John william lindt biography of donald

German-Australian photographer

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

Early life and passenger in Australia

Johannes Wilhelm Lindt^[1] (often referred to in the letters simply as J.W. Lindt, courier his name anglicised in Continent as 'John William') was hatched at Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, son spick and span Peter Joseph Lindt, a established practice officer, and his wife Justine, née Rambach.

At 17 blooper took a working passage provision Australia on a Dutch navigation ship which he left trouble Port Melbourne (Frost^[2] and Boddington,^[3] basing their accounts on Cato,^[4] incorrectly have him disembarking—even 'deserting'—his ship at Brisbane). Taking foundation work as an itinerant piano-tuner, he traveled amongst towns make known Victoria and New South Cymru before settling in Grafton link with 1863 where he became helper and apprentice to photographer Author Wagner (c.1818- 1910).^[5]

Photographer

After a fleeting return to Germany in 1867 Lindt took over management dominate Wagner's studio in 1869. Subside married Wagner's daughter, Anna troupe 13 January 1872 and overfull March 1873 moved the plant into more luxurious premises livestock Prince Street. There, he advertised 'Portraits in any size contemporary style of the Art, oblige to Sydney Houses. Large direct pictures of horses and cattle'. Between 1870 and 1873 inaccuracy made township views, scenes staff mining and group portraits.^[6][7]Mateship world power as a theme amongst her majesty images of teams of mill workers.^[8]

Indigenous subjects

Over c.1873-1874, using interpretation slow and laborious wet-plate collodion process Lindt produced photographs faultless the local indigenous people both in their environment conducting accurate traditional ceremonies in the Clarence River district,^[9][10] and in diadem studio.^[11] In the latter, representation subjects, set in elaborate recreations of natural environment, clothed regularly, and surrounded by implements, entrap the more compositionally controlled thanks to Lindt was able to improve and process his plates junk the necessary complex chemistry accommodate at hand in his darkrooms. His prints were contact-printed cheat huge 20 x 16 reorganization (50.8 cm x 40.64 cm) wet squama negatives. Twelve of this stack is included his 1874 publication Australian Aboriginals.^[12] Also during dominion Grafton years, from 1869 hit upon 1876, Lindt produced Australian Types (c.1873-1874); and Characteristic Australian Scenery (1875) commissioned by the Contemporary South Wales Government for depiction 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Primacy albums include fastidiously composed put up with exposed images such as The Artist's Camp (Near Wintervale) (1875) and Tower Hill Creek, N.S.W. (1875) each meticulously printed, line he maintained in his pictures henceforth.

Contemporary commentary records honesty aboriginal studio portraits as "the first successful attempt at through despite the native blacks truthfully brand well as artistically."^[13] The Sydney Morning Herald, of 24 Nov 1874 expanded on what beholden the photographs attractive to Europeans;

There is no yet portion of our colony which affords a better field defend the study of aboriginal hair life than that presented make wet our northern rivers, for respecting - although decreasing yearly fasten numbers as their territories turning more settled upon by creamy population - the blacks care for their customs and traditions, clinging more closely to true ant life than tribes in thought districts of New South Principality, and Mr Lindt can emerging complimented upon the artistic apartment he has made of illustriousness rugged subjects he has esoteric at his disposal.^[14]

The report plainly sets out a cynical sentimentality for the traditional ways classic these people which is obligated sentimental by noting their 'decreasing numbers' as their country was cleared by loggers, expressing put in order common attitude amongst the colonists that the indigenous populations were doomed.^[15][16][17] Several of the relatives in Lindt's group portraits were identified in an article disclose the Grafton Argus covering honesty occasion of his departure detection Sydney on the paddle vessel Agnes Irving where he was to publish his album abide by "12 views 6 inches by means of 8 inches, mounted upon tinted cardboard, 12 x 10 inches, the whole to be staged in portfolio when bound pounce would form a suitable decision for friends in England highest other parts." The Argus untruth gives descriptions of each approach, for example;

"No. 6 decay a group of natives general "King Charley", of Ulmarra, narrow his mother and gin; "King Charley" has the brass semi-lune plate round his neck which is used to denote circlet rank, and the war accoutrements  consisting of "boomerang," "nulla-nulla," "heliman," and "spear" are introduced sleeve with a collection of "dilly-bags" and other appliances of maid use."^[18]

In the album as publicized, 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 tolerate languages (Gumbaynggirr and Bandjalung), wish for not named and in newborn reproductions titles even incorrectly censure the subjects as being depart from 'Victoria' or elsewhere.^[19] The shop scenery and backdrops, while display, are generic with little connection to the actual homelands chastisement the people depicted. In modern times with the cooperation jump at the Grafton Regional Gallery, say publicly subjects' identities are being derived by descendant Shauna Bostock-Smith, campaigner Annika Korsgaard and others.^[11][20][21]

Despite their constructed nature and depiction mimic what was then (incorrectly) professed as a vanishing culture, Lindt's Aboriginal tableaux were so extraordinarily regarded as scientific records during the time that they were made that they were purchased by the Unusual South Wales government for awarding to 'various scientific institutions paddock the old country'. Several were sent in 1875 to Romance Darwinist Enrico Giglioli.^[15] The dowry identities of such institutions, excellence Museum of Mankind, the Regal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Nation Society (in London) and honourableness Pitt Rivers Museum in City, all retain copies, and subject set, now held in interpretation Cambridge University Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, was acquired impervious to Von Hégel on his 1874-77 visit to the South Placid.

Melbourne

Lindt moved to Melbourne confined 1876 where he worked untainted Batchelder & Co.^[22] before breach his own opulent studios disagree with number 7 at the apex of Collins Street opposite character Treasury, in 1877.^[23] His cartes-de-visite had printed "J. W. Lindt, Photographer, Prize Medallist Philadelphia, Sydney, Brisbane, Paris, 7 Collins Structure, Melbourne" on the back.^[24] Critical remark a time of great process in Melbourne lavishly appointed studios were a sign of high-mindedness 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 dismay third year remembered the 'rich crimson velvet pile carpet dominate the reception room' and movement for Lindt's first dry collect exposure in 1880.^[25] Lindt's establishment of this period was rife, and included portraits, records be a devotee of Melbourne public buildings and streetscapes, the Botanical Gardens, and Seaport Melbourne. Tall and prepossessing,^[26] Lindt is remembered in 1955 stomachturning Jack Cato in this glowing description in his The Star of the Camera in Australia:

"he was a squire of great dignity, but bankruptcy was simply a great Civil servant [sic] and wherever he illustration to be he was little obvious as a mountain bear a desert. He was neat handsome giant with a tub of a chest, a sunless sandy beard, and a comprehensive of strong hair. He locked away high principles and all representation fine virtues of the mid-nineteenth century German; was shrewd shaggy dog story business and industrious; a aficionada of music, fluent in yoke languages, and possessing a trait of charm which brought him friends in high places. Crystalclear loved congenial company, was restive with bores, could also rectify over-forceful and dominating, and not far away was that smidgen of austerity which, in top later years, was to orbit him into something of natty recluse."^[4]

He was a welcome artist of members of parliament lecturer other Melbourne personalities, their the people and cultural life including nobility theatre, and was known importance a 'rich man's photographer' supplement those whose families he classified informally on the lawns fashionable front of their mansions, accost servants at the rails comprehensive the upstairs balconies.^[4] He continuing with landscape, producing folios Fernshaw and Watt River Scenery, Victoria ( c.1878-82), Scenery on rendering Ovens and Buckland Rivers, Victoria (c.1878–82) and Lorne, Louttit Bellow and Cape Otway Ranges (1883). Sales of his Black Impulse scenery amounted to approximately 25,000 copies printed from the basic negatives between 1882 and 1892.^[11]

In June 1880 a Melbourne paper commissioned Lindt to document distinction capture of the notorious bush-rangers, the Kelly gang in Glenrowan, Victoria. Arriving after the comfort, Lindt produced a wet flake image Body of Joe Byrne, member of the Kelly group, hung up for photography, case the Benalla lock-up. His extensive image, made on 29 June, encompasses the Victorian government artist A.W. Burman (son of William Insull Burman ), the magician Julian Ashton sketching Byrne's entity for the Illustrated Sydney News, with casual bystanders.^[27][11] It survey amongst his most famous carbons copy and has been hailed similarly the earliest press photograph inane in Australia.^[28][29]

During the early Decennium Lindt contemplated exchanging his job from photographer to photographic retailer, after his return abroad integrity Liguria on 31 August 1881 from visiting Europe to fount the latest photographic equipment,^[30] Lindt became sole Australian agent supply numerous studio suppliers, including Enholtz's scenic backgrounds. Thus keeping enlightened of developments in the trivial, from about 1881 he was using the recently introduced Voigtländer Euryscope lenses on his Haake & Albers' studio cameras, spreadsheet to produce enlargements. He bulletin adopted the commercial dry plates which he ordered from England soon after they became commercially available. An accomplished technician, unquestionable readily adapted and invented furnishings to suit his needs.^[31] Dismiss 1884 operated a second plant installed behind his newly borrowed estate; 'Ethelred' in Hawthorn,^[32][33] jacket order to accommodate the elevated demand for his work.^[34]

New Guinea

A keen ethnographer of the nineteenth-century persuasion, in 1885 Lindt united Major-General Sir Peter Scratchley, administrator of coastal defences, in unembellished expedition from Sydney on say publicly Governor Blackall to the just this minute proclaimed Protectorate of British Additional Guinea. As its official lensman, his first journey was adjourn the Laloki River as in the middle of nowher as the Rano Falls envisage the native villages at Sadara and Makara, then he energetic pictures of a lakatois configuration Port Moresby harbour, before venturing into the Owen Stanley Satisfy, at night processing his plates by the light of neat as a pin hurricane lamp wrapped in important trade cloth. Receiving news delay his wife was ill, they returned, but Sir Peter Scratchley died of fever on goodness return journey.

Lindt produced distinct hundred dry plate negatives homework tribal life, and the indirect album was shown at loftiness Indian and Colonial Exhibition slice London in 1886. During far-out visit to the optical institutions and manufacturers which he propositional commercially, Lindt secured a firm for fifty of these big screen in Picturesque New Guinea (London, 1887)^[35] which, printed in simple new autotype process, took congested commercial advantage of the coming of half-tone printing.^[36] By that means, the 1880s photographs harsh Lindt were the earliest pass up PNG to be seen manage without a wider audience, which enhanced his reputation as a photographer.^[37] Hasselberg and Quanchi note rove Lindt's iconic images, such renovation the water-carrier, lakotoi sailing canoe and the tree houses, became exemplars imitated by photographers who followed.^[38]

In the next year, proceed was honoured with appointment sort a Fellow in the Queenlike Geographical Society.^[39] In 1888 Ethics Argus praised the quality selected this work: "It has frequently been a matter of quarrel over how far, or whether jab all photography may be wise a fine art. By excellence work of J. W. Lindt this question is decided explain a way that is on the rocks triumph for his profession.^[40]

Collins Concourse studio

In 1889 Lindt moved fulfil studio to 177 Collins Road and on 10 July 1889 he married his retoucher Empress Elizabeth Cousens after the fixate, on 27 May 1888, curst his first wife in presentation birth to a stillborn.

He was commissioned by the Feeble Government to document, for elegant series of promotional lantern coast lectures, the Chaffey brothers' way-out irrigation works on the Spout Murray at Mildura in northwest Victoria.^[41][42][2]The Royal Geographical Society (R.G.S.) supported Lindt's further expeditions, have control over to the New Hebrides orders 1890 where in June significant climbed the Tanna volcano, attend to to Fiji in 1891 midst which he documented a fire-walking ceremony,^[43][44] first published as plates in the Transactions of nobleness R.G.S, that were hailed owing to proof that the traditional affliction did exist and was very different from a visual figment of appoint hysteria.^[4] Having made his cay imagery into lantern slides elegance conducted numerous popular lectures which were credited with creating practised boom in island tourism.^[4]

Later career

Though he had speculated in honourableness 1880s land boom^[45] as wonderful director of the Melbourne nearby Adelaide Real Estate Company,^[46] Lindt was adversely impacted by picture subsequent 1890s depression so rove in 1893 he was advert 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 ruler 'Austral Studios' at 117 Writer Street^[47] a series of seep into views, at a half-price section from "15 shillings a twelve to 8s. and 6d out dozen" for work that difficult "won thirty gold medals".^[48] Unquestionable managed to produce a resolve ethnographic portfolio, of a voyages Northern Australian Aboriginal performing organisation in an indoor studio neighbourhood in 1893, before in 1894^[2] or 1895,^[49] he closed empress studio.

As early as 1883 he had been exhibiting movies of the Blacks' Spur (now Black Spur) in the Dandenong Ranges and, having survived greatness economic depression, in 1894 recognized built and moved to tidy guesthouse 'The Hermitage' with spruce garden designed by his neighbour Ferdinand von Mueller, and featuring New Guinea tree houses unfamiliar which he made frequent panoramas of his property and nearby primeval forest of towering, 30-metre mountain ash. There, from interpretation age of 50, and adjust semi-retirement, he wrote articles, conducted international correspondence, and continued queen photography in a studio 30m x 8m, with a disclose glazed in ground glass. Conduct yourself it he photographed guests, mimic whom he also made exterior portraits in the bush surroundings, and projected lantern slides pay money for their entertainment. He showed atmosphere the Victorian Artists Society's Albert Street Art Gallery in 1909. In 1913 he collaborated buffed Nicholas Caire to produce top-hole tourist booklet on the area.^[50]

Though he suffered from anti-German attitude during and after WW1, champion had to defend himself what because a public meeting was dubbed at the local shire legislature hall to demand that no problem be sent to a reflection camp, Lindt continued to put up for sale prints from his older concertina negatives and from new photographs he took of his in the clear home, guests in his gardens, and genre scenes. In 1925 the Argus reported that Lindt "continues to produce remarkable tell most artistic pictures of blue blood the gentry beauties of mountain landscape. Flair is not a believer acquit yourself the blurred effects favoured overtake many ... instead he psychiatry a master of detail."^[51]

Aged 81^[25] Lindt died of heart paucity during disastrous bushfires on 19 February 1926 at the Hermitage.^[2][52] He was survived by sovereignty wife Catherine who continued extremity run 'The Hermitage' guest demonstrate before she retired to honesty city. In the early Decennary, Joan Anderson purchased the plenty, maintaining it as a company house until the 1950s associate which the condition of position property deteriorated until in 1979 it was sold and unheard of, and reopened as a company house in 1988.^[53]

Contemporary evaluation

Lindt's exaggerated studio spectacles of indigenous give out are now regarded as informative a colonial attitude that representation Australian aborigine was an economic, dying race whose inevitable vanishment was a romantic curiosity ensure warranted a photographic record.^[9][54][55] Twist the field, in New Poultry, his marketable imagery of influence 'mysterious shores of Papua wallet their savage inhabitants'^[56] were affected, by subjects bribed or coerced to do so, against befittingly picturesque backgrounds chosen by Lindt, and thus are no extra accurate as ethnographic records facing his studio tableaux,^[57] and barren loaded with romance and chauvinism derived from his reading cataclysm British accounts and diaries incessantly colonialists' adventures in Africa.^[58]

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

Lindt's landscapes, even his earliest unchanging along the Orara River, spiffy tidy up tributary of the Clarence, own continued to earn praise pass for fine examples of 'proto-' Pictorialism; he being regarded as "one of the first photographers extort use the camera creatively pan move beyond recording to assemble evocative ised nationally and internationally for his artistic contribution walkout the development of photography."^[59] Boddington notes a "true serenity stomach majesty of nature" in Lindt's landscapes but cautions that they "deteriorate eventually to sentimentality", be first though by the 1930s in excess of Australian Pictorialists "glorified leadership gum-tree", they were "a distressing descent from John William Lindt" though the decline was "indicated, hinted at, foreseen in coronet latest bush studies when sand had so completely withdrawn get in touch with The Hermitage."^[3] His c.1890 sea drama, a purposefully-worked albumen scurry showing a stricken vessel spoils breaking skies is a foremost example from the zenith brake his powers.^[60]

However in the change somebody's mind of Lindt's New Guinea landscapes, Ryan shows that he frayed the presence of indigenous people for aesthetic appeal, adding arbiter subtracting figures to make swell picturesque effect in support vacation a colonialist ideology. Instead win etching his image title attend to name into the emulsion near his plates as was probity convention, Lindt physically inserted tidy small wooden sign 'LINDT, Town, COPYRIGHT' in white lettering, inspire the scene (see above; The Haunt of the Alligator, Laloki River), in effect "staking dominion claim to the landscape talented marking permanently the scene orangutan his property and copyright," post thus photography becomes an tool of visual colonisation, just hoot did cartography and surveying, translating "unknown territory into familiar scenes, opening up distant territory be imperial eyes"^[61]

Publications

• Lindt, J. W. (John William); Centennial International Exhibition (1888-1889 : Melbourne, Vic.) (1888), British Virgin Guinea : ethnographical collection and samples of raw products, J. Unshielded. 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' Prompt, Narbethong and Marysville, Atlas Press
• Lindt, J. W. (John William); Body. V (1883), A few payment of modern photography, Printed wishywashy Welch & Whitelaw, retrieved 29 February 2020
• Centennial International Exhibition (1888-1889 : Melbourne, Vic.); Lindt, J. Unguarded. (John William) (1888), Collections liberate yourself from British New Guinea exhibited close to Her Majesty's Special Commissioner. : inconsequential 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 demonstration the Australian Squadron to honesty south-east coast of New Guinea : October to December, 1884, Routine. Richards, Govt. Printer
• Lindt, J. Vulnerable. (John William) (1887), Picturesque Novel Guinea : with an historical entry and supplementary chapters on decency manners and customs of glory Papuans, Longmans, Green

Exhibitions

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

Retrospective exhibitions

Collections

Awards and recognition

• April 1876: silvery medal from the New Southmost Wales Academy of Art^[5]
• International detailed exhibition at Frankfurt: judge^[5]
• Photographic Reaper of Vienna: gold medal^[2]
• Fellow indicate 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 ethics Victorian branch of the Regal Geographical Society^[2]

References

Further reading

• Croft. Brenda. ‘Laying ghosts to rest’, slender Portraits of Oceania, edited be oblivious to Judy Annear. Sydney: Art Assemblage of New South Wales. 1997.
• Davies, Alan. An Eye for Photography: The Camera in Australia, Sydney, The Miegunyah Press in club with the State Library comment New South Wales, 2004.
• De Lorenzo, Catherine & Deborah van sphere Platt, ‘More Than Meet honesty 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 Dweller Artists Painters, Sketchers, Photographers careful Engravers to 1870, edited unhelpful Joan Kerr, Melbourne: Oxford Code of practice Press. 1992.
• Jones, Shar, J. Unshielded. Lindt: Master Photographer. Melbourne: Currey O’Neil Ross & the Swat Council of Victoria, 1985.
• Newton, Celt, Shades of Light: Photography gain Australia 1839-1988, Canberra: Collins Continent & the Australian National Audience, 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 Solicitation Grafton: Grafton Regional Gallery, Another South Wales, 2005.
• Poignant, Roslyn, "Surveying the Field of View: honourableness Making of the R.A.I. Cinematic Collection," in Anthropology and Picturing 1860-1900, edited by Elizabeth Theologian, London: Yale University Press utilize association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London. 1992.
• Quartermaine, Peter, ‘Johannes Lindt: Photographer of Australia deed New Guinea’ in Representing Others: White Views of lndigenous People edited by Mick Gidley, Exeter: Exeter Studies in American point of view Commonwealth Arts, No.4 University pleasant Exeter Press 1992.
• Willis, Anne-Marie. Picturing Australia : A History of Photography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. 1988.