National Library delves into the archives for a snapshot of Australia’s history

At its very best photojournalism can define a moment, a movement, an era or a whole generation. It can bring down a careless politician or elevate them to a winning position, it can lift a weary spirit and sometimes, at its very best, it can move opinions and the way we view the world.

Photojournalism did not, however, leap into the world fully formed in the way we now understand it to be.

The first newspaper photographers in Australia were recruited from the large studios of the day. The first Fairfax photographer was George Bell, and he learnt his trade at Kerry & Co., one of the largest studios in Sydney.

In the days before photographs could be reproduced in newspapers and magazines, many parlours in late 19th-century Australia would contain a book of “scenes” picked out to reflect individual tastes.

These postcards were selected and collated and used as a form of visual entertainment. By 1903 Kerry & Co. had a selection of more than 50,000 postcards from all over Australia.

George Bell travelled Australia on horseback during a cumbersome time for professional photography. The gear was heavy and large plate cameras took negatives with emulsions coated on glass plates. These are the glass-plate negatives that make up the Fairfax Archive collection now held by the National Library of Australia.

A portrait of Bell holding his bulky wooden Ross twin lens camera and sitting astride his horse has watched over the generations of photographers from the walls of the multiple offices that The Sydney Morning Herald has occupied.

Herald photographer George Bell in 1910. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.Credit: Fairfax Archives

Bell worked first for The Sydney Mail, a weekly sister publication, but joined the Herald when they started to run photographs in 1908. An accountant’s note soberly records his employment in what was known then as “the process department” in 1898.

The bulky full-plate cameras made from leather-covered wood required a high degree of skill to load the glass plate negatives and get a decent result. The slow emulsion and shutter speeds negated being able to “freeze” any fast action or movement. Because of this, Bell’s early work is very stylised. Some of the subjects look almost mannequin-like, set in scenes and surroundings as if they are part of a museum display.

Subjects were often propped up against solid objects such as walls, trees or park benches to stop any movement. As emulsions and shutters improved to allow the “freezing” of faster-moving objects, newspaper work slowly changed to a form more familiar to what we have today.

Fit to Print: Defining moments from the Fairfax Photo Archive is an exhibition running at the National Library of Australia from February 27. All the exhibited photographs were taken on these early wooden cameras and captured on glass plates.

One of the advantages of glass plates is their stability, which has meant, as long as the negatives are not broken, that good-quality prints have been reproduced, many of which are works of art.

When you consider that Bell travelled the country on a horse, carrying the cumbersome camera, tripod and fragile glass plate negatives, it makes these early photographs a remarkable achievement.

New heights

The arrival of aviation in Australia presented a new platform for photography. In those early years, the only aerial views most people would experience were the photographs produced by the camera operators brave enough to climb aboard the flimsy early flying machines.

On May 8, 1911 Bell somewhat heroically took a short hop with his camera on a Bristol biplane. The flight took off from Ascot racecourse (later part of Mascot airport) and over the ocean near Botany Bay, took a quick loop of the city and back to land via Marrickville and the Cooks River to the south-east.

Technician working on the Southern Cross c. 1931. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia Credit: Fairfax Archives

Bell wrote in the Herald about the difficulties of his early attempts at aerial photography. “There is not much to hang on to around the seat and although there are plenty of wires about, they must not be touched. Anyway, my hands were busy with the camera.”

Just how did Bell manage to wrangle the fragile glass plates in an open cockpit? He went on: “We were simply flying through a gale, the wind roared in my ears the whole time and my eyes began to water with the icy blast”.

Aerial photography from this halting beginning in Australia is an essential tool in telling a visual story. From floods to bushfires, drought to dust storms, getting up in the air presents a new perspective and is quite often the only way to tell the story.

Helicopters were used as a camera platform almost as soon as they were invented; however, they were costly and only used when essential. Now most photographers carry a drone, which is like having an infinite tripod in your camera kit.

Two women promenading at Bondi Beach c.1930. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia Credit: Fairfax Archive

Making a splash

Big public events have always driven technology and photo coverage. A huge event in the early 20th century prompted the Herald to run its first news photograph.

The arrival in Sydney of US president Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet” of battleships on August 20, 1908 attracted an estimated crowd of 500,000 people to the harbour foreshores at a time when the city’s population was only 600,000.

A lack of trust in the half-tone reproduction process is demonstrated by the fact that a wood-block illustration was commissioned and appears on the page before the photograph.

Fast-forward over a decade and the proposal, planning and building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a project custom-made to photo-document, with every stage of the construction process covered by Fairfax photojournalists.

The bridge, and subsequently the Opera House, are Sydney icons and globally recognised.

The drive and individual brilliance of photographers have always propelled photo coverage, and in sports-mad Australia the appetite for cricket inspired one of Fairfax’s early photographers, Herbert Fishwick, to think differently.

Photographers are limited to the boundary lines at cricket matches. This fact drove Fishwick to commission a specially made long lens from the English optical company Ross.

When this custom lens was attached to his Graflex camera he was able to capture pictures of previously unattainable quality and definition. First used during the 1920-21 Ashes tour, his photographs made their way back to England, where they caused a sensation among the newspaper operators and cameramen of the time.

Fishwick wore binoculars on his glasses, which allowed both his hands free to wrangle the oversized set-up measuring 1.2 metres.

Today long lenses are an accepted sight along the boundary of any cricket pitch, and it all started with H. H. Fishwick during that 1920-21 tour.

Child playing with the medals of a returned soldier at an Anzac Day service in Petersham in 1933. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.Credit: Fairfax Archives

Moving pictures

War too pushed the boundaries. Roll film and the portable camera put the viewfinder close to everyone’s eyes. The outbreak of WWI drove newspaper sales and popularised the personal camera. In the excitement of the early days of the war, Kodak advertisements breathlessly screamed, “Don’t let your soldier go away without a vest pocket Kodak”.

Much of the imagery of day-to-day life in the trenches at Gallipoli now housed in the Australian War Memorial collection came from these cameras.

As the death toll rose and the wounded returned home, the advertisements reverted to “buy a vest pocket Kodak for Christmas” with no mention of the war.

The Herald and Daily Mail ran pictures of the Australian wounded, but death was not portrayed. Herald photographers took now iconic images of the wounded being reunited with family members at ANZAC buffets in Sydney’s Hyde Park.

One of Mike Bowers’ favourite images is of Jean Thompson sitting in her husband’s Bugatti between races at Mile Beach in 1930. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.Credit: Fairfax Archives

In the 1930s motorsport in Australia was in its infancy. A Herald photographer attended a race at Gerringong’s Mile Beach on May 10, 1930, when the track was “sodden and heavy”.

One of my favourite images is taken during this meet. Jean Thompson, the wife of driver William Bethel Thompson, sits in his Type 37A Bugatti between races. A ladder runs up her left stocking, and her racing goggles around her neck point to her accompanying her husband on at least one of his winning outings that day.

A visit to Australia before aviation travel became accessible usually involved a boat journey of many weeks. Famous passengers were a rich source of news photographs, and to get the jump on competitors Herald photographers would accompany the harbour pilots out to the heads to meet the arrivals: scrambling up rickety boarding ladders with heavy gear would not have been for the faint-hearted.

Shearers at work on Boonoke Station c. 1920 by George Bell. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.Credit: Fairfax Archives

Once aboard, the photographer would have some time with their famous subject while the ship entered the harbour and berthed. There are many examples of these boat arrival photographs in the collection.

Australia really did ride on the sheep’s back during those early years of the 20th century, as highlighted by the many images of country life in the collection.

In the late 1920s an accountant noted the expenses paid to one of the photographers sent “bush”. His wage was £4 per week, but for the feeding of his horse and the upkeep of his buggy (both of which remained the property of “the firm”) he was paid £5. It would take another year for the photographer’s wage to match the money paid to his horse.

Huddled around the campfire out bush c. 1920. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia.Credit: Fairfax Archives

A direct line can be drawn between the photographers at the Herald today and these early practitioners. The people who mentored and taught me can still remember and quote the generation of photographers who were taught by Bell and Fishwick.

The Fit to Print exhibition is by no means exhaustive, but represents what caught my eye, as well as the other curators at the National Library, Guy Hansen and Allister Mills. It is looked at with a modern eye and the hindsight of history, but I hope would meet with the approval of Bell and his pioneering colleagues.

It covers the period from the first stilted and set-up pictures to a form of photojournalism recognisable today.

Fit to Print: Defining moments from the Fairfax Photo Archive, February 27 to July 20, Exhibition Gallery, National Library in Canberra.

Mike Bowers was the managing photographic editor of the Herald and The Sun-Herald between 2001 and 2009. He wrote the book A Century of Pictures, celebrating 100 years of Herald photography in 2008.