4wdtouring.com.au | 073CULTUREIt’s dif cult pro ling anyone who was the partner of some-
one more famous, as the person they share their bed with
can overshadow their own independent work.
Such is the case with photographers Olive Cotton and
Alice Springs, whose own impact was somewhat softened
by the work of their more famous husbands, respectively,
Max Dupain and Helmut Newton.
It would be easy to think that they were just hobby
farmers, or muses, who occasionally used their genius
husband’s camera gear behind the scenes and banged off
a pic or two.
To think this about these two women would be an
absolute travesty of justice for two of the nest still
photographers Australia has seen.
Olive came from the Sydney Photographers Circle, and
during the pre-WWII years she and Max were right in the
thick of this new technique, shooting the changing face
of towns, with the rise of the pub and the corner milk bar
now challenging the church as the community focal point.
When she broke it off with Dupain – while other
photographers were documenting the rise of the sub-
urbs and man-made structures – Cotton decided to see
how modernism could represent the outback. She was
determined to use these new techniques to give new
shade, texture and light onto a timeless environment.
To give her even more hardcore cred, while the men in
her circle chased fame, she moved out of the city and lived
in a tent for three years down a lonely dirt road in NSW’s
South West Slopes district.
She eventually moved to a farm and took up a job as
a schoolteacher, which allowed her free time before and
after work. The obscurity of the Cowra region also al-
lowed her to concentrate on her vocation, rather than the
distraction of being caught up in a city art scene.
When she passed away in 2003, the ABC said, “The
pictures taken by Olive Cotton were audacious studies oflight and shade... these were lovingly crafted after hours,
when everyone had gone home, when she had some time
to herself and when she could set-up the studio.
The Australia Council recently paid homage to Cotton’s
input as an essential element into the way we see the
Australian bush: “Patiently, she photographed Australia‘s
landscapes, trees, owers and clouds.”
Another reason her photography may have been over-
looked, aside from her self-imposed geographical exile,
was that her work, although considered brilliant, was
not considered as bold as other modernists. It was more
nuanced and softer, mainly because a natural scene tells a
much longer story, than a stark man-made structure might.
Cotton never stopped shooting the whole time, even
though she rarely could afford to process her work. In
her 70s, she received a federal grant that saw her work
revisited with an exhibition.
It was only then – after half a century’s worth of negs
were reprinted – that those in the small community of
Koorawatha realised that the humble ex-school teacher
was one of the true masters of 20th Century Aussie art.Olive Cotton
‘The Patterned Road’, 1937
South Coast, NSW
© Olive Cotton/National
Gallery of Australia4WD_63_062-073_Classic Aussie Shots-v3.indd 73 28/07/2017 7:40 PM