Harold Pierce Cazneaux (30 March 1878 – 19 June 1953), commonly referred to as H. P. Cazneaux, was an Australian photographer; a pioneer whose style had an indelible impact on Australian photographic history. In 1916, he was a founding member of the pictorialist 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. His career between the Wars established him as "the country's leading pictorial photographer".[1]
Cazneaux was born in Wellington, New Zealand, a son of Emily Florence "Emma" Cazneau, née Bentley (14 May 1855 – 24 March 1892)[2] and Pierce Mott Cazneau (23 November 1849 – 20 April 1928), sixth son of Liverpool artist[a] Edward Lancelot Cazneau.[4] They married on 23 December 1876[5] and emigrated to Melbourne in 1886.[6] Around 1890 they moved to Adelaide, where Pierce Mott Cazneau was employed by Hammer & Co. in Rundle Street. His wife died in 1892.[7] In 1895 Pierce Mott Cazneau, who was by then manager of the studio,[8] married again, to Christina Margaret Jane Harley (12 October 1867 – 17 February 1938). They had four more children: Jack, Pip, Dot, and Harley, living at Ebor Avenue, Torrensville, later 355 Esplanade, Henley Beach. In 1901 Pierce Mott Cazneau was living at Payneham, South Australia.[9] Around 1902 the family changed their surname to Cazneaux, perhaps starting with Carmen Cazneaux,[10] a promising singer.[11]
Harold Pierce Cazneaux was born in Wellington, New Zealand on 30 March 1878. His father Pierce Mott Cazneau was an English-born photographer and his mother Emily Florence Cazneau was a colourist, miniature painter and photographer from Sydney.[12] Around 1890 the family moved to Adelaide, where the father began working for Hammer & Co., photographers with a studio in Rundle Street.
Cazneaux received further education at (unnamed) state schools in Adelaide, and worked for his father, taking night classes at the School of Design, Painting and Technical Art. In 1896 he started working for Hammer & Co. as a photo retoucher.[1]
In 1904 he left for Sydney, where he took up a position with one of Sydney's oldest photo studios, Freeman & Co. He was later appointed the firm's manager and chief operator. At the same time he honed his photographic skills documenting the architecture of old Sydney and in 1907 exhibited at the Photographic Society of New South Wales. In 1909 he held the first one-man photographic exhibition in Australia.[8]
Cazneaux' prints were exhibited in solo shows in the windows of the Kodak Salon, Sydney, as well as international 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 "Happiest Moment" competition, ostensibly open to amateur and professional alike,[13] and the £100 prize money went toward a deposit for his future home.
He was a founder of The Sydney Camera Circle, whose pictorialist "manifesto" was drawn up and signed on 28 November 1916 by a group of six photographers: Cecil Bostock, James Stening, William Stewart White, Malcolm McKinnon and James Paton, later joined by Henri Mallard.[14] This group 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".[15][16]
He left Freeman & Co. in 1917[1] or 1918,[8] to work freelance, with greater creative freedom.
In 1921 he was elected a member of the London Salon and in 1937 he was the first Australian to be conferred with 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 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). He also contributed to Ure Smith's prestige magazines Art in Australia and Australia: National Journal. His work encompassed the whole range of realist photography: portraiture, street scenes and landscape, notably in later years the Flinders Ranges. He was fascinated by old and new Sydney, particularly the Sydney Harbour Bridge and beach culture. He was a master of bromoil techniques, blurring out distracting features. His daughters acted as assistants and often appeared in his images.[1]
The use of light was a defining characteristic of Cazneaux' 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 died in his sleep at the age of 75.
Cazneaux' work was championed for decades by the editor of The Home magazine, Sydney Ure Smith.
The National Library of Australia 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 also has a fine collection of Cazneaux' work, and was, in 1975, the first Australian museum to hold a major exhibition of his work.
The exhibition Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in June and July 2008 included more than 100 of his images, exploring the breadth and depth of his work such as landscape, portraits, the harbour and the city.
Ambleside_in_Roseville.jpg)
An exhibition of his photographs, called "Thoroughly modern Sydney: 1920s and 30s glamour and style" was held at the Museum of Sydney, in Sydney 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. Subjects 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.
One of Cazneaux' most famous images was taken in 1937, of a solitary river red gum tree, near Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The title he gave to the photograph was "The Spirit of Endurance", for the qualities he felt epitomised the tree's survival in a harsh environment.
The tree still stands and, known as "The Cazneaux Tree", is a notable landmark within the Flinders Ranges National Park, classified as number 239 on the National Trust of South Australia's Register of Significant Trees.[17]
Harold Pierce Cazneaux (1878–1953) married Mabel Winifred Hodge (1882–) on 1 September 1905.[8] They had a home on Dudley Avenue, Roseville, New South Wales. Their family included:
Cazneaux lived for much of his life in Roseville, on Sydney's North Shore. There he established the garden studio that was his main place of work until he died. The house, a Federation cottage called "Ambleside", is located in Dudley Avenue, but was neglected as of 2012.
Children of Pierce Mott Cazneau (c. 1849–1928) and Emma Cazneau, née Bentley (1855–1892); married 1876
Children of Pierce Mott Cazneau (c. 1849–1928) and Christina Margaret Jane Harley (c. 1867–1938), married 1895
