Compiled by Ric Bolzan
Head of Photography, Australian Museum
VOLUME 23 NUMBER 8, AUTUMN 1991
“Now and then there appears out of the confusion of our complex and noisy civilization a being seemingly strayed from some more romantic day when galleons sailed the blue Caribbean and Marco Polo, moved by a great curiosity, set out on his adventurous journey to Cathay. In an age when human effort so largely tends toward making life a communal and unindividualistic affair, the figure of a man who desires solitude and the experience of penetrating an unexplored country, stands forth unique and somewhat incongruous. Such a one is Frank Hurley. . .”
So wrote G.P. Putnam from the foreword to the book Pearls and Savages by Frank Hurley (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1924). The desire to capture colour has been an aim of photographers since it was first realised it was possible to make permanent images by the action of light. Frank Hurley was no exception.
He experimented with Finlay colour in the 1920s, and a number of lantern slides produced from the negatives he made on his voyages to Papua in 1920-1923 were hand-coloured. These precursors to the 35-millimetre colour slides of today were produced by making a glass positive from the original negative, then dyes were used to painstakingly paint the emulsion.
This selection of hand-coloured lantern slides is thought to have been produced by Hurley himself to illustrate lectures about his travels. Ric Bolzan
“The shore was bordered with rows of skulls stuck on poles and ornamented with ruffs of palm leaves which stirred with a weird motion in the breeze. . .The palm-fringed skulls are brought out… to display to visiting guests the prowess and power of the tribe.” Kerewa village, Gulf of Papua.
“The young woman who stands erect is not, as might be supposed, the widow. The two widows are the wretched creatures concealed beneath the canopies of tapa cloth.“ Wanigela, Collingwood Bay.
"We stood on the threshold of a great hall that extended like a vast cavern into a remote gloom. From roof and walls pended an amazing collection of fantastic masks in various stages of construction." Purari Delta, Gulf of Papua.
“Vaieki, the coxswain, in one of the giant fields of lotuses which bordered the shores of Lake Murray. These mammoth and flamboyantly lovely flowers are like all the vegetation of the district. . .extravagant and incredibly beautiful. The blossoms were of a delicate pink and measured up to fourteen inches across. The lotus is a new species."
Lake Murray.
"The submarine glory of a coral reef, unexcelled for beauty among all the spectacles of the Universe." Torres Strait.
“Garments! What more beautiful than the exquisite brown skin with which Nature had endowed them, with the plumage of birds and garlands of flowers. The debutante: of Eroro were wrapped in gowns of clinging Tapa bark drapes like an apron in front and draped like an apron behind. From out this chic and racy attire blossomed the female form divine".
Beiama, Om Bay.
"Kaimari ladies. . . their dress, microscopically speaking, is customary rather then effective. The hair is shorn close, leaving a narrow ridge down the centre and two rings above the ears resemble of tufts of astrakan.“ Gulf of Papua.
“Day after day the file of brown men with Father Bach and myself at the head climbed the winding track to mountain crests or plunged into deep valleys, where we loitered beside cool mountain torrents that made the gorges noisy with their ceaseless song." Goilala country, inland from Kairuku.
Background
The historic photographic collection at the Australian Museum includes more than 50,000 glass plate negatives and over 30,000 lantern slides, some of which have been hand coloured. A selection of these photographs can be seen on the
photographic archives page of the
Australian Museum website.
