Harold Cazneaux was and Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n pictorialist photographer; a pioneer whose style had an indelible impact on the development of Australian photographic history. In 1916 he was a founder of the Pictorialist

Pictorialism

‎Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...

 Sydney Camera Circle. As a regular participator in national and international exhibitions, Cazneaux was unfaltering in his desire to contribute to the discussion about the photography of his times. He created some of the most memorable images of the early twentieth century.

Biography

Harold Pierce Cazneau (he added an "x" to his surname in 1904 to acknowledge his Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 ancestry) was born in Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 to Australian parents who returned home after some years.

For many years Cazneaux’s prints were exhibited in shows organised by the London Salon of Photography (1911 to 1952) and later included in the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain’s annual salons. In 1914 he won Kodak's "Happy Moment" competition, and the £100 prize money went to a depost for his future home.

He was a founder of the Pictorialist

Pictorialism

‎Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...

 Sydney Camera Circle whose "manifesto

Manifesto

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...

" was drawn up and signed on 28 November 1916 by a group of six photographers: Cecil Bostock

Cecil Bostock

Cecil Westmoreland Bostock was born in England. He immigrated to New South Wales, Australia, with his parents in 1888. His father, George Bostock, was a bookbinder.who died a few years later in 1892....

, James Stening, W. S. White, Malcolm McKinnon and James Paton, later joined by Henri Mallard

Henri Mallard

Henri Marie Joseph Mallard, Australian Photographer Born in Balmain of French parents, he came to photography via the industry. Using his French connections, and accent , he secured a position in 1900 with Harrington as a sales representative to the French consulate...

. They pledged "to work and to advance pictorial photography and to show our own Australia in terms of sunlight rather than those of greyness and dismal shadows".

In 1921 he was elected a member of the London Salon and in 1937 he was the first Australian to be conferred an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society. Beyond his photographic oeuvre, Cazneaux was also a prolific writer. As a correspondent for Photograms of the Year (UK) for more than twenty years he was the international voice of Australian photography. He was official photographer for Sydney Ure Smith’s lifestyle magazine The Home from 1920 to 1941. And he was commissioned to produce images for a number of Ure Smith’s publications including Sydney Surfing (1929), The Bridge Book (1930), The Sydney Book (1931) and The Australian Native Bear Book (1932).
The use of light was a defining characteristic of Cazneaux’s later work and in 1916 he and others formed the Sydney Camera Circle, establishing the so-called ‘Sunshine School’ of photography. The Circle was created for a number of important reasons: it embraced the particularities of Australian light and landscape, and was a move away from the English-inspired darker imagery dominating photographic practice at that time.

Cazneaux's work was championed for decades by the editor of The Home magazine, Sydney Ure Smith

Sydney Ure Smith

Sydney George Ure Smith was an Australian arts publisher and promoter who 'did more than any other Australian to publicize Australian art at home and overseas'....

.

The National Library of Australia

National Library of Australia

The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...

 is the home of the principal archive of Cazneaux prints and negatives, thanks to the generosity of the Cazneaux family. The Art Gallery of New South Wales

Art Gallery of New South Wales

The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...

 also has a finest collection of Cazneaux’s work in Australia, and was also the first Australian museum to hold a major exhibition of his work in 1975.

The exhibition Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in June and July 2008 includes more than 100 of his iconic images exploring the breadth and depth of his work such as landscape, portraits, artists’ portraits, the harbour and the city.

An exhibition of his photographs, called "Thoroughly modern Sydney: 1920s and 30s glamour and style" was held at the Museum of Sydney

Museum of Sydney

The Museum of Sydney, on the Site of First Government House is built on the ruins of the house of New South Wales' first Governor, Arthur Phillip on the present-day corner of Phillip and Bridge Street, Sydney. The original house, which was Australia's first Government House, was built in 1788 and...

, in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 in August-October 2006. It was assembled largely from images he took for the Australian magazine "Home", though it also included new prints from previously unpublished negatives. The subject ranged across "all that was fashionable and new" at that time, covering architecture, art and interior design, and also including many portraits of Australians then active in those fields.

He married Winifred, and had five daughters, including Joan and Rainbow, and a son, Harold, who died aged 21 at Tobruk in 1941. The entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith

Dick Smith (entrepreneur)

Dick Smith, AO is an Australian entrepreneur, businessman, aviator, and political activist. He is the founder of Dick Smith Electronics, Dick Smith Foods and Australian Geographic, and was selected as the 1986 Australian of the Year.-Electronics:In 1968, Dick Smith founded electronics retailer...

 is his grandson.

External links

• Shades of Light (Australian Photography 1839 - 1988) the online version of the original Shades of Light published 1998, Gael Newton, National Gallery of Australia.
• http://www.photo-web.com.au/AustPictorial/default.htm the online version of Gael Newton's "Australian pictorial photography : a survey of art photography from 1898 to 1938 organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney" Sydney : Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1979.

External links

• Cazneaux biography on National Library of Australia
  National Library of Australia
  The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
  
  website
• Largest collection of Harold Cazneaux photographs in world held in Pictures Branch at National Library of Australia, Canberra