observes in his Illuminations, “The enlargement of a
snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible
though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.”16
Other ways of looking at the world also arrived in
Australia around the same time, namely Robert Frank’s
seminal book The Americans,17 a road movie photographic view
of American culture full of disparate angles, juke boxes,
American flags, car, bikes and diners.18
6
Beginnings
While legislatively the National Gallery had split from
the State Library of Victoria in 1944,19 it wasn’t until
August, 1968 that the National Gallery of Victoria moved
into it’s own building designed by Roy Grounds at 180 St
Kilda Road (now known as NGV International).20 In the
years leading up to the move the Trustees and Staff went
on a massive spending spree:
“But although the sources of income from bequests were limited during the
year [1967], a somewhat increased Government purchasing grant continued,
which, with the allowance made by the Felton Committee, seemed to
stimulate Trustees and Staff almost to a prodigality of spending. Perhaps, too,
an urge for as full a display as possible at the opening of the new Gallery
contributed; for by the end of the year the entire grant for purchase until the
end of June 1968 had been consumed, and as well some commitments made
for the future. Only donations made from private sources, and through the
generosity of the National Gallery society, enabled the rate of acquisition to
be maintained.”21
Unfortunately, this profligacy did not include spending
on photography. This was because the Department of
Photography was only formed in April 1967 after the
Director at the time, Dr Eric Westbrook, convinced the
Trustees of the Gallery “that the time had come to allow
photographs into the collection.”22 The impetus for establishing a
photography collection “was the growing recognition and promotion
7
of the aesthetics of photography.”23 The Department of Photography
at the NGV thus became the first officially recognised
curatorial photography department devoted to the
collection of photography as an art form in its own right
in Australia and one of only a few dedicated specifically
to collecting photography in the world.24 While the
collecting criteria of the NGV has always emphasised “the
primacy of the object as an example of creative expression,”25 the fluid
nature of photography was acknowledged in a 1967 report
on the establishment of the Department of Photography.26
The new department, however, did not gain momentum until
the establishment of a Photographic Subcommittee in
October 1969 that consisted of the Director of the
Gallery and three notable Melbourne photographers: Athol
Shmith, Les Gray and Chairman, Dacre Stubbs, along with
the Director of the National Gallery Art School, Lenton
Parr. Advising the Committee were honorary
representatives Albert Brown (in Adelaide) and Max Dupain
(in Sydney).27 The Photographic Subcommittee defined the
philosophies of the Department and began acquiring
photographs for the collection.28 While the Department was
located in the Gallery’s library and had no designated
exhibition space at this time,29 Committee members
stressed the need to make contacts with the international
art world and fact-finding missions were essential in
order to establish a curatorial department in Australia
as no photography department had ever been established in
8
Australia before. “Members were also concerned to position the new
Department in an international context (achieved initially through linking the
Gallery to an international exhibitions network and later by purchasing
international photography.”30
Financial support and gallery space was slow in
materialising and then (as now) “it was enlightened corporate and
individual support that would significantly help the NGV to create its
photography collection.”31 The first attributable international
photograph to enter the collection was the 21.8 x 27.5 cm
bromoil photograph Nude (1939) by the Czechoslovakian
photographer Frantisek Drtikol in 1971 (Gift of C. Stuart
Tompkins),32 an artist of which there remains only one
work in the collection, and other early international
acquisitions included twenty-seven documentary
photographs taken during NASA missions to the moon in the
years 1966 - 1969 (presented by Photimport in 1971)33 and
work by French photographer M. Lucien Clergue in 1972,
founder of the Arles Festival of Photography.34 Early
international exhibitions included The Photographers Eye from
the Museum of Modern Art in New York (facilitated through
Albert Brown’s connections with photography curator John
Szarkowski of MoMA).35
The purchasing of the Dritkol nude is understandable as
he is an important photographer of people and nudes.
“Drtikol made many portraits of very important people and nudes which
show development from pictorialism and symbolism to modern composite
9
pictures of the nude body with geometric decorations and thrown shadows,
where it is possible to find a number of parallels with the avant-garde works
of the period.”36 The acceptance of the set of twenty-seven
NASA photographs is understandable but still problematic.
Although some of the photographs are breathtakingly
beautiful and they would have had some social
significance at that time (the first lunar landing was in
1969), their relative ‘value’ as pinnacles of
international documentary photography, both aesthetically
and compositionally, must be questioned.37 One wonders on
what grounds the Photographic Subcommittee recommended
their acceptance at the very start of the collection of
international photography for the Department of
Photography when so many definitive photographs by
outstanding masters of photography could have been
requested as a donation instead. Similarly, the purchase
by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1980 of over 108
space photographs by NASA, Washington, D.C.
(manufacturer) for the international collection is
equally mystifying when there was a wealth of European
and American master photographers work being shown in
exhibitions around Melbourne (and sold at very low
prices, eg. $150 for a Paul Strand vintage print) that
did not enter the collection.
In 1972 Jenny Boddington (with a twenty year background
in documentary film)38 was appointed Assistant Curator of
Photography. She was selected from fifty-three
10
applicants,39 and was later to become the first full-time
curator of photography at the NGV, the first in Australia
and perhaps only the third ever full-time photography
curator in the world. In 1973, the Melbourne photographer
Athol Shmith, who sat on the Photographic Subcommittee,
visited major galleries and dealers in London and Paris
for five weeks and reserved small selections of non-
vintage prints for purchase by Henri Lartigue, Bill
Brandt, Paul Strand, Andre Kertesz, Edward Steichen and
Margaret Bourke-White40 (non-contemporary ie. vintage work
not being generally available at this time). Also in 1973
the corridor beside the Prints and Drawings Department
opened as the first photography exhibition space, to be
followed in 1975 by the opening of a larger photography
gallery on the third floor.41
In 1975 Boddington made a six-week tour of Europe, London
and America that included meeting photographers Andre
Kertesz and Bill Brandt and the Director of the Museum of
Modern Art, John Szarkowski.42 Boddington also spent four
weeks viewing photography at the MoMA, time that
radically changed her ideas about running the department,
including the decision that priority be given to the
acquisition of important overseas material. She states:
“My ideas about the running of my department are radically changed … I
believe that for some time in the future immediate priority and all possible
energy should be given to the acquisition of important overseas material,
remembering that ours is the only museum in Australia with a consistent
11
policy of international collecting, and that effort in the initiation and
mounting of exhibitions can be saved by showing some of the best work we
have already purchased.”43
As Suzanne Tate notes in her Postgraduate Diploma Thesis,
Boddington “was also determined to achieve autonomy from the
Photographic Subcommittee, and to act on her own judgment, as other
curators did.”44 Perhaps this understandable desire for
autonomy and the resultant split and aversion (towards
the Photographic Subcommittee) can be seen as the
beginning of the problems that were to dog the nascent
Photography department. In 1976 the Photographic
Subcommittee was discontinued although Les Gray (who
expressed a very ‘camera club’ aesthetic) continued to
act as honorary advisor.45 The Photography department
continued to collect both Australian and international
photography in equal measure (but of equal value?) and
held exhibitions of international photography from
overseas institutions (including the early exhibition The
Photographer’s Eye in 1968)46 and from the permanent
collection (such as an exhibition of work by Andre
Kertész, Bill Brandt and Paul Strand)47 in order to
educate the public, not only in the history of the medium
but how to ‘see’ photography and read ‘good’ photographic
images from the mass of consumer images in the public
domain.48
12
Paradigms and problems of international
photography collecting at the National Gallery of
Victoria
“It does not do to be impatient in the business of collecting for an art
museum. A public collection is a very permanent thing. It is really necessary to
think in terms of the future and how our photographs and our century will
appear in that future. We would like those in the future to inherit material
that is intelligible both for itself and in relation to the other arts; at the same
time there is the need to satisfy the present. A collection cannot be richer than
the responses of its artists but it is hoped that it will represent a rich trawl of
each historical period.”
Jenny Boddington 49
The current photography collection at The National
Gallery of Victoria consists of over 15,000 photographs
of which around 3,000 are by international artists (a
ratio of 20% whereas the ratio between Australian/
international photographers at the National Gallery of
Australia in Canberra is 60/40%).50 Dr Isobel Crombie, now
Assistant Director, Curatorial and Collection Management
and former Senior Curator of Photography at the National
Gallery of Victoria, notes in her catalogue introduction
“Creating a Collection: International Photography at the
National Gallery of Victoria,” from the exhibition Re_View:
170 years of Photography that several factors have affected
the collection of international photographs at The
National Gallery of Victoria. I have identified what I
13
believe to be the three key factors:
1. Lack of financial support
2. The purchasing of non-vintage prints
3. The dilemma of distance
Financial support
When the Department of Photography was set up at The
National Gallery of Victoria the lack of adequate funds
tempered the Photography Subcommittees purchasing
aspirations. This situation continued after the
appointment of Jenny Boddington and continues to this
day. Athol Shmith noted that there were two options for
building a collection: one was to spend substantial funds
to acquire the work of a few key photographers, the other
option (the one that was adopted) was a policy of
acquiring a small number of works by a wide range of
practitioners, a paradigm that still continues.51 “A broadly
based collecting policy was established to purchase work by Australian and
International practitioners from all periods of photographic history.”52
The majority of early acquisitions of the Department were
overwhelmingly Australian but this collection policy
broadened dramatically after the overseas travel of Athol
Shmith and Jenny Boddington.53 Cultural cringe was
prevalent with regard to Australian photography and it
14
was rarely, if ever, talked about as art. Australian
photography was still in the hands of the camera clubs
and magazines and influenced by those aesthetics... but
the ability to purchase the desired international work
was severely curtailed due, in part, to the low exchange
rate of the Australian dollar. In 1976 one Australian
dollar was worth approximately US 40 cents. Another
reason was the lack of money to purchase international
work. In the early 1970s the Department had approximately
$3,000 a year to purchase any work (international or
Australian) that gradually built up to about $30,000 per
annum in the mid 1970s. In 1981-82, this was reduced to
almost zero because of the financial crisis and credit
squeeze that enveloped Australia. This lack of funds to
purchase work was compounded by sky rocketing prices for
international photographs by renowned photographers in
the early 1980s.
While generous help over eight years from Kodak
(Australasia) Pty. Ltd had helped buy Australian works
for the collection (a stipulation of the funds),54 money
for international acquisitions had been less forthcoming.
In a catalogue text from 1983 Boddington notes,
“… classic, well-known photographs are now very expensive indeed. One can
only look back with sincere appreciation to the days when the department’s
purchasing budget was $1000 a year and the trustees agreed to buy 27 Bill
Brandts, whilst the National Gallery Society donated a further 13 from
15
‘Perspective of Nudes’, thus concluding out first major international purchase,
happily before Brandt’s prices quintupled in a single blow early in 1975.
Photography was then beginning to be a factor in the market place of art and
a budget of $1000 a year was no longer adequate - even for the purchase of
Australian work! Where funds are limited (as they are) a fairly basic decision
has to be made as to the direction a collection will follow. Here in Melbourne
we have on the whole focused on the purest uses of straight photography as
it reflects broad cultural concerns …”55
By 1976 the Felton Bequest purchased works by Julie
Margaret-Cameron (one image!) and the NGV purchased
thirty-four André Kertész, evidence that the status of
the Photography department was rising. Throughout the
remainder of the 1970s and early 1980s, eighty works were
acquired by artists such as Imogen Cunningham (five
images), Edward Muybridge (two images - the only two in
the collection), Lois Conner (three images) and Man Ray
(eleven images).56 In 1995 Isobel Crombie revised the
collecting policy of the Department and she notes in
“Collecting Policy for the Department of Photography, National Gallery of
Victoria (Revised October 1995),” Appendix 1 in Suzanne Tate’s
Postgraduate Diploma Thesis under the heading
‘International Photography’57 that, “Given our financial resources
extremely selective purchases are to be made in this area to fill those gaps in
the collection of most concern to students and practicing photographers.”58
Crombie further notes that the contemporary collection is
an area that needs much improvement whilst acknowledging
the dramatic increases in prices asked and realised for
16
prime photographs and the restricted gallery funds for
purchases.59
While today the importance of philanthropy, fund raising
and sponsorship is big business within the field of
museum art collecting one cannot underestimate the
difficulties faced by Boddington in collecting
photographs by international artists during the formative
years of the collection. As photography was liberated to
become an art form in the early 1970s through the
establishment of museum departments, through the
emergence of photographic schools and commercial
photographic galleries (such as the three commercial
photography galleries showing Australian and
international work in Melbourne: Brummels (Rennie Ellis),
Church Street Photographic Centre (Joyce Evans) and The
Photographers Gallery (Paul Cox, John Williams, William
Heimerman and Ian Lobb), photography was given a place to
exist, a place to breathe and become part of the
establishment. But my feeling is that the status of
photography as an art form, which was constantly having
to be fought for, hindered the availability of funding
both from within the National Gallery of Victoria itself
and externally from corporate and philanthropic
institutions and people.
To an extent I believe that this bunker mentally hindered
the development of the photographic collection at the
17
National Gallery of Victoria until much more recent
times. Instead of photography being seen as just art and
then going out and buying that art, the battle to define
itself AS art and defend that position has had to be
replayed again and again within the NGV, especially
during the late 1970s-1980s and into the early 1990s.60
This is very strange position to be in, considering that
the NGV had the prescience to set up one of the first
ever photography departments in a museum in the world.
Then to not support it fully or fund it, or to really
understand what was needed to support an emergent art
form within a museum setting so that the masterpieces
vital for the collection could to be purchased, is
perplexing to say the least. I wonder whether more could
not have been done to attract philanthropy and funds from
personal and big business enterprises to support
international acquisitions. I also wonder about the
nature of some of the international purchases for the
Department of Photography (the choice of photographer or
photographs purchased) and the politics of how those
works were acquired.
The purchasing of non-vintage prints
The paradigm for collecting international photographs
early in the history of the Department of Photography was
set by Athol Shmith in 1973 on his visit to Paris and
18
London.
“Typically for the times, Shmith did not choose to acquire vintage prints, that
is, photographs made shortly after the negative was taken. While vintage
prints are most favoured by collectors today, in the 1970s vintage prints
supervised by the artists were considered perfectly acceptable and are still
regarded as a viable, if less impressive option now.”61
This assertion is debatable. While many museums including
the NGV preferred to acquire portfolios of modern
reprints as a speedy way of establishing a group of key
images, Crombie notes in the catalogue essay to 2nd Sight:
Australian Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria that the
reason for preferring the vintage over the modern print
“is evident when confronted with modern and original prints: differences in
paper, scale and printing styles make the original preferable.”62 Crombie’s
text postulates that this sensibility, the consciousness
of these differences slowly evolved in the photographic
world and, for most, the distinctions were not a matter
of concern even though the quality of the original
photograph was not always maintained.63 I believe that
this statement is only a partial truth. While modern
prints may have been acceptable there has always been a
premium placed on the vintage print, a known value above
and beyond that of modern prints, even at the very dawn
of photography collecting in museums. I believe that
price (which is never mentioned in this discussion) is
the major reason for the purchase of non-vintage prints.
19
In Crombie’s “Collecting Policy for the Department of
Photography, National Gallery of Victoria (Revised
October 1995),” she notes under the heading ‘Past
Collecting Policy’ Point 1 that “Many non-vintage
photographs have been collected … Purchase of non-vintage
prints should not continue though we may we accept such
photographs as gifts on occasion.”64
I vividly remember seeing a retrospective of the work of
Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh in
2005. One room consisted of small, jewel-like vintage
prints that were amazing in their clarity of vision and
intensity of the resolution of the print. In the other
three rooms there were large blown-up photographs of the
originals, authorised by the artist. Seen at mural size
the images fell apart, the tension within the picture
plane vanished and the meaning of the image was
irrevocably changed. Even as the artist’s intentions
change over time, even as the artist reprints the work at
a later stage, the photograph is not an autonomous object
- it becomes a post-structuralist textual site where the
artist and curator (and writers, conservators, historians
and viewers) become the editors of the document and where
little appeal can be made to the original intentions of
the author (if they are known).65 While change,
alteration, editing, revision and restoration represent
the true life of objects66 (and noting that the same re-
inscription also happens with vintage photographs), the
20
purchase of non-vintage prints eliminates the original
intention of the artist. This is not to say that the
modern printing, such as Bill Brandt’s high contrast
version of People sheltering in the Tube; Elephant and Castle,
underground station (1940 printed 1976, below) cannot become
the famous version of the image, but that some
acknowledgement of the history of the image must be made.
Ignoring the negative/print split is problematic to say
the least, especially if the original was printed with
one intention and the modern print with an entirely
different feeling. This is not a matter of refinement of
the image but a total reinterpretation (as in the case of
the Brandt). While all artists do this, a failure to
acknowledge the original vision for a work of art and the
context in which it was taken and printed - in Brandt’s
case he was asked by the War Office to record the Blitz,
in which Londoners sheltered from German air raids in
Underground stations - can undermine the
reconceptualisation of the modern print.
21
Bill Brandt
People sheltering in the Tube; Elephant and Castle, underground station
1940
Silver gelatin print
© Bill Brandt Archive © IWM Non-Commercial License
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
purpose of academic research
Civilians sheltering in Elephant and Castle London
Underground Station during an air raid in November 1940.
Elephant and Castle London Underground Station Shelter:
22
People sleeping on the crowded platform of Elephant and
Castle tube station while taking shelter from German air
raids during the London Blitz.
Bill BrandtPeople sheltering in the Tube; Elephant and Castle,
underground station
1940, printed 1976
Silver gelatin print
34.4 x 29.3 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, MelbournePurchased, 1974
© Bill Brandt Archive
23
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
purpose of academic research
NB. Note the removal of the man sitting up at right in
mid-foreground
The dilemma of distance
While the dilemma of distance is cited as an obstacle to
the collection of international photographs by the
Department of Photography in the early 1970s by Isobel
Crombie,67 this observation becomes less applicable by the
middle of the decade. Master prints from major
international photographers were available for purchase
in Australia by The National Gallery of Australia in
Canberra (which had been collecting photography since the
early 1970s),68 The Art Gallery of New South Wales (which
established a Department of Photography in 1974),69 and
The National Gallery of Victoria, through exhibitions at
newly opened commercial galleries in both Melbourne and
Sydney. Public touring exhibitions were held of the work
of international photographers, most notably British
Council exhibition of Bill Brandt in 1971, and the French
Foreign Ministry’s major exhibition of Cartier-Bresson in
1974.70
24
In Melbourne commercial galleries specialising in
photography and photographer run galleries had emerged,
namely Brummels established by Rennie Ellis in 1972, The
Photographers Gallery and Workshop founded by Paul Cox,
Ingeborg Tyssen, John F. Williams and Rod McNicoll in
1973 (the Gallery was taken over in late 1974 by Ian
Lobb, his first exhibition as director being at the
beginning of 1975; Bill Heimerman joined as joint
director at the beginning of 1976), and Church Street
Gallery established by Joyce Evans in 1977.71 At the
commercial galleries the main influence was
overwhelmingly American:
“The impact of exhibitions held by the NGV was reinforced by exhibitions of
the work of Ralph Gibson, William Clift, Paul Caponigro, Duane Michals and
Harry Callahan at The Photographers Gallery and by the series of lectures and
workshops that the artists conducted during those exhibitions. Joyce Evans
also organised important exhibitions during this period but again the focus
was American with work by Minor White, Jerry Uelsmann, Les Krims and
others.”72
Shows of American photography, many of which toured
extensively, became relatively commonplace and it was the
first time Australian photographers and the general
public had access to such a concentration of
international photography in a variety of styles.73 Ian
Lobb, who took over the running of the Photographers
25
Gallery in late 1974 (with Bill Heimerman), notes that
the first exhibition of international photography at the
gallery was that of Paul Caponigro in 1975.74
“We sold 22 prints which he told us was the second highest sale he had made
to that point. With the success of the Caponigro show, we closed the gallery
for a few months while the gallery was rebuilt. I took Bill as a business
partner, and he made a trip to the USA to set-up some shows. From 1975,
every second show was an international show.”75
Lobb observes that,
“The initial philosophy was simply to let people see the physical difference
between the production of prints overseas and locally. After a while this
moved from the Fine Print to other concerns both aesthetic and conceptual.
The gallery at best, just paid for itself. During international shows the
attendance at the gallery was high. During Australian shows the attendance
was low.”76
From 1975 - 1981 The Photographers Gallery held
exhibitions of August Sander (German - arranged by Bill
Heimerman), Edouard Boubat (France), Emmet Gowin (USA -
twice), Paul Caponigro (USA - twice), Ralph Gibson (UK -
twice, once of his colour work), William Eggelston (USA),
Eliot Porter (USA), Wynn Bullock (USA), William Clift
(USA), Harry Callahan (USA), Aaron Siskind (USA - twice,
once with a show hung at Ohnetitel) Jerry Uelsmann (USA),
Brett Weston (USA). There was also an exhibition of
26
Japanese artist Eikoh Hosoe (Japan) and his Ordeal by Roses
series in 1986. These exhibitions comprise approximately
60% of all international exhibitions at The Photographers
Gallery during this time, others being lost to the
vagaries of memory and the mists of time. Prices ranged
from $100 per print (yes, only $100 for these
masterpieces!!) in the early years rising to $1500 for a
print by Wyn Bullock towards the end of the decade.77 At
Church Street Photographic Centre the focus was
predominantly on Australian and American artists, with
some British influence. Artists exhibited other than
those noted above included Athol Shmith, Rennie Ellis,
Wes Placek, Fiona Hall, Herbert Ponting, Julia Margaret
Cameron, Eugène Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jack Cato,
Norman Deck, Jan Saudek, Robert Frank, Edouard Boubat,
Jerry Uelsmann and Albert Renger-Patzsch to name just a
few.78
The purchasing of vintage prints by major international
artists from these galleries by the National Gallery of
Victoria was not helped by the allegedly strained
relationships that Boddington had with the directors of
these galleries. The feeling I get from undertaking the
research is that one of the problems with Boddington’s
desire to achieve autonomy and make her own decisions
about what to purchase for the Photography Department
(being strong willed) was that she ignored opportunities
that we right here in Melbourne - because of the
27
aforesaid relationships and lack of money (a lack of
support from the hierarchy of the National Gallery of
Victoria). Her under-standable desire to be independent
coupled with relations with other professionals working
in the photographic field was to cost the gallery dearly
in the long run.
ConclusionIt would be a great pity if the oral history of the early
exhibition of international photographers in Melbourne
was lost, for it is a subject worthy of additional
research. It would also be interesting to undertake
further research in order to cross-reference the
purchases of the Department of Photography at the
National Gallery of Victoria in the years 1975-1981 with
the independent international exhibitions that were
taking place at commercial galleries in Melbourne during
this time. What international photographs were purchased
from local galleries, what choices were made to purchase
or not purchase works, what works were actually purchased
for the collection and what were the politics of these
decisions?
For example, during 1976 nine photographs by the Italian
photographer Mario Giacomelli (1925-2000) entered the
collection as well as nineteen photographs by German
photographer Hedda Morrison; in 1977 twelve photographs
entered the collection by a photographer name Helmut
28
Schmidt (a photographer whose name doesn’t even appear
when doing a Google search). Under what circumstances did
these photographs come into the collection? While these
people might be good artists they are not in the same
league as the stellar names listed above that exhibited
at The Photographers Gallery and Church Street
Photographic Centre. Questions need to be asked about the
Department of Photography acquisitions policy and the
independent choices of the curator Jennie Boddington,
especially as the international prints were here in
Melbourne, on our doorstep and not liable to the tyranny
of distance.
Dr Isobel Crombie notes that the acquisitions policies
were altered so that there was no major duplication
between collections within Australia79 but it seems
strange that, with so many holes in so many collections
around the nation at this early stage, major
opportunities that existed to purchase world class
masterpieces during the period 1975-81 were missed by the
Department of Photography at the NGV.
While Crombie acknowledges the preponderance of American
works in the collection over European and Asian works she
also notes that major 20th century photographers that you
would expect to be in the collection are not, and blames
this lack “on the massive increases in prices for international
photography that began in the 1980s and which largely excluded the NGV
from the market at this critical time.”80 Crombie further observes
29
that major contemporary photographers work can cost over
a million dollars a print and the cost of vintage
historical prints are also prohibitively high,81 so the
ability to fill gaps in the collection is negligible,
especially since the photography acquisitions budget is
approximately 0.5-1 million dollars a year.82
Crombie’s time scale seems a little late for as we have
seen in this essay, opportunities existed locally to
purchase world class prints from master international
photographers before prices rose to an exorbitant level.
Put simply, the NGV passed up the opportunity to purchase
these masterworks at reasonable prices for a variety of
reasons (personal, political and financial) before the
huge price rises of the early 1980s. They simply missed
the boat.
I believe that this subject is worthy of further in-depth
research undertaken without fear nor favour. While it is
understandable that the NGV would want to protect it’s
established reputation, the NGV is a partial public
institution that should not be afraid to open up to
public scrutiny the formative period in the history of
the international collection of photography, in order to
better understand the decisions, processes and
photographic prints now held in it’s care.
Dr Marcus Bunyan, May 2015 Word count:
30
5,592
Front cover of John Szarkowski’s book The Photographers Eye,
originally published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1966
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
purpose of academic research
31
André Kertész
A Bistro at Les Halles, Paris
1927
Gelatin silver photograph
17.7 x 24.7 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1976
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
purpose of academic research
32
Julia Margaret Cameron
Mrs Herbert Duckworth, her son George, Florence Fisher and H. A. L. Fisher
c. 1871
Albumen silver photograph
31.0 x 22.7 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the
assistance of the Herald & Weekly Times Limited, Fellow,
1979
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
purpose of academic research
33
Imogen Cunningham
Leaf pattern
c. 1929; printed 1979
Gelatin silver photograph
33.0 x 26.1 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased 1979
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
purpose of academic research
34
NASA, Washington, D.C. (manufacturer)
Instrument called Gnomon to determine size and distance of objects on moon
1969
Gelatin silver photograph on aluminium
49.0 x 39.0 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by Photimport, 1971
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
35
purpose of academic research
Neil Armstrong / NASA, Washington, D.C. (manufacturer)
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the Moon
near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM)
1969
Colour transparency
50.8 x 40.6 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
36
Purchased 1980
Photograph used under conditions of “fair use” for the
purpose of academic research
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction. 1936
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Shocken,
1969
Boddington, Jennie. International Photography: 100 images from the
Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Adelaide: The Art
Gallery of South Australia, 1983
Boddington, Jennie. Overseas Travel by Assistant Curator of
Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1976
Boddington, Jennie. Modern Australian Photographs. Melbourne:
National Gallery of Victoria, 1976
Cox, Leonard B. The National Gallery of Victoria, 1861-1968: The Search
for a Collection. Melbourne: The National Gallery of Victoria;
Brown Prior Anderson Pty Ltd, 1971
Crombie, Isobel. Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne:
National Gallery of Victoria, 2009
Crombie, Isobel. Second sight: Australian photography in the National
Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria,
2002
Downer, Christine. “Photographs,” in Galbally, Ann [et
al]. The first collections: the Public Library and the National Gallery of
37
Victoria in the 1850s and the 1860s. Parkville, Vic.,: The
University of Melbourne Museum of Art, 1992, pp. 73-79
Frank, Robert. The Americans. Washington: Steidl/National
Gallery of Art, Revised edition, May 30, 2008
Newton, Gael. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-
1988. Canberra: Australian National Gallery, Collins, 1988
Tate, Suzanne. Photographic Collections in Victoria: Waverley City
Gallery, Horsham Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria: An Analysis
of Past History and Future Directions. The University of Melbourne:
Postgraduate Diploma Thesis, 1998
Endnotes
1. Anon. “Photography in Australia,” on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 01/08/2014.2. “Daguerreotype Portrait of Dr William Bland circa 1845,” on the State Library of New South Wales website [Online] Cited 27/07/2014.3. Newton, Gael. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Canberra: Australian National Gallery, Collins, 1988[Online] Cited 02/06/2014.4. Fennessy, Kathleen. “For ‘Love of Art’: The Museum of Art and Picture Gallery at the Melbourne Public library 1860 - 1870,” in The La Trobe Journal 75, Autumn, 2005, p. 5 [Online] Cited 27/07/2014.5. Anon. “Pictures,” on the State Library of Victoria website [Online] Cited 02/09/2010. No longer available.6. Fox, Paul. “Stretching the Australian Imagination: Melbourne as a Conservative City,” in The La Trobe Journal 80,
38
Spring, 2007, p. 124 [Online] Cited 27/07/2014.7. Tsara, Olga. “Linnaeus Tripe’s ‘Views of Burma’,” in The La Trobe Journal 79, Autumn, 2007, p. 55 [Online] Cited 27/07/2014.8. Crombie, Isobel. “Likenesses as if by magic: The earlyyears 1840s - 1850s,” in Second sight: Australian photography in theNational Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2002, p. 15.9. Fox, Paul Op. cit., p. 124.10. Newton, Gael. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Canberra: Australian National Gallery, Collins, 1988[Online] Cited 02/07/2014. Chapter 11 “Live in the Year 1929” and Chapter 12 “Commerce and Commitment.”11. Crombie, Isobel. Second sight: Australian photography in the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2002. See chapters “In a new light: Pictorialist photography 1900s - 1930s” (p.38), “New Photography: Modernism in Australia 1930s - 1940s” (p.50)and “Clear statements of actuality: Documentary photography 1940s - 1960s” (p.64).12. Anon. “The Family of Man,” on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 02/09/201413. Newton, Gael. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Canberra: Australian National Gallery, Collins, 1988[Online] Cited 02/06/2010. Chapter 13 “Photographic Illustrators: The Family of Man and the 1960s - an end and a beginning” and Footnote 13.14. Ibid., See also the layout and size of the photographic murals on the Musuem THE FAMILY OF MAN, Chateau de Clervaux / Luxembourg website , the only permanent display of the exhibition left in the world. [Online] Cited 02/09/2014.15. “Benjamin’s work balances, often with paradoxical results, tensions between aspects of experience: the experiences simultaneously of being too late and too early (too soon) in the temporal dimension (c.f. Hamlet’s“the time is out of joint”) and being both distant and close (in the spatial dimension), and anyway of being both temporal and spatial. The concept of “aura,” which is one of Benjamin’s most influential contributions, is best understood in terms of these tensions or oscillations. He says that “aura” is a “strange web of
39
space and time” or “a distance as close as it can be.” The main idea is of something inaccessible and elusive, something highly valued but which is deceptive and out ofreach. Aura, in this sense, is associated with the nineteenth century notions of the artwork and is thus lost, Benjamin argues, with the onset of photography. At first photographs attempted to imitate painting but very quickly and because of the nature of the technology photography took its own direction contributing to the destruction of all traditional notions of the fine arts.”Phillips, John. On Walter Benjamin. [Online] Cited 02/06/2014. “One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.”Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 1936, Section 2. [Online] Cited 02/06/2014.16. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Shocken, 1969, p. 236.17. Frank, Robert. The Americans. Washington: Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Revised edition, May 30, 2008.18. Newton, op. cit., Chapter 13.19. Anon. “A chronology of events in the history of the State Library of Victoria,” on the State Library of Victoria website. [Online] Cited 03/06/2010. No longer available.20. See Cox, Leonard B. The National Gallery of Victoria, 1861 - 1968: The Search for a Collection. Melbourne: The National Gallery of Victoria; Brown Prior Anderson Pty Ltd, 1971.21. Ibid., p. 378.22. Crombie, Isobel. op. cit., Introduction p. 7.23. Crombie, Isobel. op. cit., Introduction p. 7.24. Westbrook, Eric. “Minutes of the Photographic Subcommittee” 22/07/1970 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. Photographic Collections in Victoria: Waverley City Gallery, Horsham Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria: An Analysis of Past History and Future Directions. The University of Melbourne: Postgraduate Diploma Thesis, Chapter One, 1998, pp. 12-13. Other institutions included the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, The Victoriaand Albert Museum, London and the Art Institute of
40
Chicago.25. Crombie, Isobel. op. cit., Introduction p. 6.26. Westbrook, Eric and Brown, Albert. “Establishment of Photography at the Victorian Arts Centre,” in Minutes of Trustees Reports, NGV, 4th April, 1967, p. 886 quoted in Crombie, Isobel. op cit., Introduction p. 6. Footnote 2.27. See Crombie, Isobel. op cit., Introduction p. 8 and Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 14-15.28. NGV Trustees. National Gallery of Victoria Annual Report 1969 - 70.Melbourne, 1970, np quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 14-15.29. NGV Photographic Subcommittee. Report. Melbourne, 1970, p. 2 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. p. 16.30. Crombie, Isobel. op cit., Introduction p. 8.31. Crombie, Isobel. “Creating a Collection: International Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria,” in Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009, p. 7.32. Ibid.,33. NGV Trustees. National Gallery of Victoria Annual Report 1971-72. Melbourne, 1970, np quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. p. 16.34. NGV Trustees. National Gallery of Victoria Annual Report 1972-73. Melbourne, 1970, np quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. p. 16.35. NGV Trustees. National Gallery of Victoria Annual Report 1969-70. Melbourne, 1970, np quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. p. 16.36. Anon. “Frantisek Drtikol,” on Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 06/10/2014.37. Some of these images have been shown for the first time in over twenty years in the 2009 exhibition Light Years:Photography and Space in the third floor photography galleryat NGV International.
41
38. “After Eureka Stockade Boddington went to work at Film Australia and in 1950 worked for the GPO Film Unit. With the introduction of television she went to work at the ABC as an editor. She and her second husband cameraman Adrian Boddington would then set up their own company Zanthus Films. After his death she became the curator of photography at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1971.”Allen, J. “Australian Visions. The films of Dahl and Geoffrey Collings,” in Eras Journal Edition 4, December 2002, Footnote 33 [Online] Cited 14/10/201439. Minutes of the NGV Photographic Subcommittee. Melbourne, 16/05/1972 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 17-18.40. Crombie, Isobel. “Creating a Collection: International Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria,” in Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009, p. 9.41. NGV Trustees. National Gallery of Victoria Annual Report 1974-75. Melbourne, 1975, p. 24 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 17-18.42. Boddington, J. Overseas Travel by Assistant Curator of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1976,pp. 1-3 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 18-19.43. Boddington, J. quoted in Crombie, Isobel. “Creating aCollection: International Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria,” in Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009, p. 9.See also Boddington, J. quoted in quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 18-19.44. Boddington, J. Overseas Travel by Assistant Curator of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1976,pp. 1-3 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 18-19.45. NGV Trustees. National Gallery of Victoria Annual Report 1975-76. Melbourne, 1976, p. 26 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National
42
Gallery of Victoria. pp. 18-19.46. See Crombie, Isobel. “Creating a Collection: International Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria,” in Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009, p. 9.47. NGV Trustees. National Gallery of Victoria Annual Report 1975-76. Melbourne, 1976, p. 27 quoted in Tate, Suzanne. op cit., Chapter 2: The Photography Department of the National Gallery of Victoria. pp. 18-19.48. See Crombie, op. cit., p. 9.49. Boddington, Jenny. Modern Australian Photographs. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1976. Catalogue essay.50. See Crombie, op. cit., p. 7.“The first formulation of policy in the Gallery’s annual report of 1976/77 stated the aim was to ‘develop a department of photography which will include both Australian and overseas works. The Australian collection will be historically comprehensive, while the collection of overseas photographers will aim to represent the work of the major artists in the history of photography’. Since that statement of intent thirty years ago, the collection has grown to include over 16,000 works. There are approximately sixty per cent Australian to forty per cent international photographs, a ratio that has remained constant over the years.”O’Hehir, Anne. “VIP: very important photographs from the European, American and Australian photography collection 1840s - 1940s” exhibition 26 May - 19 August 2007 on the National Gallery of Australia website [Online] Cited 12/10/2014.51. See Crombie, op. cit., p. 9.52. Crombie, Isobel. “Collecting Policy for the Department of Photography, National Gallery of Victoria (Revised October 1995),” in Tate, Suzanne. Photographic Collections in Victoria: Waverley City Gallery, Horsham Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria: An Analysis of Past History and Future Directions.The University of Melbourne: Postgraduate Diploma Thesis,1998, p. 73. Appendix 153. Crombie, Isobel. Second sight: Australian photography in the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2002, p. 954. Boddington, Jennie. Modern Australian Photographs. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1976. Catalogue essay.55. Boddington, Jennie. International Photography: 100 images from
43
the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Adelaide: The Art Gallery of South Australia, 1983. Catalogue essay.Here we must acknowledge the contradiction between the quotations at footnotes 52 and 55, where the former proposes a broad based collecting policy from all eras both internationally and locally and, a few years later, the other proposes a focus on the purest uses of straightphotography (in other words pure documentary photography)as it reflects broad cultural concerns.56. Tate, Suzanne. Photographic Collections in Victoria: Waverley City Gallery, Horsham Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria: An Analysis of Past History and Future Directions. The University of Melbourne: Postgraduate Diploma Thesis, 1998, pp. 19-2057. Crombie, Isobel. “Collecting Policy for the Department of Photography, National Gallery of Victoria (Revised October 1995),” cited in Tate, Suzanne. Ibid., Appendix 1 ‘International Photography’ Point 2, 1900-1980, p. 73.58. Ibid.,59. Ibid.,60. This battle is still being fought even in 2014. See Jones, Jonathan. “The $6.5m canyon: it’s the most expensive photograph ever - but it’s like a hackneyed poster in a posh hotel,” on The Guardian website 11/12/2014[Online] Cited 15/11/201461. Crombie, Isobel. “Creating a Collection: International Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria,” in Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009, p. 962. Crombie, Isobel. Second sight: Australian photography in the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2002, p. 1063. Ibid., p. 1064. Crombie, Isobel. “Collecting Policy for the Department of Photography, National Gallery of Victoria (Revised October 1995),” in Tate, Suzanne. Photographic Collections in Victoria: Waverley City Gallery, Horsham Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria: An Analysis of Past History and Future Directions.The University of Melbourne: Postgraduate Diploma Thesis,1998, p. 73. Appendix 165. McCaughy, Patrick. Review of ‘ Securing the Past: Conservation in Art, Architecture and Literature’ by Paul Eggert on The Australian
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newspaper website [Online] December 2nd, 2009. Cited 01/01/201566. Ibid.,67. Crombie, Isobel. “Creating a Collection: International Photographyat the National Gallery of Victoria,” in Re_View: 170 years of Photography. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009, p. 968. O’Hehir, Anne. op. cit.,69. Dean, Robert. “Foreign Influences in Australian Photography 1930 - 80.” Lecture delivered at Australian Photographic Society Conference (APSCON), Canberra, 2000, p. 10. [Online] Cited 01/01/2015 Download the lecture (40kb pdf)70. Ibid.,71. Ibid., See also footnote 2872. Ibid., p. 1173. Ibid.,74. Lobb, Ian. Text from an email to the author, 20th May, 201475. Ibid.,76. Ibid.,77. Ibid.,78. Evans, Joyce. Text from an email to the author, 6th September 201479. Crombie, op. cit., p. 1080. Ibid.,81. Ibid.,82. Vaughan, Gerard. Lecture to Master of Art Curatorshipstudents by the Director of the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne, 30/03/2010.
45