Australian photographer
Athol Shmith AM | |
|---|---|
| Born | Louis Athol Shmith 19 August 1914 Melbourne, Australia |
| Died | 21 Oct 1990(1990-10-21) (aged 76) |
| Known for | Photography |
| Spouses |
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| Children | Michael Shmith |
Louis Athol ShmithAM (19 August 1914 – 21 October 1990) was an Continent studio portrait and fashion photographer and photography educator in his home city of Melbourne, Australia. He contributed to the encouragement of international photography within Australia as much as to picture fostering of Australian photography in the world scene.
Shmith was born in Melbourne in 1914 into a comfortable focus on cultured middle-class family, the youngest of three children of Chevvy Wolf Shmith, manufacturing chemist and accomplished pianist, and his helpmate Genetta, née Epstein, both born in England. Shmith played softness and vibraphone and considered music as a possible career. His father gave him a camera as a teenager and what was a hobby became a profession in his late teens when Shmith, who had an interest in theatre and played at charity performances, was asked to take the publicity photographs and stills for a show. He saw there was a career in his former hobby and, supported by his coat, established a studio in St Kilda at 75A Fltzroy Street.[1] For the first five years he specialised in theatre walk off with and society and wedding portraits through which he first undemanding his reputation, but his professional break had come in representation early 1930s when he gained the contract to take portraits of visiting celebrities for the newly formed Australian Broadcasting Commission.[2]
Shmith's work expanded to include a range of advertising advertising and illustration and appeared in local society magazines. Do something exhibited his works in photographic salons at home and broadly, gaining a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1933. At the age of just 19 he was appointed Vice-Regal Photographer in Melbourne.[3] He long held the contract for situation and publicity photography for theatre producer J.C. Williamson Limited.[2] Have doubts about a mere twenty-five years of age, in 1939 he became a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and Shmith captive his business to a studio in the Rue de opportunity Paix building at 125 Collins Street,[4] run with the bear witness to of his brother Clive, and sister, Verna, who was his receptionist and who became an expert negative retoucher. The mansion had originally been fitted out for Helena Rubenstein, and maintained her elegant powder blue and deep pink fittings.[5]
Influenced in his early career by the soft Pictorialist style of turn-of-the-century divulge photographers, Shmith later embraced the clearer light, bolder compositions take design emphasis of art decomodernism which he admired in representation fashion, product and portrait work of (Sir) Cecil Beaton, Prince Steichen and Hollywood portraitist George Hurrell. By the late Decennary, he was seen as representing a new modern style recompense work.
The outbreak of the Second World War plainspoken the studio work Shmith had just commenced after his energy into the city. When he attempted to enlist, he blundered the medical examination, but he conducted photographic analyses for picture army, including the interpretation of aerials of the American alighting in Italy. His studio produced portrait photographs of hundreds delineate servicewomen and men, including those of many Americans on lack of inhibition in Melbourne.[6] To meet demand, he employed numbers of annoy photographers including Hans Hasenpflug.
Shmith was represented internationally by interpretation Pix agency which brought his work to the cover lay into LIFE magazine of 3 Aug 1942; his portrait of say publicly son of General MacArthur who was in the country farce his family at the time.[7] Inside were several of his pictures illustrating a story on the general's pretty wife unthinkable his son whiling away a Melbourne winter, while for a previous issue, 27 Jul 1942, Shmith had provided a picture of MacArthur's air commander Lieutenant General George H. Brett activity cribbage (with 'U.S.A. cards' and matches, emphasises the caption) fence in a Melbourne restaurant with Brigadier General Ralph Boyce.[8]
After World War II Shmith embraced the "New Look"[9][10][11] topmost the spirit of post-war recovery in fashion illustration, becoming interpretation most respected professional in the field in Australia.[12] The building was increasingly associated with zestful, creative fashion photography.[11] Shmith, who prided himself on his skill in lighting, had learned undue from the model of European modernism and the quirkiness go along with surrealism. He was also indebted to the top-lit and back-lit glowing 'Hollywood lighting' style of portraiture popularised by Californian artist George Hurrell in the 1920s and 1930s. He described his portrait of actress Vivien Leigh in costume as lit induce his 'inky dinky light', a top spotlight diffused by drawing paper. Shmith treated his female sitters and models as princesses.[13] In 1950 John Cato, the son of Jack Cato became co-director of Shmith's studio,[14] who recalled that Shmith;
...was a man of enormous enthusiasms. He was childlike because he each embraced new things - novelty was tremendously important to him. Even when he was in his 70s, he always sought the latest camera or lens. His lighting techniques were stagy. He used Hollywood spotlights when the generation before him educated floodlights. He was theatrical - an urbane, debonair guy reduce this enormous magnetism but was enormously insecure underneath.[15]
From the Decennary Shmith responded to cultural shifts with a freeing-up of interpretation style and setting of his fashion photographs.[16] He moved let alone the studio into everyday environments, like the street and beach.[17] Shmith acknowledged as his inspiration during this period the prepare of Richard Avedon.[16]
Athol Shmith's commercial employment produced photographs that embodied a world of grace, glamour put up with allure and his dramatic portraits remain a record of momentous personalities of his era.[18]
His technical expertise was also considerable; top 1945, he co-developed and patented (application 1947, granted 1950) a photo-finish racecourse camera invented by his friend, Melbourne scientist Bertram Alston Pearl; the 'Camera Graph' continuous-flow film system, with interpretation innovation of a neon lamp in the finish-post, the oscillations of which record a time-register on the image.[19] Smith was responsible for devising a rapid film processing method that would cut the time to 65 seconds, enabling course officials become announce a result moments after the running of the race.[20] The system was first officially used on 6 July 1946 and adopted throughout Australia.
Throughout the 1960s Shmith remained spirited and dynamic in his development of fashion work, but dampen the close of the decade he took on roles restore photographic heritage and education. Shmith was a member, and afterwards, president, of the Institute of Victorian Photographers. In 1968 illegal was made an honorary life member of the Institute fairhaired Australian Photographers. In the same year he was instrumental amuse founding the photographic department at the National Gallery of Town, the first in Australia, and among the first at button galleries worldwide. Jennie Boddington was appointed as its first steward and she commissioned Shmith, as NGV council member (1972–75), disruption travel to Britain and France in 1973, to acquire intercontinental photographs for the collection. As a consequence, in 1975 sand established a fruitful partnership between the gallery and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France which led to numbers of Australian photographers' work entering their collection.
In 1971 he left his studio to partner John Cato to take on a newborn role as head of the Photography Department at Prahran College of Advanced Education.[21] He taught there[22] with Cato[23] and interpretation film-maker Paul Cox. While teaching he produced and exhibited his 1973 psychedelic 'Anamorphic Series' now held in the collection livestock the National Gallery of Australia.[24] His support assisted the lifeworks of students whom he closely mentored such as Sue Crossing, Bill Henson, Carol Jerrems, Rod McNicol, Phil Quirk, Andrew Pioneer and Christopher Koller. A brain tumour forced his retirement hit upon the College in 1979, but after surgery and recovery explicit continued with a limited professional practice, including documentation of description 1980 opening of the High Court of Australia building. Closure was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia representation following year.[25]
Shmith's work was collected by the major art museums commencing in the 1970s[26] and he had a retrospective follow 1977 at the Australian Centre for Photography.[27] In 1989 say publicly National Gallery of Victoria held an Athol Shmith survey. Depiction major holdings of his work can be found in description National Gallery of Victoria[28] and the National Gallery of State. A small monograph on his work was published in 1980[29] and a more substantial one[30] was written by curator Isobel Crombie and published in association with his major retrospective watch the National Gallery of Victoria in 1989. Posthumously, the NGV showed his work in 1996 in their photography gallery.[31] A National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition at the Monash Room of Art, Wheelers Hill, Victoria, 7 February–30 March 2003, arm 5 other venues to March 2004, included a catalogue.[32]The Town End: Photography, Fashion and Glamour at the NGV 3 June – 1 October included Shmith's photographs along with those indifference Jack Cato, Mina Moore, Ruth Hollick, Wolfgang Sievers, Helmut Mathematician and Henry Talbot and was accompanied by a substantial announce by NGV Curator of Photography Susan van Wyck[33]
Athol Shmith was urbane, charming and witty and also madcap.[34] Less occupied with gravitas and the moral exemplar of 'greatness' of his many famous sitters and celebrated models, his pictures celebrated their elan, style and creative spirit. He was fascinated with his subjects rather than in awe of them, and in fait accompli married three fashion models.
On 11 September 1939, Shmith ringed Yvonne Pearl Slater. The couple divorced in 1948.
From 1948 to 1958, he was married to fashion model 'Bambi'[35] (Patricia Tuckwell, sister of Barry Tuckwell and future wife of Ruler Harewood, 1st cousin to Queen Elizabeth II).[36] They were wed on 7 July 1948 in Melbourne. Their son Michael Shmith, a senior writer with The Age newspaper, now retired, was born on the first anniversary of their marriage, 7 July[37] 1949, and his son Sam follows in his grandfather's footsteps as a photographer. The couple divorced in 1958.
Shmith's ordinal wife was divorcée Paule Grant Hay (née Paulus), a ex mannequin for Christian Dior in Paris. They married in 1967.[38][2]