lieved sunlight was a key element in helping create a
distinctly Australian form of Pictorialism and, as a
leading member of the Sydney Camera Circle
(founded in 1916), he actively promoted the so-
called ‘‘Sunshine School.’’ Cazneaux was an influ-
ential advocate and theoretician, publishing articles
on the aesthetic possibilities and development of
photography for the Australasian Photo-Review
(AP-R) and the British publication, The Photo-
grams of the Year.
Most Australian Pictorialists were amateurs,
producing work for exhibition at local and inter-
national salons, but professional photographers
also applied this style to their commercial work.
Around the turn of the century, for instance, H.
Walter Barnett adopted a soft-focus approach in
his highly regarded society and celebrity portrai-
ture, and was the only Australian to be offered
membership of the prestigious British group, the
Brotherhood of the Linked Ring. Other notable
professional Pictorialist photographers included
Ruth Hollick who specialized in child and social
portraiture and was one of a number of Australian
women to take up the medium. Commercial photo-
grapher and adventurer Frank Hurley applied
some of the atmospheric qualities of Pictorialism
to very different and dramatic ends when he was
employed as official photographer for both Charles
Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton’s various expe-
ditions to Antarctica and to the Australian Impe-
rial Force during World War One.
Pictorialism remained popular with many Aus-
tralian photographers throughout the 1930s and
1940s. Jack Cato was a major studio photographer
whose work extended this by now well-established
style to include more modern elements. Cato is also
significant as the author of Australia’s first history
of the medium,The Story of the Camera in Austra-
lia(1955). However, despite the continuation of
Pictorialism it was clear that the creative spirit of
the times was changing. As modernism took hold in
the arts internationally, a group of avant-garde
Australian photographers began to abandon the
‘‘fuzzy-wuzzy’’ look of Pictorialism for an ap-
proach that they believed was more in tune with
the machine age.
Information concerning modernist photography
reached Australia in the 1930s through imported
magazines such as US Camera, Das Deutsche
Lichtbild, andModern Photography. Their illustra-
tions had a strong impact on a group of younger
Australian practitioners who began to experiment
with modernism and Surrealism in their personal
and commercial work. Also influential were a
small number of modernist photographers who
had been forced to migrate to Australia due to
the rise of Nazism. Photographers Wolfgang Sie-
vers, Helmut Newton, Margaret Michaelis, and
Henry Talbot, all arrived between 1938 and 1940
and brought with them first-hand knowledge of
modernist photography.
Max Dupain was one of the most prolific and
talented Australian-born photographers of the mid
1930s and 1940s. Along with the impact of moder-
nist photography on his practice he was influenced
by popular debates concerning the revitalization of
society following World War One. In this interwar
period, he produced many photographs that are
often critical of modernity as a degenerative force
on the body or which—in images such asThe Sun-
baker—suggest the regenerative possibilities of
contact with nature, in particular, the Australian
beach. Important outlets for Dupain’s work in the
1930s were innovative magazines such asArt in
AustraliaandThe Home, which featured a wide
variety of creative practice from architecture and
fashion to art photography.
Olive Cotton also adopted modernism in her
own diverse practice. She developed a distinctive
photographic approach to her architectural and
commercial subjects but her most enduring inter-
ests lay with the natural world. Cotton’s sensuous
appreciation of nature shows her delight in the
ways that light and patterning could play both a
compositional and atmospheric role. Another
photographer to appreciate the creative possibili-
ties of light was Athol Shmith. A Melbourne-based
fashion and commercial photographer, Shmith
mixed the clean lines of the modernist style with a
seductive Hollywood glamour. His studio work in
particular shows his ability to use lighting, dark-
room techniques, and hand-coloring to create flaw-
less images of beauty.
In the post-war period a group of Australian
photographers began to produce work in the
so-called Documentary style. This international
movement, with its emphasis on creating clear
statements of actuality, made a major impression
on Australian photographers including Max
Dupain, Axel Poignant, David Moore, Jeff Car-
ter, and David Potts. These practitioners consid-
ered the Documentary style well suited to
recording how contemporary Australians lived
and worked. With a social realist perspective
inspired by the Documentary philosophy of Scot-
tish-born filmmaker John Grierson, these photo-
graphers focused on the world around them
recording a diverse range of subjects from urban
poverty to outback life and the Australian inter-
est in sport and the outdoors.AUSTRALIA, PHOTOGRAPHY IN