National Library of Australia - Home page
NLA News - home April 2006 Volume XVI Number 7

The Camera Art of Geoffrey Powell

click to enlarge
Geoffrey Powell (1918–1989)
Geoffrey Powell Self-portrait, 1937
gelatin silver photograph;
38.0 x 30.3 cm
Geoffrey Powell Archive, 1936–1947
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3305733
click to enlarge
Geoffrey Powell (1918–1989)
Muddy Axle, 1936
gelatin silver photograph;
33.0 x 32.9 cm
Geoffrey Powell Archive, 1936–1947
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3305734

Jennifer Lovell uncovers the career of Geoffrey Powell, a photographer who had a knack for being where the action was

The title of a Geoffrey Powell exhibition, staged at Brisbane’s Gallery 482 in early 2004, proclaimed Powell to be ‘Australia’s forgotten documentary photographer’. While this description may be accurate now, in his day Powell achieved notoriety at a young age, both for his photographs and for the lengths to which he went in order to take them. The National Library has recently acquired a number of posthumously printed photographs that were taken by Powell in the early years of his career, in addition to others from the late 1940s, a period in which Powell was a vocal and respected participant in Australia’s postwar documentary photography movement. Powell’s story is just beginning to be told through the work of researchers, such as those at the Geoffrey Powell Archive, and through the histories of those people and institutions that intersected with Powell’s eventful life.

In 1935, at the age of 17, Powell purchased his first camera and, in the company of his friend Laurence Le Guay, joined the Photographic Society of New South Wales. Through the society, Powell began to exhibit frequently and soon found work as a studio assistant, first at Russell Roberts’ studio in 1936, then at Max Dupain’s Bond Street studio in 1937. Three of the Library’s new acquisitions—Muddy Axle, 1936; Old Theatre Royal, Sydney, Night Streetscape, 1937; and Portrait of Max Dupain, the Well Known Sydney Photographer, 1938—were taken during this period in which Powell was an associate of Max Dupain, Olive Cotton and other members of Australia’s burgeoning modernist photography movement.

Modernist photography, with its new vantage points, sharp focus and near abstract compositions, was a departure from Australia’s pictorial photography tradition. A Daily Telegraph article from 8 May 1936 provides a glimpse of the lively exchanges that resulted over images such as Powell’s Muddy Axle, 1936:

When I wandered into the Photographic Society’s rooms the other night, criticism was in full swing. Fifty stern photographers were analysing the art, or absence of art, in a print of the wheels of a car. ‘There you have the revolt against romanticism that you find in modern art!’ said one critic. ‘A meaningless pattern,’ said another. ‘He’s only an old bromide man—don’t take too much notice of him,’ said a modernist, urging me to ignore this detractor.

The reporter concluded:

Actually, the car-wheels print belonged to the five percent on the walls that were modern. Former photographers, ‘old bromide men’, have been well described as artists of the blurred eye. They took scenes and portraits, blurred and softened to look like etchings. Modern photographers today are artists of the Third Eye—the eye which picks out one item from an object and shows you its values with a cold absence of all emotion … Some of the younger men in the Society can see the rift between Blurred Eyes and Third Eyes widening—the breakaway will yet give Australia the type of work now so common on the Continent and in America.

In other cases, it was Powell’s pursuit of a photographic opportunity, rather than his chosen style, that garnered attention. An article in the November 1940 edition of Pertinent magazine reminded readers that Powell ‘achieved prominence by securing the only photographs taken aboard the replica of the ship Supply on the morning of the sesquicentenary celebrations in Sydney [1938], and [he] smuggled himself aboard the ship at midnight to do so’. Later in 1938, Powell illegally climbed to the top arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to photograph the sunset over Port Jackson. His ticketing and subsequent court appearance were covered by both the Sydney Sun and the Daily Telegraph. Powell’s keenness was best demonstrated when he stowed away aboard the yacht of suspected Nazi agent Count Felix von Luckner. Powell’s photographs of the Count were published in Sydney Ure Smith’s The Home magazine, and Powell told the tale of his adventure in the November 1940 edition of Pertinent.

click to enlarge
Olive Cotton (1911–2003)
Geoff Powell and Max Dupain with a Model’s Enormous Beach Hat c.1938
gelatin silver matt photograph;
15.4 x 15.0 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an12799855
Courtesy of Olive Cotton family and Josef Lebovic Gallery
click to enlarge
Geoffrey Powell (1918–1989)
Families Awaiting Eviction, 1945, 2
gelatin silver photograph;
33.0 x 33.0 cm
Geoffrey Powell Archive, 1936–1947
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3305740

According to Powell, he was originally offered passage to Batavia by the Count, whose own photographer had left the yacht in New Zealand. Powell wrote that the passage ‘offered the kind of opportunity I’d always hoped for; I’d always wanted to visit the East, and, too, it also was a stepping off place for Europe, where I’d been hoping some day to complete my career as a photographer’. Unfortunately for Powell, the Count’s photographer reappeared and the offer was withdrawn. Not one to be easily dissuaded, Powell followed the yacht to Cairns and stowed away on board. Soon discovered, he was cast off on Thursday Island. Rather than pursuing his photographic career in Europe, Powell documented life in rural Queensland as he worked odd jobs to earn his train fare back to Sydney. The resulting photographs of pineapple plantation workers and station hands foreshadowed Powell’s participation in the social documentary photography movement following World War II.

Powell returned to Sydney on the day before his 21st birthday. He began working as a freelance photojournalist and commercial photographer, opening the Geoffrey Powell Studio on Hunter Street, but his efforts were interrupted when he was drafted into the Australian Commonwealth Military Forces in 1941. Photographs attributed to a pseudonym created from Powell’s middle names, Bruce St Aubyn, began to appear in various publications at this time. During his military service, Powell exercised the technical side of his skill in photography assignments where he developed sound signals recorded on photographic paper, or worked with Army Intelligence in the research and development of specialised photographic equipment intended for front-line operations.

In 1944, Powell was transferred from active duty to the Reserve of Officers and spent the remainder of the war working as a civilian newspaper photographer in Sydney. He continued his freelance practice, which began to show a more singular interest in documentary photography as a means of effecting social change. In an article entitled ‘Camera Art’, written for Progress magazine in 1945, Powell declared:

For photography to become a highly specialised expressive medium the manipulator of the camera must develop his mind and outlook to the world’s current problems. This will bring about a finer sense of observation which will enable him to perceive new subjects with a new approach … By suitable encouragement the photographer will dissociate himself from the escapist tendency typified by the ‘pin-up’ girl and pick up his lenses and films for the constructive purpose of helping mankind.

Families Awaiting Eviction, 1945, awarded a bronze plaque in 1947 by Australian Photography in an annual dedicated to ‘factual photography’, is one of several photographs recently acquired by the Library that illustrates Powell’s commitment to social documentary photography.

Powell was commissioned to complete a photographic series entitled ‘Return to Civil Life’ in 1945. The series formed the basis for a nationwide touring exhibition organised by the Design and Public Relations Division within the Commonwealth Department of Post-War Reconstruction. Another important commission came from Edgar Ross, a prominent coal mining unionist and editor of the Miners’ Federation journal, Common Cause. Powell was hired to produce photographs documenting the living and working conditions found in communities throughout the coal mining industry. Coal Miner at Crib, Kandos, NSW, 1947 is part of this series.

In 1946, Powell began working for the Department of Information (DOI) Film Unit and cinematography soon replaced still photography as his main artistic medium. His enthusiasm for filmmaking is palpable in articles that he wrote for magazines such as Contemporary Photography. Unfortunately, Powell’s new career was short-lived as ongoing complications from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident during the filming of The Lighthouse Keeper (1949) for the DOI forced him into a more sedentary line of work.

click to enlarge
Geoffrey Powell (1918–1989)
Coal Miner at Crib, Kandos, NSW, 1947
gelatin silver photograph;
30.0 x 30.4 cm
Geoffrey Powell Archive, 1936–1947
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3305744

Turning to a broadcasting career, Powell worked as a studio supervisor for the ABC during the early years of television in Australia, and later pioneered the talkback radio format in both Hong Kong and Australia. During a decade-long sojourn on Macau in the 1960s, Powell’s interest in documentary still photography was revived and he produced an extensive photo essay of life on the island. A brief stint in 1966 as a promoter for the Macau Grand Prix landed Powell in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. Powell’s assistant at the time, Marya Glyn-Daniel, chronicles their experiences in a lively memoir entitled The Macau Grand Prix and My Part in the Cultural Revolution in China.

In each of his careers, Powell had a knack for being where the action was. As a photographer, this was reflected in his involvement in modernist photography at its inception in Australia, and his participation in the development of social documentary photography in the postwar period. The Library’s new acquisitions serve as an introduction to this ‘forgotten’ photographer, while providing visual documentation of both urban and rural Australia in the 1930s and 1940s.

JENNIFER LOVELL completed an internship at the National Library in 2004. She is currently in Mexico, conducting independent research into indigenous art traditions

Back to NLA News Index Back to April Issue Back to NLA Home Page
NLA News - home

To order a particular issue of the NLA News e-mail nlasales@nla.gov.au
or join the Friends of the National Library of Australia and receive a copy each month by mail.