Photography

Freeman Brothers Studio – Large Format Photographs

Published by Geoff Barker 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Unidentified man, from collodion negative, Freeman Brothers Studio, 1871-1880,Powerhouse Museum, H8504-22

Over the last couple of months I have been working on a previously uncatalogued collection of large format, 50.8 cm x 44.5 cm, glass plate negatives donated to the Powerhouse Museum in 1969. The 28 collodion portraits were found in a chest in our stores at Castle Hill and have been identified as all being originally taken by the Freeman Borthers Studio here in Sydney. We are currently conserving and cataloguing the photographs but hope to be posting them onto flickr commons by the end of the year for researchers to use.

The Freeman Brother Studio lays claim to being the longest running studio in Australia. It was established as the ‘Freeman Brothers and Wheeler’ by William Freeman and his brother James in George Street in 1854; it was still running nearly 150 years later. James was the more experienced of the two having worked in Richard Beard’s gallery in Bath before coming to Australia and was certainly instrumental in the success with which they plied their trade in Sydney.[1]

One of the keys to their success was their continual upgrading of equipment and premises to deliver the latest techniques. As a result they attracted the cultural elite of Sydney to their studios where they were photographed using the techniques of the day. Thus surviving examples can be found as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, collodion glass plates, flexible sheet negatives all of which were then used to make albumen, gelatin and platinum prints on card, glass, and paper.

In 1864 the brothers undertook a major renovation of their studio which opened to the public in January 1865. Here they claimed … the most artistic arrangements in the distribution of light and shadow have been effected in their Gallery. In carrying out these alterations, Messrs. Freeman Brothers have availed themselves of the very best and latest improvement in the construction of a Photographic Studio, which have been forwarded them from home, “and which they have adapted to the requirements of ‘ the climate according to the dictates of their experience. By a simple and beautiful arrangement, any kind of light can be thrown on the sitter, to suit the varieties or dress or complexion, so that the sunniest effects of a Lawrence or a Reynolds can be obtained, varying down to the most somber and effective tones of a Rembrandt. These remarks Messrs. Freeman wish apply to all the varieties of Photographic Portraiture, from the largest style adapted to Photography down to the universally popular Carte de Visite. While announcing the above important improvements, Messrs. Freeman wish to recall the attention of the public to their beautiful Sutton’s Panoramic Apparatus from the camera, of which they have now a splendid and varied collection of Views of Sydney and its neighborhood …[2]

In January 1867 James Freeman went to England leaving his brother and their partner Victor A. Prout to take control of the business.[3] Why James left is unclear, perhaps illness or an argument but it was clearly unexpected for it was February before the official notice of his retirement from the studio of ‘Freeman Brothers and Prout’ was published in the papers. From this date William and Victor Prout took over the formal management under the name of ‘Freeman and Prout’.[4]

In 1868 the studio acquired over 20,000 negatives from the demise of Dalton Brothers, one of Sydney’s other pre-eminent studios. It turns out the acquisition was not just photographs for in advertising this acquisition they also called attention to the tinted and coloured cards and miniatures produced by Miss Hunt, … for so long favourably known while in Mr. Dalton’s employment …. Miss Hunt must have greatly added to the studio for the surviving coloured work from Dalton Studio ranks among the best produced in this period in Australia.[5]

James Freeman’s retirement appears to have been accompanied by a desire to return to England for in 1868 both brothers returned to there. This arrangement lasted only for a few years until William returned to manage the Sydney studio after the death of James in 1870. The studio suffered a huge blow in November 1871 when a fire on the premises destroyed their entire stock of negatives, including those acquired from Dalton Studio’s.[6]

In 1890 Freeman Brothers passed to William Rufus George who managed the studio until his son Alfred took over in 1903. Harold Cazneaux worked for the studio from 1904 to 1918, a period which saw them embrace a more informal style of portraiture and wedding photography. During the depression the studio was in competition with the street photographers who would snap passers by in the street. Valentine Waller who managed the business though this period was instrumental in lobbying for the State Government to bring in the regulation and registration of this form of photography in 1937. The company continues to survive and evolve moving to digital photography in 2003.[7]

The scale of their enterprise did not seem to affect the quality of the work they produced; in fact the studio from its inception spared no effort in touching up, and printing, their photographic prints. This combination of high quality work and patronage by the elite of Sydney makes their early work excellent examples of nineteenth-century Australian photography, illustrated by their winning silver and bronze medals at the London International Exhibition in 1862.

References
Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 3 January 1865, page 8
Alan Davies, Freeman Studio in the Picture Gallery, exhibition catalogue, State Library of New South Wales, 2003
Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 12 February, 1867, page 1
Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
Government Notices, The Sydney Morning, Saturday 11 November 1871, page 2

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[1] Alan Davies, Freeman Studio in the Picture Gallery, exhibition catalogue, State Library of New South Wales, 2003
[2] Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 3 January 1865, page 8
[3] Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
[4] Notices, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 12 February, 1867, page 1
[5] Advertisement, The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 2 May 1868, page 1
[6] Government Notices, The Sydney Morning, Saturday 11 November 1871, page 2
[7] Alan Davies, Freeman Studio in the Picture Gallery, exhibition catalogue, State Library of New South Wales, 2003

Jobs – not the greatest just the latest

Published by Campbell Bickerstaff 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

During an interview yesterday regarding the design legacy of Steve Jobs I was probed to cast back and find something comparable.  I thought about Olivetti and their penchant, early in the 20th century, for graduates of the Bauhaus who they put to work on shaping their image, corporate and product, with new dynamic graphics and plasticity to product design.  This emphasis and understanding and appreciation from the corporate head down of design were later emulated by Braun and Sony (among others) with even more crafted identities.

Then I woke up last night and realised that I should have cast back just a little bit further for a fine example of what might in the day have mirrored Jobs’ recent efforts.  What product from the past was placed in peoples hands, a product that had been the domain of the professional made domestic, a product that could be put to a creative use, a product neat and simple in design, portable, easy to operate, empowering, global . . . why the Kodak Brownie of all things and the man behind it George Eastman.  Eastman put the power of photography into everyone’s hands . . . with a device just as simple, intuitive and elegant as the ipod . . . point and shoot.

So putting Jobs into some larger perspective he is not the greatest just the latest in a long line of visionary industrialists.

Ron and the Speed Graphics cameras

Published by Campbell Bickerstaff 0 Comments Tags: , .

Earlier this year I received a call from Ron Bickley about some cameras he had. Now I get a call every week about the donation of cameras as people everywhere decide to finally part with their still or motion film cameras as they make the final transition from photography to digital image making.

bickley speed graphic serial no 757005

Ron’s story was a big one. Ron’s cameras were the tools of his trade and he plied his trade for four decades, photographing every horse and greyhound to win a race at most track meetings in the Sydney metropolitan area and beyond including Harold Park, Wentworth Park, Wyong, Wollongong, Newcastle, Canterbury, Rose Hill, Randwick and Warwick Farm. Four of Ron’s cameras, used from 1946 until the early 1970s, were Speed Graphics.

I have been at the Museum since 1996 and this was the first offer I had fielded for a Speed Graphic. What is so special about the Speed Graphic? The Speed Graphic is often vaunted as the press camera of the mid twentieth century and this reputation is well deserved. The Pulitzer Prizes for photography for the years 1942-1954 were taken with Speed Graphic cameras.

So I made the trip to San Souci, Sydney to visit Ron. It was a very hot and humid Sydney day and we spent a bit of time in his shed talking about his work and looking at the cameras. Inside the shed the temperature rose with no breeze and my eyes occasionally drifted to the inviting sight of Ron’s gleaming swimming pool as perspiration enveloped me. Back in the house I got a long cool drink and Ron showed me some photographs from the day and that’s where this fantastic shot comes from.

Group of photographers, all holding Graflex Speed Graphics cameras, leaning over fence in front of stand at Randwick racecourse. Left to right: P. Percival, Peter Hardacre, Ron Bickley, B. Mullaney, A. (Spider) Funnel, A. Bullard, Roy McGuinness

Photograph of Ron at the track with some colleagues all holding Speed Graphic cameras (except far left – English Speed Graphic look-a-like), leaning over the fence in front of the stand at Randwick racecourse. Left to right: P. Percival, Peter Hardacre, Ron Bickley, B. Mullaney, A. (Spider) Funnel, A. Bullard, Roy McGuinness”

The photograph gives you an indication of the popularity of this camera. The Speed Graphic was most suitable for professional, press and photo journalist use. The qualities that made this camera the choice of press and photo journalists include its tough, fail proof mechanics; excellent results; the ability to fold into a strong, compact box; its ease of use as a hand held and to track a moving object; plus lenses could be easily interchanged.

Evolution of a 1950s fashion model

Published by Anne-Marie Van de Ven 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

97/272/1-1 Janice Wakely modelling Gala Gowns in Zurich, photographed by Henry Talbot, 1960 Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Discovering the many aspects of one woman’s career was one of the most interesting aspects of my 20 day internship at the Powerhouse Museum. Under the supervision of Curator Anne-Marie Van de Ven I’ve just finished cataloguing the Janice Wakely modelling and photography archive. This archive includes photographs of Janice, photographs by Janice, magazine and newspaper tear sheets and clippings, plus biographical material. The photographs document the career of one of the most prominent Australian fashion models of the 1950s and 60s. During this time, Janice was a highly sought after fashion model with great success both in her homeland of Australia, as well as overseas in London, Zurich and Paris.

The archive contains photographs of Janice Wakely as a fashion model, taken during the 1950s and 1960s, many by leading Australian and international photographers of the day – including Helmut Newton, Bruno Benini, Athol Shmith, Henry Talbot, David Franklin and the British photographer Terence Donovan. The majority of the prints are photographs of Janice modelling in the different photographer’s studio, however there are also some showing Janice modelling outdoors and others where she appears at special publicity events, like the publicity photograph of a group of models for the All Australian Fashion Parades in 1962. Other photographs show Janice with her contemporaries – internationally renowned hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, pre-eminent fashion designer Hardy Amies, and photographers Henry Talbot and David Franklin.

While many of the photographs were taken in Australia, primarily Melbourne, there are also photographs of Janice in London, Switzerland, New York and Delhi, including a photograph taken of Janice in 1960 by British photographer Terence Donovan, a prominent British photographer and major figure of the ‘Swinging London’ scene of the 1960s.

Janice shared close working relationships and friendships with the photographers she worked with, and some greatly influenced her career and her later transition into photography. Her passion for photography began during some of her earlier modelling assignments where, between takes, she would pick up a camera and take pictures of the photographers and other models at work. Helmut Newton was the first to encourage her to take up photography, introducing her to darkroom and camera techniques in his penthouse studio and on location.

97/272/1-2/12/3 Photograph of Helmut Newton by Janice Wakely taken at Lorne, near Melbourne, 1959 Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Her archive consists of several such photographs including candid and intimate shots of her photographer friends and colleagues. Most photographs were taken in Melbourne and Sydney while some were taken overseas in Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea, including photographs taken by Janice of Henry Talbot and Helen Homewood during an overseas assignment for Woman’s Day with Woman magazine which took them to Hong Kong, Thailand, India and the United Kingdom. These photographs provide an interesting ‘behind the scenes’ view of a photographer and model at work during a photo shoot. There is a unique series of candid photographs of photographer Helmut Newton and model Georgia Gold on a beach in Lorne, Victoria, which Janice took during a photo shoot for the first issue of Australian Vogue.

Janice’s photographic prints are as much a documentation of the careers of the photographers, as they are of Janice’s own career. There are many original prints in good condition, given to Janice by the photographers. The archive is an important documentation of the Australian fashion industry of the 1950s and 60s and how that industry fitted into the wider global context, with many of its industry professionals working both domestically and overseas. It also provides examples of high fashion tastes and styles during the era, and reveals how fashion developed and evolved from the 1950s into the 1960s.

97/272/1-4/1 Penthouse brochure,Janice appears bottom right, photograph taken by Janice Wakely, 1965 Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Janice’s skills as a fashion model and burgeoning photographer reached new heights in 1962 when she and fellow model Helen Homewood opened the Penthouse Modelling Agency and Photographic Studio, in Helmut’s old penthouse studio. Through this agency, Janice and Helen trained and booked jobs for new modelling talent while Janice also captured the model’s test shots and carried out assignments as a photographer. The archive includes some unique personal works, like the photograph that Janice took of ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev rehearsing for ‘Le Corsair’ in Melbourne.

This archive demonstrates Janice Wakely’s transition from fashion model to photographer, the establishment of the Penthouse Agency and how she balanced and found success through both professions. It also provides important documentation of some of Australia’s most prominent fashion photographers in practice. The collection compliments others in the Powerhouse Museum including those which document the works of photographers Henry Talbot, Bruno Benini and Helmut Newton and photographs of other Australian fashion models of the era, such as Helen Homewood, Georgia Gold, Jan Stewart and Margot McKendry.

Helen Dunlop, Curatorial Intern with Anne Marie Van de Ven, Curator, June 2011

Aesthetics, sensuality and the visual image

Published by Anne-Marie Van de Ven 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Left: Dancer Antonio Rodrigues, photo by Bruno Benini, Melbourne, 1960s. Benini archive acquired with funding assistance from the Australian Government’s National Cultural Heritage Account, 2009.
Right: Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni. Prado Museum, Madrid

It is an interesting analysis to see how the male form is conceived aesthetically within two very different contexts and mediums. The seventeenth century painter Guido Reni, and the Italian-Australian fashion photographer, Bruno Benini, were very different individuals. Nonetheless certain characteristics of both men are of comparative interest. Reni and Benini were both Italian. Guido was born in Bologna, home to Europe’s first University and a hub of seventeenth century artistic activity; Bruno, in the picturesque Umbrian town of Massa Marittima, sixty-five kilometres south-west of Sienna. Guido and Bruno’s depictions of the nude have also both been interpreted by some in erotic terms.

The sensuality of Guido’s semi-naked saint, caught between pain and in an ecstasy that transcends the pain of martyrdom, has been seen as erotic by popular art historian Simon Schama. In his series The Power of Art, Saint Theresa’s ecstasy by the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini is even conceived as tantamount to orgasm. None of the male nude photographs by Benini were included in the recent Benini exhibition, Creating the Look: Benini and fashion photography (30 July 2010 – 18 April 2011).

I believe we do a certain injustice to both depictions of the naked form in seeing it predominantly through these post-Freudian eyes. The sensual and sexual are rather contained within both these pictures via conformity to particular aesthetic cultural discourses. In Reni’s case, this is embodied in an intimate expression of Classicism and in Bruno’s of twentieth century Modernism. For a pre-Freudian, seventeenth century audience, the key to Reni’s painting was perceived in the action of the pose. Somewhat related to what the Frenchman Andre Felibien, derivative of Aristotle, called, The Unity of Action. This encapsulated a theoretical belief in pictorial clarity that required the thoughts and intentions of an individual, to be conveyed in the action of the body. Thus the saint’s tilted head, the gaze of his eyes and the contraposta of his torso, are all subtly crafted to lead the viewer’s thoughts beyond the transience of both sensuality and pain, to a meditation upon the constant and the eternal. The painting is thus carefully set up as an aesthetic paradox between the visual and the intellectual.

In quite a few of Bruno’s pictures the body is viewed reductively. This originated with the photographer Alfred Steiglitz, who in the 1930s began photographing parts of the body in isolation. This was a transition from the Formalism of Modernist painting to the camera lens. As such, the body in many of Bruno’s photographs becomes an abstracted quasi-architecture. The sensual and erotic are explicitly contained within the confines of an expression of shape for its own sake.

In both pictures we are not simply looking at a naked figure. The erotic and the sensual are not free agents rather both are culturally prescribed, and thus contained, by differing aesthetic discursive agendas.

Post by Dominique Millar, Curatorial Intern (Master of Art Curatorship, University of Sydney)

Faded glory or historically charming?

Published by Anne-Marie Van de Ven 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Photo by Bruno Benini, scan by Nitsa Yioupros © Estate of Bruno Benini

The assigned value and significance of objects is in a state of perpetual flux. Evolving digital technologies (like the potential to create high resolution scans from original negative and positive formats and distribute these over the web) contributes to, engages with and draws attention to this constant process of change.

Recently, the Powerhouse Museum acquired the fashion photography archive of Bruno Benini, an Italian-born Melbourne-based Australian fashion photographer (b. Italy 1925, migrated to Australia 1935, died Melbourne 2001). As Benini worked mainly for newsprint, the bulk of the images in the archive are black and white (prints, contacts sheets, proofs prints, negative film, etc). There are also substantial numbers of colour photographs (transparencies and prints, and colour pages from newspapers and magazines which show these images in print). Among these are numerous large format (4×5 inch) colour negatives including the 1960s image above of Janice Wakely modelling a Cole of California swimsuit which I’ve blogged about previously on Photo of the Day. In this digital version of the image, the transparency has been captured in its entirety as an authentic original object, providing evidence of its condition and format.

This work, like many other colour transparencies, has faded over time, as the dyes and emulsions used on photographic film wasn’t always stable. At what point might these images irretrievably decline in value and loose their significance?

Storing negatives and transparencies at low temperature, with no light and in a low humidity environment can slow the deterioration process sufficiently to ensure many years of future visual reference and viewing pleasure, but the deterioration process can only be decelerated, it is non-reversible. Although today’s computer editing software can manually colour correct fading digitally, by adding and reinstating missing colours or reducing the amount of the remaining colours (as we see in the colour corrected and digitally enhanced image of Benini colour transparency below), when is a digital reproduction most meaningful? In it’s authentic state above, or when enhanced as seen below?

Colour transparency, colour corrected and digitally enhanced. © Estate of Bruno Benini

In 2007, the team that was developing the Fashion from Fleece: 200 Years of Wool in Fashion exhibition, visited the basement stores to view Australian Wool Board images in the Henry Talbot fashion photography archive. From a curatorial and collection perspective, we were initially disappointed and concerned that the selected images had, on close inspection, faded. However, somewhat to my relief and surprise, I discovered during this inspection that photographers and creative directors don’t necessarily view this deterioration with trepidation or as something detrimental. They see it as something that happens over time, and that it can be viewed as visually arresting and historically charming. When viewing the faded Talbot transparencies, the Creative Director Chris Dent, had no qualm or compunction about planning to use the images in his design layout. He felt the fading was something he could work with to communicate a fresh ‘historical’ perspective … graphically. In this context, fading was seen to provide a sense of history.

I was interested to see this view expressed again earlier this year when we were developing the Creating the look: Benini and fashion photography exhibition. In an interview with photographer Juli Balla (whose work features as one of four contemporary case studies in the exhibition), she too expressed a view that the faded glory of colour transparencies provided her with inspiration and a special hook, or tool, for revisiting and ‘re-visualising’ the 1960s look in her photographs for Grazia Italia’s Bridget Bardot Story (2010).

One of my favourite pictures of Benini’s is this one with the cute little tents on the beach. I love the colours. Recently I did an assignment for ‘Grazia’ magazine, Italy. It was about Brigitte Bardot and it was styled as if Brigitte Bardot would have worn it in the 60s. I used a colour treatment on the pictures which really looks quite like this image of Bruno’s. It’s not something he [Benini] did on purpose. It is just a technique which happens to the transparencies over time, but it is so beautiful. It suits this [Bardot] story to a ‘T’.

Interview with Juli Balla, June 2010

Juli Balla for Bridget Bardot Story, Grazia Italia, 2010. Fashion: Dolce Gabbana; Model: Millicent; Hair: Michael Brennan; Makeup: Rae Morris; Styling: Tamara Gianoglio. © Juli Balla

Juli Balla for Bridget Bardot Story, Grazia Italia, 2010. Fashion: Dolce Gabbana; Model: Millicent; Hair: Michael Brennan; Makeup: Rae Morris; Styling: Tamara Gianoglio. © Juli Balla

When she was creating these photographs for the Bridget Bardot Story, Balla wasn’t familiar with Benini’s tent image, but she had obviously seen and been inspired by similar images. When asked to comment on Benini’s work for the Creating the look exhibition video, she was naturally drawn to this particular image in the context of her own work.

I now also recall an earlier experience that I had with faded images when the Museum was developing the Henry Talbot fashion photography archive and collection. Looking to acquire Talbot’s image of the model Penny Pardey with the scooter, rather than acquiring the vintage print, we chose a more recent Cibachrome print, as the vintage print had faded so much that it was considered un-useful and useable.

Photo by Henry Talbot, 1967. © Estate of Henry Talbot

The vintage print showed Pierre Cardin’s vibrant hot pink mini-dress (seen beautifully on the original, then un-faded, colour transparency) as pale orange because the print had been over exposed to light. In hindsight, should we also have acquired the faded print for its historical appeal and significance? Maybe not. There’s probably a limit to how long photographic image fading can remain historically significant, interesting or appealing.

Please feel free to comment and share your expertise and experience of working with, or being inspired, by faded colour transparencies. Also please feel free to post and comment about different approaches to digitally scanning original negatives and transparencies eg retaining the borders, keeping the fading, leave all evidence of damage – or enhancing original materials. I’m sure readers would like to hear your views on these topics, and see examples – for example where you too were inspired by the faded charm of historical colour transparencies. If you would like to see more Benini and Balla images, please visit the Creating the look: Benini and fashion photography exhibition (August 2010 – April 2011).

Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Curator

Reference:
Denis Nikitenko, Michael Wirth & Kataline Trudel, Applicability Of White-Balancing Algorithms to Restoring Faded Colour Slides: An Empirical Evaluation, JOURNAL OF MULTIMEDIA, VOL. 3, NO. 5, DECEMBER 2008 (Accessed 2 December 2010)

Dahl and Geoffrey Collings and Moholy- Nagy

Published by Anni Turnbull 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

2007/30/1-29/5 New Year's card, Laszlo and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy to Dahl and Geoffrey Collings designed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, paper, Dahl and Geoffrey Collings, Killcare Heights, New South Wales, Australia, 1937. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

This is the third our series based on the cataloguing of 2007/30/1, the archive of Dahl and Geoffrey Collings, specifically on the Christmas and New Year’s cards sent to them by family, friends and professional colleagues.

After moving to London in 1935 the Collings’ lived in a small flat at 158 Clifford’s Inn, Fetter Lane, just off Fleet Street. In February 1936 Dahl Collings met Professor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, formerly of the Bauhaus School in Berlin which had been forced to close by the Nazis in July 1933, when applying for a job with his Pallas Studio to assist with the interior design and presentation of Simpson’s Department Store in Piccadilly, coincidentally some decades later the model for Grace Brothers in the British television sitcom ‘Are you being Served?’. She always described Moholy-Nagy as the greatest influence on her career but initially neither she nor Geoffery Collings grasped the significance of this first meeting. In Geoffrey Caban’s book A Fine Line – A History of Australian Commercial Art, Dahl Collings reminisced that it was only through her friend, the Australian journalist Leicester Cotton, that she learnt of Moholy-Nagy’s reputation and that Cotton “couldn’t believe my luck”. Later she discovered that Moholy-Nagy had been impressed with her portfolio of work which showed “that I had used watercolour, fabrics and other materials in a way he hadn’t seen before.” In Caban’s book Dahl Collings also described her time with Moholy-Nagy as “absolutely stunning” because of the creative possibilities he encouraged her to explore and the team environment which he had he established. Through Dahl Collings, Alistair Morrison was employed on the project and he also found it to be a rewarding experience as “Moholy-Nagy introduced him to the potentialities and subtleties of design.” (Geoffrey Caban, A Fine Line – A History of Australian Commercial Art. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1983, pp71-73)

Dahl and Geoffrey Collings quickly became friends with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and his wife Sibyl (1903 – 1971) as well as with Gyorgy Kepes (1906 – 2001) and his English girlfriend, Juliet Appleby (1919–1999), an artist and illustrator who married Kepes in 1937. These friendships continued well after the Moholy-Nagys and Kepes’ had left England to help establish the ‘New Bauhaus’ in Chicago, Illinois, in 1937 and the Collings’ had returned to live in Australia.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy died from leukemia in Chicago on 24 November 1946 and we hold a card within the archive from Sibyl Moholy-Nagy thanking the Collings’ for their condolences. The card reads, “To Dahl and Geoffrey Collings with much love and admiration and in memory of Moholy-Nagy who was the teacher of us all.” (2007/30/1-22/1/6)

Today Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s name is commemorated through such institutions as the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary, and the Moholy-Nagy Foundation, Inc. which is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

2007/30/1-29/6 New Year's card, Sibyl and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to Dahl and Geoffrey Collings designed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, paper, Dahl and Geoffrey Collings, Killcare Heights, New South Wales, Australia, 1938. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

The two cards we have selected for this post feature images created by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy using the photogram process. Photo-sensitive materials including photographic paper were exposed to light without the aid of a camera which allowed Moholy-Nagy to create interesting shapes, lines, angles etc often by placing objects on the paper or by moving them during exposure. Moholy-Nagy first experimented with this process in Berlin in 1922 working with his first wife Lucia Schulz as well as with Man Ray who termed his works ‘Rayographs’. The 1937 card includes a photogram entitled ‘Selbstbild’, a self portrait of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, which is dated 1925. A print from the collection of Sybil Moholy-Nagy is held by George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, while another print of this photogram is in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The photogram on the 1938 card is reproduced in a book we hold on Moholy-Nagy and is dated 1923 but at this stage we don’t have any other details about it. It is similar to other photograms made by Moholy-Nagy around the same time including this one at George Eastman House.

Paul Wilson, Project Archivist and Curator, Anne- Marie Van de Ven