Joyce Evans Collection of Australian Photography
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Joyce Evans
Untitled [Joyce with camera], 1951
Gelatin silver print
From We Had Such High Hopes: Student Activism
and the Peace Movement 1949-1952,
A Photographic Memoir by Joyce Evans
(Australian Scholarly Publishing 2019)
VIEW CATALOGUE/BID ONLINE
‘…I am a camera. The images that emerge with the flow of time are images that live at the edge of consciousness…’1
Born in Elsternwick, Melbourne in 1929, Joyce Evans OAM (1929 – 2019) remains revered internationally as the ‘doyenne of Australian photography’ for her immeasurable legacy as not only a photographer of outstanding merit, but an art historian, gallery director, curator, collector and lecturer. In 2019, shortly following her death she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to the photographic arts, while today examples of her work may be found abroad in the Musée de la Photographie, Mougins, France, and locally in numerous state and regional public galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia which is currently in the process of acquiring her most acclaimed achievements.
Passionately dedicated to photography across all spheres including portraiture, landscape and documentary photography, her abiding intention was to always ‘capture the essence’ of her subject – to highlight the spiritual and psychological aspects all too often overlooked or dismissed as being of little consequence. As she observed, ‘Aesthetically, I enjoy the camera’s capacity to record relationships and detail which my subconscious may perceive, but may not fully see…’2 Interestingly, Evans’ initial foray into the art world was at the Bakery Art School, Sydney (1967 – 68) where she studied painting under the guidance of Australian artistic legend, John Olsen. Although she did not pursue the medium, Olsen’s influence was formative, inspiring her to appreciate precisely this power at the ‘edge of an image’, to relate to that which is not seen – a premise that would inform her entire photographic oeuvre. Indeed, it was not until the following decade that Evans first encountered the photographic arts while visiting the Basel Art Fair during a trip to Switzerland during the mid-1970s; as she poignantly recalled, ‘…When I first became aware of photography as an art form, I literally fell in love. I had the shaky knees, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t breathe… it just blew me away.’3
Shortly upon her return to Melbourne, Evans established the Church Street Photographic Centre, a specialist photography gallery and bookshop in Richmond which, operating from 1976 to 1981, was only the third photographic gallery to open in the city after Brummels (1972) and The Photographers Gallery and Workshop (1973). With a desire ‘to create an environment in Melbourne, where the best photography in the world could be seen’4, thus Evans played a pioneering role as the city’s first commercial gallerist to introduce local audiences to the work of many significant Australian and international photographers – showcasing talents such as Max Dupain, David Moore, Athol Shmith, Bill Henson and Fiona Hall, and further afield, iconic figures including Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugène Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Jan Saudek. Not surprisingly, Evans soon acquired a reputation internationally as one of Australia’s most innovative gallerists and was regularly consulted on purchases for many of the country’s major institutional photographic collections which were emerging at the time.
The opportunity afforded by the Church Street Gallery also gave Evans the impetus to become a both collector and practitioner in her own right, and upon the gallery’s closure in 1982, she devoted herself wholly to these pursuits. Working across a number of photographic genres, Evans is perhaps best known for her investigation of recurring themes including the edge of the road, road kills and fatalities, and the landscape – all explored through photographic essays that encompass locations as disparate as the Dandenongs and Mount Martha regions in outer Melbourne; the Central Desert and outback Australia; the vineyards and rural villages of France; and the old Jewish cemetery in Prague. Evans also dabbled in portrait photography, producing insightful character studies (mainly in black and white) of numerous celebrated Australian art world personalities and intelligentsia, including Marianne Baillieu; Barbara Blackman; Germaine Greer; Tim Burstall; Lin Onus; Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and Chris Wallace-Crabbe. Captured either in a fleeting moment, or carefully composed and constructed with integrity, Evans’ compelling images inevitably seek to capture her subject’s emotional and psychological truth, as she reflected: ‘Making photographs that are memorable requires more than just camera, light and story, it requires a type of harmony, unity and an indefinable something which I can best explain as becoming emotionally attached to the subject so that the images make themselves…’5
Significantly, Evans also taught photography at RMIT University, Melbourne; was appointed inaugural assistant director of Waverley City Gallery (now Monash Gallery of Art) 1990 – 91 (the first municipal public collection in Melbourne to specialise in photography); and established a course on the History of Photography at the University of Melbourne, where she was also appointed Research Fellow from 1997 – 2010. Furthermore, for over a decade, she worked as an honorary photographer for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Central Australia, documenting country towns and events for the National Library of Australia.
The Collection
This selection of works from of the Joyce Evans Collection of Australian Photography comprises works by eminent Australian photographers, detailing a varied Australian history through portraiture, photojournalism and documentary. Featuring important images from the nineteenth century through to the 1980s, the collection highlights Joyce Evans’ keen eye for talent and innovation, with many images having been exhibited in major museum exhibitions and held in public collections nationwide.
The collection is introduced by Eight Images Relating to the Kelly Gang – a collection of late 1800s albumen cartes de viste by photographers James E. Bray and William E. Barnes. Vestiges of the infamous Glenrowan Inn siege, these haunting images document the charred remains of Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and the blackened Inn destroyed by fire.
Following are over 20 early photographs by Bill Henson, created between 1974 and 1979, which offer sensitive portraits of ballet dancers in training – the subjects haloed by a diffuse, warm light and captured with a soft focus, creating an enigmatic, painterly tableaux.
The magnetism of Henson’s portraits is paralleled in Carol Jerrems’ image of Caroline, 1976, a photograph that originates from one of the most turbulent decades in Australia's history. By the mid-seventies, the groundswell of women’s rights had gained enormous momentum and accordingly, Jerrems focused her lens on female subjects from all stratums of society, with Caroline continuing her theme of portraying assertively positioned women standing in the centre of the photographic frame.
Poignantly portraying another minority group, in Aboriginal Couple, South Australia (Finnis Springs Mission), 1959 the widely travelled and celebrated photojournalist, David Moore, features an elderly couple at Finniss Springs Mission, South Australia, shortly before droughts and water shortages led to its closure in the early 1960s.
Arguably Moore’s most distinguished modernist contemporary, Max Dupain is also represented with Eggs, 1933 and Kerosene Lamp, 1935 – captivating high-contrast black and white images whose considered compositions highlight the artist’s mastery of light and shadow as he transforms mundane domestic objects into places of quiet contemplation.
Other key figures such as Wolfgang Sievers and Mark Strizic similarly feature prominently throughout the collection – both important émigré photographers who arrived in Australia from Germany in 1938 and 1951 respectively and remain among the finest exponents of industrial and architectural photography in mid twentieth-century Australia. In two of Sievers’ most striking images of the manufacturing process, Lathe Operator at Marweight, Burnley, Melbourne, 1968 and Aluminium Ingots, Comalco, Yennora, New South Wales, 1973, the artist documents the advancements of the modern world in spectacular monochrome. Meanwhile, in works such as Hopscotch Under Crenellation, 1971; Off Moray Street, South Melbourne, 1971; and Riversdale Road, Camberwell, 1959, Strizic captures what he described as the ‘derelict and splendid’6 aspects of a burgeoning mid-century Melbourne, emphasising the gritty nature of his adopted city through long shadows and silhouettes.
A selection of major public exhibitions to include images from the Joyce Evans Collection of Australian Photography are:
An Unorthodox Flow of Images, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 30 September – 12 November 2017
Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, December 2014 – 1 March 2015
Sydney Moderns: Art For A New World, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 July – 7 October 2013
Melbourne: A City In Transition, Gallery 101, Melbourne, April – May 2009
David Moore: 100 Photographs, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 12 November 2005 – March 2006
Bill Henson, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 8 January – 3 April 2005, then touring to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 23 April – 10 July 2005
Soft Shadows and Sharp Lines: Australian photography from Cazneaux to Dupain, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 September – 17 November 2002
From Face to Face: Photographs by David Moore, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 21 November 2000 – 18 February 2001
The Enigmatic Object: Photography and The Uncanny, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 April – 22 June 1997
Max Dupain: An Appreciation, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 11 – 30 August 1992
The Life and Work of Wolfgang Sievers, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 22 June – 1September 1991 and touring
Four Photographers, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2 June – 19 August 1990 and touring
Max Dupain Retrospective 1930 – 1980, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 29 August – 28 September 1980
The Family of Man, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 24 January – 8 May 1955, and touring internationally until 1959
1. Joyce Evans cited at https://www.thecultureconcept.com/joyce-evans-photographer-of-influence-and-outstanding-merit (accessed 28 September 2022)
2. Evans, ibid.
3. Joyce Evans cited in ‘An Interview With Joyce Evans: Photographer, Educator, Valuer’ at https://michaels.com.au/blogs/news/an-interview-with-joyce-evans-photographer-educator-valuer-commercial-photographic-gallery (accessed 28 September 2022)
4. Evans, ibid.
5. Joyce Evans cited at https://www.theodorebruceauctions.com.au/the-joyce-evans-oam-collection-of-photography/ (accessed 28 September 2022)
6. Edgar, R., ‘Photographer caught ‘derelict and splendid’ Melbourne’, 14 December 2012, The Age at https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/photographer-caught-derelict-and-splendid-melbourne-20121213-2bcbr.html (accessed 20 September 2022)