Title
Meditation (Gracie Macbeth)
circa 1904-circa 1908
Artist
-
Details
- Date
- circa 1904-circa 1908
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- gelatin silver photograph
- Dimensions
- 19.3 x 19.6 cm image/sheet
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Gift of the Cazneaux family 1975
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 160.1975
- Copyright
- Artist information
-
Harold Cazneaux
Works in the collection
- Share
-
About
‘With Meditation (Gracie Macbeth)’ photography revisits the work of Julia Margaret Cameron who was much admired by early 20th-century pictorialists. However, unlike Cameron’s portraits, the narrative in ‘Meditation (Gracie Macbeth)’ is less obvious and the pose not as stiff. The pictorial effect is constructed differently as by this time gelatin silver and faster cameras allowed for considerable leeway in manipulation of the various stages of the photographic process. The effect is more knowing and polished than 40 years before. This moody, soft-focus image is, as Helen Ennis has pointed out, a portrait ‘in which achieving a likeness was not a primary concern. As the title indicates, the evocation of a mood or a state of being is all important.’1 ‘Meditation (Gracie Macbeth)’ was exhibited in Cazneaux’s solo show in 1909 having been taken in the years after his arrival in Sydney in 1904.
Cazneaux had been ‘spellbound’ at the sight of John Kauffmann’s pictorialist photographs in 1898 which were exhibited in the first pictorial photography show to be seen in Australia. The exhibition, organised by the South Australian Photographic Society in Adelaide, included work by Henry Peach Robinson, Horsley Hinton and others associated with the British pictorialist movement. Cazneaux spent the next years perfecting his vision of photography as art of which ‘Meditation (Gracie Macbeth’) is a classic example. When Cazneaux moved to Sydney from Adelaide he had good friends in Sydney, including his cousins from the Peisley family (two of the Peisley girls featured in his 1906 photograph ‘The orphan sisters’) and the Macbeths.
1. Ennis H ed 2000, 'Mirror with a memory: photographic portraiture in Australia', National Portrait Gallery, Canberra p 21
© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007
-
Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
Harold Cazneaux, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 Dec 1989–11 Mar 1990
Bridled Passions, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 23 Nov 1996–02 Feb 1997
Mirror with a Memory: The Photographic Portrait in Australia, National Portrait Gallery [Old Parliament House], Canberra, 03 Mar 2000–11 Jun 2000
Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 05 Jun 2008–10 Aug 2008
-
Bibliography
Referenced in 5 publications
-
Judy Annear, Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, 'The photograph and portraiture', pg.15-31, Sydney, 2007, 19, 26 (illus.).
-
Natasha Bullock, Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, Sydney, 2008.
-
Helen Ennis and Geoffrey Batchen, Mirror with a memory: Photographic portraiture in Australia, Parkes, 2000, 20 (colour illus.), 21. no catalogue numbers
-
Wayne Tunnicliffe, Bridled Passions, Sydney, 1996. no catalogue numbers
-
Editor Unknown (Editor), Harrington's Photographic Journal, Sydney, Oct 1908, (illus.).
-