4wdtouring.com.au | 069CULTUREThe other nut in Helmut Newton’s shell, the other half
of the great German Jewish refugee double shot, Mr.
Wolfgang Sievers, was a man not given to chasing fame
but rather in chasing the hyper-reality of the new country
he called home.
Setting up in Melbourne, he travelled to shoot the
industrial and architectural feats that were mushrooming
all over Australia in the post-war years, but not before
he did four years armed service in the scrub along the
Murray River.
He befriended fellow New Photographer, Helmut
Newton and in 1953 the pair of newcomers got the ball
rolling with an aptly titled exhibition called ‘New Visions in
Photography’.
From then on, according to the Victorian Museum, “His
interest (was) in the relationship of man with machine, and
of the machine with the landscape.
And he did this everywhere from Weipa to Broken Hill
to Dampier to Groote Eylandt, holding a view- nder to his
eye with one hand while he swatted mosquitos and horse
ies with the other.
Like a good new Australian, the talented ex-Berliner
stuck around to tell the glorious nation-building story,
while the likes of Newton (and Nolan) ed to the bright
lights of Europe and the creative cluster-bomb of the
Swinging 60s.
As Aussie art expert Angela Jooste explains, “Sievers
assisted in promoting post-war Australia as a progres-
sive, modern industrial and commercial force on the
international stage.”
Although it wasn’t as sexy as fashion, Sievers had a job
to do now, that job being the journalistic documentation of
the massive new factories, re neries, ports and buildings.
Sievers was bound by light, of the German school that
taught him to explore the form, function and humanity of
real life, of what was actually going on in front of him in his
adopted country.
He once explained the nature of his work as ‘Fiercely
Australian but also ercely European’.
“Later in his photography career, Sievers became
concerned with the impact industries such as mining had
on the natural environment.
“This issue, as well as the increase in mechanised and
computerised work settings reducing the need for people
to perform many tasks, resulted in Sievers questioning his
involvement as a photographer in the areas of manufactur-
ing and heavy industry.
“Jorge Calado in Life Line wrote that ‘For Sievers,
industry was beautiful, but goodness resided in the worker’.
Whereas other photographers depicted machinery with
the workers either missing or merely silhouetted, Sievers
followed the Bauhaus ideal of celebrating the skill, talent
and dignity of the individual worker.’”Wolfgang Sievers
‘Worker, Bruck Textiles’, 1951
Wangaratta, Vic.
© State Library of Victoria