Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

122 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s 123 ROSE SIMMONDS London-born, Queensland-based photographer Rose Simmonds was elected to the committee of the Queensland Camera Club (QCC) in 1928 and in 1936 served as the club’s vice-president, a role not commonly occupied by women at this time. 1 Simmonds was the QCC’s only female member, participated in the club’s monthly outings and regularly won its competitions and those held by the Australasian Photo-Review magazine. In 1937 she was made an associate of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. During the 1930s, her work was included in exhibitions in Sydney and Adelaide, and, in 1941, she held a solo exhibition in Brisbane. Simmonds’s early photographs reveal her dedication to the tenets of Pictorialism. This movement emerged in England and France at the end of the nineteenth century and saw photographers seeking to assert their medium’s status as art by emulating the effects of painting. To this end, Pictorialists eschewed the detailed realism previously associated with the photographic image, producing softly focused prints that emphasised atmospheric effects. Many of Simmonds’s photographs bridge the gap between Pictorialism and modernist photography, which evolved after World War One in response to rapid industrialisation and emphasised ‘machine-forms, clean lines and unusual camera angels’. 2 (Grey Street Bridge, Brisbane) c.1933 is an example. From a low vantage point, Simmonds has foregrounded the bridge — renamed the William Jolly Bridge in 1955 after Brisbane’s first Lord Mayor — as a feat of modern engineering. At the same time, she has chosen to blur the detail and use the bromoil process favoured by Pictorialists, whereby a photograph’s silver image is removed and replaced with ink to create tonal variations. Notes 1 Melissa Miles, The Language of Light and Dark: Light and Place in Australian Photography , Power Publications and McGill-Queen’s University Press, Sydney & Montreal, 2015. p.67. 2 Sue Smith, Queensland Pictorialist Photography 1920–1950 , Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1984, p.14. Rose Simmonds , (Grey Street Bridge, Brisbane) c.1933