Harold Cazneaux came to Australia from his native New Zealand at the age of 11. The family settled in Adelaide, where Harold began working as a retoucher in 1897. In 1904, he moved to Sydney; five years later he held his first solo photographic exhibition, which was also the first solo photographic exhibition in Australia. He was the leading photographer for the Home magazine from the early 1920s onward, and his photographs of Sydney over a number of decades have become key images of aspects of Australian history. The National Library of Australia has some two hundred Cazneaux photographs and the National Gallery of Australia has about twice that number.
Purchased 2015
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Harold Cazneaux's portraits of influential Sydneysiders included Margaret Preston and Ethel Turner, both important figures in the development of ideas about Australian identity and culture.
Spanning the 1880s to the 1930s, this collection display celebrates the innovations in art – and life – introduced by the generation of Australians who travelled to London and Paris for experience and inspiration in the decades either side of 1900.
