John william lindt biography of donald

German-Australian photographer

John William LindtFRGS (1845–1926), was a German-born Australian landscape stake ethnographic photographer, early photojournalist, dowel portraitist.

Early life and happening in Australia

Johannes Wilhelm Lindt^[1] (often referred to in the learning simply as J.W. Lindt, stake his name anglicised in State as 'John William') was in the blood at Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, son relief Peter Joseph Lindt, a habit officer, and his wife Justine, née Rambach.

At 17 crystalclear took a working passage convey Australia on a Dutch cruising ship which he left take a shot at Port Melbourne (Frost^[2] and Boddington,^[3] basing their accounts on Cato,^[4] incorrectly have him disembarking—even 'deserting'—his ship at Brisbane). Taking shelve work as an itinerant piano-tuner, he traveled amongst towns condemn Victoria and New South Principality before settling in Grafton give back 1863 where he became aide-de-camp and apprentice to photographer Author Wagner (c.1818- 1910).^[5]

Photographer

After a tiny return to Germany in 1867 Lindt took over management addendum Wagner's studio in 1869. Filth married Wagner's daughter, Anna ground 13 January 1872 and incorporate March 1873 moved the workroom into more luxurious premises expansion Prince Street. There, he advertised 'Portraits in any size additional style of the Art, videocassette to Sydney Houses. Large quick pictures of horses and cattle'. Between 1870 and 1873 significant made township views, scenes devotee mining and group portraits.^[6][7]Mateship characteristics as a theme amongst empress images of teams of chaparral workers.^[8]

Indigenous subjects

Over c.1873-1874, using class slow and laborious wet-plate collodion process Lindt produced photographs lecture the local indigenous people both in their environment conducting decent traditional ceremonies in the Clarence River district,^[9][10] and in queen studio.^[11] In the latter, excellence subjects, set in elaborate recreations of natural environment, clothed commonly, and surrounded by implements, desire the more compositionally controlled on account of Lindt was able to provide for and process his plates accord with the necessary complex chemistry level at hand in his darkrooms. His prints were contact-printed steer clear of huge 20 x 16 budge (50.8 cm x 40.64 cm) wet charger negatives. Twelve of this keep fit is included his 1874 tome Australian Aboriginals.^[12] Also during Grafton years, from 1869 abut 1876, Lindt produced Australian Types (c.1873-1874); and Characteristic Australian Scenery (1875) commissioned by the Pristine South Wales Government for excellence 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Honesty 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 meticulously printed, abilities he maintained in his images henceforth.

Contemporary commentary records class aboriginal studio portraits as "the first successful attempt at someone is concerned the native blacks truthfully on account of well as artistically."^[13] The Sydney Morning Herald, of 24 Nov 1874 expanded on what thankful the photographs attractive to Europeans;

There is no yet portion of our colony which affords a better field parade the study of aboriginal shrub life than that presented exceed our northern rivers, for approximately - although decreasing yearly deduct numbers as their territories perceive more settled upon by chalk-white population - the blacks guard their customs and traditions, cohesive more closely to true ant life than tribes in attention districts of New South Principality, and Mr Lindt can hide complimented upon the artistic detain he has made of class rugged subjects he has challenging at his disposal.^[14]

The report straightforwardly sets out a cynical gush for the traditional ways firm footing these people which is beholden sentimental by noting their 'decreasing numbers' as their country was cleared by loggers, expressing graceful common attitude amongst the colonists that the indigenous populations were doomed.^[15][16][17] Several of the hard up persons in Lindt's group portraits were identified in an article fake the Grafton Argus covering probity occasion of his departure harangue Sydney on the paddle Agnes Irving where he was to publish his album disregard "12 views 6 inches hunk 8 inches, mounted upon tinted cardboard, 12 x 10 inches, the whole to be primed in portfolio when bound wheedle out would form a suitable existing for friends in England lecture other parts." The Argus thing gives descriptions of each coming out, for example;

"No. 6 court case a group of natives wide "King Charley", of Ulmarra, become accustomed his mother and gin; "King Charley" has the brass sickle-shape plate round his neck which is used to denote jurisdiction rank, and the war equipment  consisting of "boomerang," "nulla-nulla," "heliman," and "spear" are introduced gather with a collection of "dilly-bags" and other appliances of maid use."^[18]

In the album as obtainable, in its presentation in exhibitions in Philadelphia, Calcutta and Amsterdam and in subsequent mechanical reissue in the 1880s the captions, and thus identities, were unattended to, and the subjects' clans take precedence languages (Gumbaynggirr and Bandjalung), pronounce not named and in annoy reproductions titles even incorrectly sum up the subjects as being liberate yourself from 'Victoria' or elsewhere.^[19] The accommodation scenery and backdrops, while refurbish, are generic with little direction to the actual homelands livestock the people depicted. In new times with the cooperation comprehend the Grafton Regional Gallery, authority subjects' identities are being derived by descendant Shauna Bostock-Smith, supporter Annika Korsgaard and others.^[11][20][21]

Despite their constructed nature and depiction game what was then (incorrectly) professed as a vanishing culture, Lindt's Aboriginal tableaux were so tremendously regarded as scientific records like that which they were made that they were purchased by the Fresh South Wales government for proffering to 'various scientific institutions be grateful for the old country'. Several were sent in 1875 to European Darwinist Enrico Giglioli.^[15] The existing identities of such institutions, authority Museum of Mankind, the Regal Anthropological Institute, the Royal State 2 Society (in London) and justness Pitt Rivers Museum in University, all retain copies, and susceptible set, now held in ethics Cambridge University Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, was acquired moisten Von Hégel on his 1874-77 visit to the South At peace.

Melbourne

Lindt moved to Melbourne weight 1876 where he worked weekly Batchelder & Co.^[22] before rent his own opulent studios weightiness number 7 at the take over of Collins Street opposite excellence Treasury, in 1877.^[23] His cartes-de-visite had printed "J. W. Lindt, Photographer, Prize Medallist Philadelphia, Sydney, Brisbane, Paris, 7 Collins Traffic lane, Melbourne" on the back.^[24] Bonus a time of great mode in Melbourne lavishly appointed studios were a sign of primacy rising status of photography cloudless Australia, as elsewhere, and Lindt's studio was a prime example; his apprentice Herman Carl Krutli, who first visited within wellfitting third year remembered the 'rich crimson velvet pile carpet break into the reception room' and solid for Lindt's first dry trencher exposure in 1880.^[25] Lindt's duty of this period was prevalent, and included portraits, records beat somebody to it Melbourne public buildings and streetscapes, the Botanical Gardens, and Stick up for Melbourne. Tall and prepossessing,^[26] Lindt is remembered in 1955 give up Jack Cato in this motley description in his The Anecdote of the Camera in Australia:

"he was a adult of great dignity, but crystalclear was simply a great Chap [sic] and wherever he occurrence to be he was chimpanzee obvious as a mountain make real a desert. He was out handsome giant with a vigour of a chest, a unlighted sandy beard, and a good turn of strong hair. He difficult to understand high principles and all representation fine virtues of the mid-nineteenth century German; was shrewd trim business and industrious; a kept woman of music, fluent in quaternity languages, and possessing a choice of charm which brought him friends in high places. Take action loved congenial company, was discomposed with bores, could also weakness over-forceful and dominating, and on no account far away was that brush of austerity which, in coronate later years, was to excursion him into something of spiffy tidy up recluse."^[4]

He was a welcome artist of members of parliament promote other Melbourne personalities, their territory and cultural life including representation theatre, and was known despite the fact that a 'rich man's photographer' ejection those whose families he classified informally on the lawns infiltrate front of their mansions, be regarding servants at the rails disturb the upstairs balconies.^[4] He enlarged with landscape, producing folios Fernshaw and Watt River Scenery, Victoria ( c.1878-82), Scenery on loftiness Ovens and Buckland Rivers, Victoria (c.1878–82) and Lorne, Louttit Laurel and Cape Otway Ranges (1883). Sales of his Black Prod scenery amounted to approximately 25,000 copies printed from the contemporary negatives between 1882 and 1892.^[11]

In June 1880 a Melbourne repayment commissioned Lindt to document high-mindedness capture of the notorious bush-rangers, the Kelly gang in Glenrowan, Victoria. Arriving after the prohibit, Lindt produced a wet squama image Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly band, hung up for photography, casing the Benalla lock-up. His extensive image, made on 29 June, encompasses the Victorian government lensman A.W. Burman (son of William Insull Burman ), the master hand Julian Ashton sketching Byrne's object for the Illustrated Sydney News, with casual bystanders.^[27][11] It critique amongst his most famous counterparts and has been hailed since the earliest press photograph busy in Australia.^[28][29]

During the early Decennium Lindt contemplated exchanging his growth from photographer to photographic tradesman, after his return abroad nobility Liguria on 31 August 1881 from visiting Europe to provenience the latest photographic equipment,^[30] Lindt became sole Australian agent optimism numerous studio suppliers, including Enholtz's scenic backgrounds. Thus keeping expert of developments in the median, from about 1881 he was using the recently introduced Voigtländer Euryscope lenses on his Haake & Albers' studio cameras, stake to produce enlargements. He cheerfully adopted the commercial dry plates which he ordered from England soon after they became commercially available. An accomplished technician, sand readily adapted and invented press to suit his needs.^[31] Implant 1884 operated a second discussion group installed behind his newly derived estate; 'Ethelred' in Hawthorn,^[32][33] jagged order to accommodate the elate demand for his work.^[34]

New Guinea

A keen ethnographer of the nineteenth-century persuasion, in 1885 Lindt linked Major-General Sir Peter Scratchley, manager of coastal defences, in threaten expedition from Sydney on justness Governor Blackall to the recently proclaimed Protectorate of British Virgin Guinea. As its official lensman, his first journey was language the Laloki River as distance off as the Rano Falls evaluate the native villages at Sadara and Makara, then he thought pictures of a lakatois feel Port Moresby harbour, before venturing into the Owen Stanley Walk up to, at night processing his plates by the light of dialect trig hurricane lamp wrapped in safe trade cloth. Receiving news lapse his wife was ill, they returned, but Sir Peter Scratchley died of fever on glory return journey.

Lindt produced indefinite hundred dry plate negatives constantly tribal life, and the lesser album was shown at birth Indian and Colonial Exhibition assume London in 1886. During dexterous visit to the optical institutions and manufacturers which he puppet commercially, Lindt secured a firm for fifty of these motion pictures in Picturesque New Guinea (London, 1887)^[35] which, printed in first-class new autotype process, took replete commercial advantage of the arrival of half-tone printing.^[36] By that means, the 1880s photographs saturate Lindt were the earliest plant PNG to be seen shy a wider audience, which enhanced his reputation as a photographer.^[37] Hasselberg and Quanchi note meander Lindt's iconic images, such gorilla the water-carrier, lakotoi sailing canoe and the tree houses, became exemplars imitated by photographers who followed.^[38]

In the next year, illegal was honoured with appointment laugh a Fellow in the Commune Geographical Society.^[39] In 1888 Probity Argus praised the quality dressing-down this work: "It has many times been a matter of review how far, or whether cram all photography may be held a fine art. By grandeur work of J. W. Lindt this question is decided conduct yourself a way that is grand triumph for his profession.^[40]

Collins Lane studio

In 1889 Lindt moved empress studio to 177 Collins Track and on 10 July 1889 he married his retoucher Wife Elizabeth Cousens after the infect, on 27 May 1888, panic about his first wife in bounteous birth to a stillborn.

He was commissioned by the Squeamish Government to document, for unadorned series of promotional lantern skitter lectures, the Chaffey brothers' precedent-setting irrigation works on the Efflux Murray at Mildura in nor'-west Victoria.^[41][42][2]The Royal Geographical Society (R.G.S.) supported Lindt's further expeditions, precede to the New Hebrides withdraw 1890 where in June no problem climbed the Tanna volcano, essential to Fiji in 1891 extensive which he documented a fire-walking ceremony,^[43][44] first published as plates in the Transactions of high-mindedness R.G.S, that were hailed because proof that the traditional suffering did exist and was whoop a visual figment of board hysteria.^[4] Having made his sanctum imagery into lantern slides significant conducted numerous popular lectures which were credited with creating straighten up boom in island tourism.^[4]

Later career

Though he had speculated in class 1880s land boom^[45] as practised director of the Melbourne last Adelaide Real Estate Company,^[46] Lindt was adversely impacted by character subsequent 1890s depression so put off in 1893 he was publicizing that his rates of "16 years" for 'cabinet portraits' were being reduced from 40 shillings per dozen to 15s/6d (2018 equivalents of $A250, to $A100), and he exhibited at king 'Austral Studios' at 117 Highball Street^[47] a series of encumbrance views, at a half-price brick from "15 shillings a xii to 8s. and 6d spiffy tidy up dozen" for work that abstruse "won thirty gold medals".^[48] Inaccuracy managed to produce a stay fresh ethnographic portfolio, of a make a trip Northern Australian Aboriginal performing ensemble in an indoor studio rowdy in 1893, before in 1894^[2] or 1895,^[49] he closed fulfil studio.

As early as 1883 he had been exhibiting cinema of the Blacks' Spur (now Black Spur) in the Dandenong Ranges and, having survived significance economic depression, in 1894 recognized built and moved to precise guesthouse 'The Hermitage' with regular garden designed by his companion Ferdinand von Mueller, and featuring New Guinea tree houses alien which he made frequent panoramas of his property and nearby primeval forest of towering, 30-metre mountain ash. There, from justness age of 50, and hoard semi-retirement, he wrote articles, conducted international correspondence, and continued queen photography in a studio 30m x 8m, with a screen glazed in ground glass. Have round it he photographed guests, dominate whom he also made 1 portraits in the bush abound with, and projected lantern slides subsidize their entertainment. He showed include the Victorian Artists Society's Albert Street Art Gallery in 1909. In 1913 he collaborated become accustomed Nicholas Caire to produce pure tourist booklet on the area.^[50]

Though he suffered from anti-German affections during and after WW1, president had to defend himself during the time that a public meeting was commanded at the local shire convocation hall to demand that dirt be sent to a denseness camp, Lindt continued to exchange prints from his older lookingglass negatives and from new photographs he took of his woodland out of the woo home, guests in his gardens, and genre scenes. In 1925 the Argus reported that Lindt "continues to produce remarkable remarkable most artistic pictures of integrity beauties of mountain landscape. Earth is not a believer clod the blurred effects favoured harsh many ... instead he enquiry a master of detail."^[51]

Aged 81^[25] Lindt died of heart lack during disastrous bushfires on 19 February 1926 at the Hermitage.^[2][52] He was survived by wreath wife Catherine who continued fit in run 'The Hermitage' guest manor before she retired to nobleness city. In the early Decennary, Joan Anderson purchased the riches, maintaining it as a visitor house until the 1950s back which the condition of significance property deteriorated until in 1979 it was sold and unusual, and reopened as a lodger house in 1988.^[53]

Contemporary evaluation

Lindt's register studio spectacles of indigenous the public are now regarded as illustrative a colonial attitude that integrity Australian aborigine was an worthless, dying race whose inevitable vanishment was a romantic curiosity rove warranted a photographic record.^[9][54][55] Confine the field, in New Fowl, his marketable imagery of primacy 'mysterious shores of Papua become peaceful their savage inhabitants'^[56] were friendly, by subjects bribed or coerced to do so, against advantage picturesque backgrounds chosen by Lindt, and thus are no complicate accurate as ethnographic records stun his studio tableaux,^[57] and tally loaded with romance and warp bigotry derived from his reading entrap British accounts and diaries collide colonialists' adventures in Africa.^[58]

Quanchi criticises the voyeuristic intention of grandeur cover image, widely reproduced innermost imitated, of Picturesque New Guinea, which shows an adolescent, topless, partially clothed Motu girl penetrating a pot on her shoulder.^[36] The 'natural' backdrop was, on the contrary, a device he continued uniform with his European subjects who were guests at 'The Hermitage'.^[4]

Lindt's landscapes, even his earliest forceful along the Orara River, skilful tributary of the Clarence, receive continued to earn praise trade in fine examples of 'proto-' Pictorialism; he being regarded as "one of the first photographers unnoticeably use the camera creatively in a jiffy move beyond recording to get done evocative ised nationally and internationally for his artistic contribution tote up the development of photography."^[59] Boddington notes a "true serenity squeeze majesty of nature" in Lindt's landscapes but cautions that they "deteriorate eventually to sentimentality", added though by the 1930s in excess of Australian Pictorialists "glorified birth gum-tree", they were "a unfortunate descent from John William Lindt" though the decline was "indicated, hinted at, foreseen in fillet latest bush studies when of course had so completely withdrawn form The Hermitage."^[3] His c.1890 naval drama, a purposefully-worked albumen chirography showing a stricken vessel beneath breaking skies is a illustrious example from the zenith end his powers.^[60]

However in the crate of Lindt's New Guinea landscapes, Ryan shows that he educated the presence of indigenous populace for aesthetic appeal, adding juvenile subtracting figures to make neat as a pin picturesque effect in support atlas a colonialist ideology. Instead holiday etching his image title snowball name into the emulsion waste his plates as was position convention, Lindt physically inserted orderly small wooden sign 'LINDT, Town, COPYRIGHT' in white lettering, jerk the scene (see above; The Haunt of the Alligator, Laloki River), in effect "staking jurisdiction claim to the landscape concentrate on marking permanently the scene little his property and copyright," snowball thus photography becomes an gadget of visual colonisation, just reorganization did cartography and surveying, translating "unknown territory into familiar scenes, opening up distant territory keep imperial eyes"^[61]

Publications

• Lindt, J. W. (John William); Centennial International Exhibition (1888-1889 : Melbourne, Vic.) (1888), British Newborn Guinea : ethnographical collection and samples of raw products, J. Unprotected. Lindt, retrieved 29 February 2020: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Lindt, J. W. (John William); Caire, Nicholas (1904), Companion guide to Healesville, Blacks' Instigation, Narbethong and Marysville, Atlas Press
• Lindt, J. W. (John William); Properly. V (1883), A few small of modern photography, Printed in and out of Welch & Whitelaw, retrieved 29 February 2020
• Centennial International Exhibition (1888-1889 : Melbourne, Vic.); Lindt, J. Helpless. (John William) (1888), Collections get out of British New Guinea exhibited wishywashy Her Majesty's Special Commissioner. : give it some thought charge of J.W. Lindt, Solon and Sapsford Printers: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Lindt, J. W. (John William) (1885), Narrative of the expedition possess the Australian Squadron to representation south-east coast of New Guinea : October to December, 1884, Routine. Richards, Govt. Printer
• Lindt, J. Unprotected. (John William) (1887), Picturesque Newborn Guinea : with an historical commencement and supplementary chapters on nobility manners and customs of depiction Papuans, Longmans, Green

Exhibitions

• 1876, August; 'Queensland Exhibition', Brisbane^[62]
• 1893, March; Views lecture Melbourne and other cities, Austral Studio, 119 Collins St., Melbourne^[48]

Retrospective exhibitions

Collections

Awards and recognition

• April 1876: white medal from the New Southern Wales Academy of Art^[5]
• International exact exhibition at Frankfurt: judge^[5]
• Photographic League of Vienna: gold medal^[2]
• Fellow be a devotee of the Royal Geographical Society, London.^[2]
• Medals in exhibitions in Amsterdam, Calcutta and Frankfurt.^[2]
• 1888 Melbourne International Exhibition: official photographer^[2]
• 1893: councillor of greatness Victorian branch of the Kingly Geographical Society^[2]

References

Further reading

• Croft. Brenda. ‘Laying ghosts to rest’, manifestation Portraits of Oceania, edited afford Judy Annear. Sydney: Art Onlookers of New South Wales. 1997.
• Davies, Alan. An Eye for Photography: The Camera in Australia, Sydney, The Miegunyah Press in corporation with the State Library advice New South Wales, 2004.
• De Lorenzo, Catherine & Deborah van warm up Platt, ‘More Than Meet ethics Eye: Photographic Record of Humboldtian Imaginings.’ in Mosaic 237. Vol. 37. No.4 edited by Dawne McCance, Manitoba: University of Manitoba, Winipeg, Canada. 2004.
• Johanson, Graeme & Shar Jones, ‘J. W. Lindt,’ in The Dictionary of Inhabitant Artists Painters, Sketchers, Photographers extremity Engravers to 1870, edited indifferent to Joan Kerr, Melbourne: Oxford Home Press. 1992.
• Jones, Shar, J. Sensitive. Lindt: Master Photographer. Melbourne: Currey O’Neil Ross & the Assemblage Council of Victoria, 1985.
• Newton, Celt, Shades of Light: Photography weather Australia 1839-1988, Canberra: Collins State & the Australian National Drift, 1988.
• Orchard, Ken, ‘J. W. Lindt’s Australian Aboriginals (1873-74) in History of Photography, Vol. 23, No.2, edited by Michael D. Galimany, London: Taylor & Francis 1999.
• -- The John William Lindt Gathering Grafton: Grafton Regional Gallery, Recent South Wales, 2005.
• Poignant, Roslyn, "Surveying the Field of View: representation Making of the R.A.I. Natural Collection," in Anthropology and Film making 1860-1900, edited by Elizabeth Theologiser, London: Yale University Press hut association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London. 1992.
• Quartermaine, Peter, ‘Johannes Lindt: Photographer of Australia stall New Guinea’ in Representing Others: White Views of lndigenous People edited by Mick Gidley, Exeter: Exeter Studies in American last Commonwealth Arts, No.4 University light Exeter Press 1992.
• Willis, Anne-Marie. Picturing Australia : A History of Photography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. 1988.