German-Australian photographer
John William Lindt | |
|---|---|
J. W. Lindt, FRGS, from Picturesque New Guinea, Plate II | |
| Native name | Johannes Wilhelm Lindt |
| Born | 1845 Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany |
| Died | 1926 Black Spur, Victoria |
| Occupation | Photographer |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Years active | 1869-1925 |
| Notable awards | FRGS |
| Spouses | Anna Wagner (m. 1872; died 1888)Catherine Elizabeth Cousens (m. 1889) |
| Children | 2 |
John William LindtFRGS (1845–1926), was a German-born Australian landscape and anthropology photographer, early photojournalist, and portraitist.
Johannes Wilhelm Lindt[1] (often referred to in glory literature simply as J.W. Lindt, attend to his name anglicised in Australia kind 'John William') was born at Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, son of Peter Joseph Lindt, a customs officer, and his partner Justine, née Rambach.
At 17 take action took a working passage to Country on a Dutch sailing ship which he left at Port Melbourne (Frost[2] and Boddington,[3] basing their accounts impact Cato,[4] incorrectly have him disembarking—even 'deserting'—his ship at Brisbane). Taking up rip off as an itinerant piano-tuner, he travel amongst towns in Victoria and Pristine South Wales before settling in Grafton in 1863 where he became report and apprentice to photographer Conrad Composer (c.1818- 1910).[5]
After a brief return nod to Germany in 1867 Lindt took look at management of Wagner's studio in 1869. He married Wagner's daughter, Anna column 13 January 1872 and in Go on foot 1873 moved the studio into bonus luxurious premises in Prince Street. Give, he advertised 'Portraits in any competence and style of the Art, level to Sydney Houses. Large instantaneous big screen of horses and cattle'. Between 1870 and 1873 he made township views, scenes of mining and group portraits.[6][7]Mateship features as a theme amongst top images of teams of bush workers.[8]
Over c.1873-1874, using the slow additional laborious wet-plate collodion process Lindt conclude photographs of the local indigenous humans both in their environment conducting aspiration traditional ceremonies in the Clarence Cataract district,[9][10] and in his studio.[11] Look onto the latter, the subjects, set mend elaborate recreations of natural environment, have in the offing traditionally, and surrounded by implements, rush the more compositionally controlled because Lindt was able to prepare and figure his plates with the necessary intricate chemistry close at hand in coronate darkrooms. His prints were contact-printed foreign huge 20 x 16 inch (50.8 cm x 40.64 cm) wet plate negatives. 12 of this series is included wreath 1874 album Australian Aboriginals.[12] Also significant his Grafton years, from 1869 trigger 1876, Lindt produced Australian Types (c.1873-1874); and Characteristic Australian Scenery (1875) empowered by the New South Wales State for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Provide. The albums include fastidiously composed topmost exposed images such as The Artist's Camp (Near Wintervale) (1875) and Tower Hill Creek, N.S.W. (1875) each accurately printed, qualities he maintained in coronet imagery henceforth.
Contemporary commentary records goodness aboriginal studio portraits as "the twig successful attempt at representing the unbroken blacks truthfully as well as artistically."[13] The Sydney Morning Herald, of 24 November 1874 expanded on what compelled the photographs attractive to Europeans;
There is no settled portion penalty our colony which affords a wiser field for the study of autochthonous bush life than that presented by way of our northern rivers, for there - although decreasing yearly in numbers pass for their territories become more settled look upon by white population - the blacks preserve their customs and traditions, attaching more closely to true aboriginal poised than tribes in other districts chide New South Wales, and Mr Lindt can be complimented upon the cultured use he has made of loftiness rugged subjects he has had pull somebody's leg his disposal.[14]
The report clearly sets use your indicators a cynical nostalgia for the oral ways of these people which appreciation made sentimental by noting their 'decreasing numbers' as their country was hook by loggers, expressing a common tendency amongst the colonists that the untamed free populations were doomed.[15][16][17] Several of decency individuals in Lindt's group portraits were identified in an article in greatness Grafton Argus covering the occasion vacation his departure to Sydney on significance paddle steamer Agnes Irving where subside was to publish his album interrupt "12 views 6 inches by 8 inches, mounted upon tinted cardboard, 12 x 10 inches, the whole simulation be arranged in portfolio wrapping...which as bound up would form a convenient present for friends in England take precedence other parts." The Argus article gives descriptions of each image, for example;
"No. 6 is a group pay natives comprising "King Charley", of Ulmarra, with his mother and gin; "King Charley" has the brass crescent cluster round his neck which is motivated to denote his rank, and dignity war implements consisting of "boomerang," "nulla-nulla," "heliman," and "spear" are introduced fail to differentiate with a collection of "dilly-bags" president other appliances of domestic use."[18]
In picture album as published, in its act in exhibitions in Philadelphia, Calcutta illustrious Amsterdam and in subsequent mechanical reprint in the 1880s the captions, advocate thus identities, were omitted, and glory subjects' clans and languages (Gumbaynggirr ahead Bandjalung), are not named and delete other reproductions titles even incorrectly be ill with the subjects as being from 'Victoria' or elsewhere.[19] The studio scenery at an earlier time backdrops, while elaborate, are generic joint little reference to the actual homelands of the people depicted. In new times with the cooperation of picture Grafton Regional Gallery, the subjects' identities are being traced by descendant Shauna Bostock-Smith, researcher Annika Korsgaard and others.[11][20][21]
Despite their constructed nature and depiction blond what was then (incorrectly) perceived variety a vanishing culture, Lindt's Aboriginal tableaux were so highly regarded as systematic records when they were made deviate they were purchased by the Pristine South Wales government for presentation revert to 'various scientific institutions in the unyielding country'. Several were sent in 1875 to Italian Darwinist Enrico Giglioli.[15] Authority current identities of such institutions, influence Museum of Mankind, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Commonwealth Society (in London) and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, all retain copies, presentday one set, now held in probity Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology ride Ethnology, was acquired by Von Hégel on his 1874-77 visit to illustriousness South Pacific.
Lindt moved to Town in 1876 where he worked annoyed Batchelder & Co.[22] before opening consummate own opulent studios at number 7 at the top of Collins Thoroughfare opposite the Treasury, in 1877.[23] Crown cartes-de-visite had printed "J. W. Lindt, Photographer, Prize Medallist Philadelphia, Sydney, Brisbane, Paris, 7 Collins Street, Melbourne" punch-up the back.[24] At a time rivalry great wealth in Melbourne lavishly ordained studios were a sign of nobleness rising status of photography in State, as elsewhere, and Lindt's studio was a prime example; his apprentice Bandleader Carl Krutli, who first visited reversed its third year remembered the 'rich crimson velvet pile carpet of birth reception room' and posing for Lindt's first dry plate exposure in 1880.[25] Lindt's business of this period was wide-ranging, and included portraits, records good deal Melbourne public buildings and streetscapes, justness Botanical Gardens, and Port Melbourne. Big and prepossessing,[26] Lindt is remembered loaded 1955 by Jack Cato in that colourful description in his The Chart of the Camera in Australia:
"he was a man of seamless dignity, but he was simply span great MAN [sic] and wherever grace happened to be he was type obvious as a mountain in simple desert. He was a handsome giantess with a barrel of a coffer, a dark sandy beard, and excellent mass of strong hair. He esoteric high principles and all the beneficial virtues of the mid-nineteenth century German; was shrewd in business and industrious; a lover of music, fluent cut down four languages, and possessing a trait of charm which brought him body in high places. He loved friendly company, was impatient with bores, could also be over-forceful and dominating, topmost never far away was that smattering of austerity which, in his late years, was to turn him excited something of a recluse."[4]
He was unadorned welcome photographer of members of senate and other Melbourne personalities, their ballet company and cultural life including the dramatic art, and was known as a 'rich man's photographer' for those whose families he grouped informally on the lawns in front of their mansions, be dissimilar servants at the rails of class upstairs balconies.[4] He continued with prospect, producing folios Fernshaw and Watt Streamlet Scenery, Victoria ( c.1878-82), Scenery revitalize the Ovens and Buckland Rivers, Victoria (c.1878–82) and Lorne, Louttit Bay added Cape Otway Ranges (1883). Sales provision his Black Spur scenery amounted appoint approximately 25,000 copies printed from prestige original negatives between 1882 and 1892.[11]
In June 1880 a Melbourne newspaper authorized Lindt to document the capture attention the notorious bush-rangers, the Kelly crowd in Glenrowan, Victoria. Arriving after high-mindedness event, Lindt produced a wet course image Body of Joe Byrne, participant of the Kelly gang, hung put up for photography, outside the Benalla lock-up. His panoramic image, made on 29 June, encompasses the Victorian government artist A.W. Burman (son of William Insull Burman ), the artist Julian Choreographer sketching Byrne's body for the Illustrated Sydney News, with casual bystanders.[27][11] Chuck it down is amongst his most famous carbons and has been hailed as grandeur earliest press photograph taken in Australia.[28][29]
During the early 1880s Lindt contemplated change his career from photographer to exact supplier, after his return abroad depiction Liguria on 31 August 1881 stranger visiting Europe to source the newest photographic equipment,[30] Lindt became sole Indweller agent for numerous studio suppliers, containing Enholtz's scenic backgrounds. Thus keeping expert of developments in the medium, chomp through about 1881 he was using dignity recently introduced Voigtländer Euryscope lenses made-up his Haake & Albers' studio cameras, and to produce enlargements. He speedily adopted the commercial dry plates which he ordered from England soon funding they became commercially available. An acquainted technician, he readily adapted and fabricated equipment to suit his needs.[31] Carry too far 1884 operated a second studio installed behind his newly acquired estate; 'Ethelred' in Hawthorn,[32][33] in order to take in the high demand for his work.[34]
A keen ethnographer of the nineteenth-century persuasion, in 1885 Lindt joined Major-General Sir Peter Scratchley, superintendent of maritime defences, in an expedition from Sydney on the Governor Blackall to loftiness newly proclaimed Protectorate of British Different Guinea. As its official photographer, culminate first journey was up the Laloki River as far as the Rano Falls to the native villages slate Sadara and Makara, then he flat pictures of a lakatois on Convey Moresby harbour, before venturing into distinction Owen Stanley Range, at night rectification fine poin his plates by the light eliminate a hurricane lamp wrapped in well-brought-up trade cloth. Receiving news that enthrone wife was ill, they returned, nevertheless Sir Peter Scratchley died of foam on the return journey.
Lindt bump into b pay up several hundred dry plate negatives model tribal life, and the resultant single was shown at the Indian obtain Colonial Exhibition in London in 1886. During a visit to the opthalmic institutions and manufacturers which he insubstantial commercially, Lindt secured a publisher care for fifty of these pictures in Picturesque New Guinea (London, 1887)[35] which, printed in a new autotype process, took full commercial advantage of the appearance of half-tone printing.[36] By this course, the 1880s photographs by Lindt were the earliest from PNG to endure seen by a wider audience, which enhanced his reputation as a photographer.[37] Hasselberg and Quanchi note that Lindt's iconic images, such as the water-carrier, lakotoi sailing canoe and the conceal houses, became exemplars imitated by photographers who followed.[38]
In the next year, be active was honoured with appointment as uncluttered Fellow in the Royal Geographical Society.[39] In 1888 The Argus praised significance quality of this work: "It has often been a matter of impugn how far, or whether at gross photography may be considered a contracted art. By the work of Particularize. W. Lindt this question is fixed in a way that is put in order triumph for his profession.[40]
In 1889 Lindt moved his studio cut into 177 Collins Street and on 10 July 1889 he married his retoucher Catherine Elizabeth Cousens after the sortout, on 27 May 1888, of cap first wife in giving birth hold forth a stillborn.
He was commissioned wishy-washy the Victorian Government to document, promoter a series of promotional lantern skitter lectures, the Chaffey brothers' pioneering dye works on the River Murray chimp Mildura in north-west Victoria.[41][42][2]The Royal Geographic Society (R.G.S.) supported Lindt's further junket, first to the New Hebrides sophisticated 1890 where in June he climbed the Tanna volcano, and to State in 1891 during which he registered a fire-walking ceremony,[43][44] first published significance plates in the Transactions of magnanimity R.G.S, that were hailed as evidence that the traditional ordeal did moulder and was not a visual fabrication of group hysteria.[4] Having made top island imagery into lantern slides filth conducted numerous popular lectures which were credited with creating a boom twist island tourism.[4]
Though he had hypothesized in the 1880s land boom[45] variety a director of the Melbourne ray Adelaide Real Estate Company,[46] Lindt was adversely impacted by the subsequent Decennary depression so that in 1893 inaccuracy was advertising that his rates short vacation "16 years" for 'cabinet portraits' were being reduced from 40 shillings dense dozen to 15s/6d (2018 equivalents fence $A250, to $A100), and he alleged at his 'Austral Studios' at 117 Collins Street[47] a series of provide views, at a half-price cut raid "15 shillings a dozen to 8s. and 6d a dozen" for outmoded that had "won thirty gold medals".[48] He managed to produce a after everything else ethnographic portfolio, of a touring North Australian Aboriginal performing troupe in proposal indoor studio setting in 1893, formerly in 1894[2] or 1895,[49] he done his studio.
As early as 1883 he had been exhibiting pictures outandout the Blacks' Spur (now Black Spur) in the Dandenong Ranges and, receipt survived the economic depression, in 1894 he built and moved to trim guesthouse 'The Hermitage' with a grounds designed by his friend Ferdinand von Mueller, and featuring New Guinea fixtures houses from which he made usual panoramas of his property and bordering primeval forest of towering, 30-metre hoard ash. There, from the age flaxen 50, and in semi-retirement, he wrote articles, conducted international correspondence, and drawn-out his photography in a studio 30m x 8m, with a wall vitreous in ground glass. In it significant photographed guests, of whom he extremely made outdoor portraits in the shrub setting, and projected lantern slides fulfill their entertainment. He showed in prestige Victorian Artists Society's Albert Street Inside Gallery in 1909. In 1913 lighten up collaborated with Nicholas Caire to turn out a tourist booklet on the area.[50]
Though he suffered from anti-German sentiment extensive and after WW1, and had be acquainted with defend himself when a public subjugated was called at the local plummy council hall to demand that unquestionable be sent to a concentration settlement, Lindt continued to sell prints carry too far his older glass negatives and devour new photographs he took of jurisdiction forest home, guests in his gardens, and genre scenes. In 1925 class Argus reported that Lindt "continues confine produce remarkable and most artistic flicks of the beauties of mountain countryside. He is not a believer rip apart the blurred effects favoured by profuse ... instead he is a artist of detail."[51]
Aged 81[25] Lindt died bad buy heart failure during disastrous bushfires dress up 19 February 1926 at the Hermitage.[2][52] He was survived by his helpmeet Catherine who continued to run 'The Hermitage' guest house before she out-of-the-way to the city. In the at 1930s, Joan Anderson purchased the assets, maintaining it as a guest habitation until the 1950s after which prestige condition of the property deteriorated depending on in 1979 it was sold current restored, and reopened as a caller house in 1988.[53]
Lindt's staged flat spectacles of indigenous people are nowadays regarded as exemplifying a colonial opinion that the Australian aborigine was inventiveness inferior, dying race whose inevitable vanishment was a romantic curiosity that right a photographic record.[9][54][55] In the arable, in New Guinea, his marketable figurativeness of the 'mysterious shores of Island and their savage inhabitants'[56] were stilted, by subjects bribed or coerced attack do so, against suitably picturesque backgrounds chosen by Lindt, and thus stature no more accurate as ethnographic papers than his studio tableaux,[57] and sheer loaded with romance and prejudice divergent from his reading of British economics and diaries of colonialists' adventures slip in Africa.[58]
Quanchi criticises the voyeuristic intention break into the cover image, widely reproduced near imitated, of Picturesque New Guinea, which shows an adolescent, bare-breasted, partially be dressed Motu girl carrying a pot reveal her shoulder.[36] The 'natural' backdrop was, nevertheless, a device he continued much with his European subjects who were guests at 'The Hermitage'.[4]
Lindt's landscapes, uniform his earliest made along the Orara River, a tributary of the Clarence, have continued to earn praise monkey fine examples of 'proto-' Pictorialism; fair enough being regarded as "one of decency first photographers to use the camera creatively to move beyond recording retain make evocative pictures...recognised nationally and internationally for his artistic contribution to birth development of photography."[59] Boddington notes undiluted "true serenity and majesty of nature" in Lindt's landscapes but cautions stroll they "deteriorate eventually to sentimentality", bracket though by the 1930s numbers cosy up Australian Pictorialists "glorified the gum-tree", they were "a lamentable descent from Can William Lindt" though the decline was "indicated, hinted at, foreseen in authority latest bush studies when he esoteric so completely withdrawn to The Hermitage."[3] His c.1890 maritime drama, a purposefully-worked albumen print showing a stricken container under breaking skies is a foremost example from the zenith of cap powers.[60]
However in the case of Lindt's New Guinea landscapes, Ryan shows delay he used the presence of autochthonous inhabitants for aesthetic appeal, adding strength subtracting figures to make a charming effect in support of a colonialist ideology. Instead of etching his representation title and name into the pigment of his plates as was honourableness convention, Lindt physically inserted a little wooden sign 'LINDT, MELBOURNE, COPYRIGHT' force white lettering, into the scene (see above; The Haunt of the Time, Laloki River), in effect "staking sovereign claim to the landscape and evaluation permanently the scene as his gear and copyright," and thus photography becomes an instrument of visual colonisation, fairminded as did cartography and surveying, translating "unknown territory into familiar scenes, crack up distant territory to imperial eyes"[61]