Note: Joan Blundell was one of Cazneaux’s five daughters.

The Cazneaux family estate

The Cazneaux family estate

Note: Mount Bogong Victoria rises more than 1,600 metres (5,200 ft), thus making it one of the highest peaks in Australia not only in terms of its elevation above sea level, but also in terms of actual base-to-summit

prominence.

As a leading pictorial photographic artist in the early decades of the 20th century, Cazneaux was revered for his abilities at capturing light and atmosphere in his monumental Australian landscapes.

The 1920s and 1930s were highly productive times for the artist. He produced a series of portraits of well-known artists, musicians, and actors and many books including Canberra, Australia’s Federal Capital (1928), Sydney Surfing (1929), The Bridge Book (1930), The Sydney Book (1931), Frensham Book (1934), and the jubilee number of the B.H.P. Review (1935).

S. Ure Smith, gave Cazneaux regular work for his new publications The Home and Art in Australia. His frontispiece photograph for the first issue of The Home in 1920 used sunshine effects so successfully that it sparked a new trend in local photograpy. Harold Cazneaux subsequently benefited greatly from the publicity.

Sydney Fruit Stall [Macleay St, Kings Cross] is a soft-focused glimpse of the Willow Cafe with its “decorative and colourful tiled facade with canvas awnings.” Similar images are held in National Library of Australia and the National Gallery of Australia.

This rare vintage photograph of body-surfing from the 1920s is one of the earliest depictions of Australian lads taking to the waves. It is easy to forget that it wasn’t until the 1960s that Australians who didn’t live near the beach were more familiar with  public swimming pools and certainly less confident and accomplished swimmers than they are today.

“Many visitors (to the beach) contented themselves with paddling, but enough braved the surf in ignorance to keep the life-savers busy and elevate them to the status of bronzed gods”.

Jill White, Dupain’s Beaches, Chapter & Verse, 2000, p. 92.