| Keith & Iris Carnall. Iris was born in Blundell's cottage. This picture was about to be taken as they were about to go to reception at American Embassy for some visiting Davis Cup players. | Carnall on an early trip to the snowfields. |
INAUGURATION OF THE CANBERRA PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
In 1945 a Photographic Society was founded in the then small
town of Canberra;
population between 13,000 and 15,000. It was one month after the
end of World War II and 94 years after the Heliographic Society
began in Paris.
Everything was done properly.
An advertisement appeared in The Canberra Times seeking expressions of interest in the formation of a Photographic Society.
Then on the 11th September 1945, after an inaugural discussion in the Radio 2CA Theatrette in Mort Street, the Canberra Photographic Society was established; a suite of Office Bearers and a Standing Committee were appointed and the annual subscription rates for members were set at:
One pound and one shilling for adult males
Ten shillings and sixpence for ladies and juniors
Five shillings for student members
.
The Office Bearers were:
Mr Ewen McKinnon President
Miss May L. Steed Vice-President
Mr R. Powning Vice-President
Mr Keith Carnall Secretary
Miss Joy Nott Treasurer
It was also set down that the Society would meet on the First Tuesday of each month, and a special committee was appointed to prepare a draft constitution for presentation at the first monthly meeting.
The next day The Canberra Times reported the formation of the Society.
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EWEN MACKINNON
The newly appointed President of the Society was Ewen Mackinnon.
Ewen was born on 18th December 1881 at Ballina in NSW. He was one of seven children in the family.
Ewen married Bertha Irene Walker on 23rd December 1907 and they had three children; Lyle, Marjorie and Ewen.
Ewen pursued a learned and diverse career in science, in the field of microbiology, mainly in Government institutions.
Ewen lived in Canberra from 1927 to 1948. During the whole of this period he was the Founding Director of the Division of Plant Quarantine in the Commonwealth Department of Health. He was also a Lecturer in Zoology at Canberra University College. As a family man he was President of the Canberra High School Parents and Citizens Association for four years.
Ewen was 64 when he became the first President of CPS and he served in that capacity in low-key style until 1948. He was a member of The Royal Photographic Society. His personal photography was centred around _ plate and _ plate cameras and his family albums still exist as a collection of glass plate negatives now in the care of his son, Ewen, here in Canberra.
On his retirement in 1948, Ewen moved back to Sydney. Subsequently he went back to work there in various occupations until his death in 1955 when he was knocked down by a car while on a pedestrian crossing.
KEITH CARNALL
Keith Carnall, the newly-appointed Secretary of the Society, was a generation younger than Ewen MacKinnon, and quite an energetic character.
Keith was born Edwin Keith Baden Powell Carnall in 1900, came
to Canberra as a boy and married a girl named Iris from the pioneering
Wilden farming family. (Iris herself was born in Blundell's cottage.)
Keith came to the Society with an astonishing sports career behind
him. He played AFL football, cricket and tennis at the highest
levels possible in Canberra, and was an above-average golfer and
hockey player as well. For this sporting prowess, Keith was inducted
into the ACT Sport Hall of Fame in 1996, in the All-Round Category.
The story that I like about Keith is that he established two cricket records which will never be broken, scoring the first century and hitting the first six at Manuka Oval in November 1930.
Keith originally owned a sporting goods business in Manuka Arcade, but by 1945 he was working at the Kingston Bus Depot in an administrative role.
Another interesting aspect of Keith's life is that for all practical purposes he never owned or drove a motor vehicle during his life.
Keith's photography was centred around 2-1/4 sq. and 35 mm cameras, and a darkroom in his garage. He maintained a photographic record of some of the historical events conducted by The Canberra Photographic Society and had tree studies published and hung in Canberra homes.
After the inaugural meeting, Keith wrote the first of 27 news bulletins covering the formative years of the Society in considerable detail. Copies of the news bulletins survive today and, thanks to that we have a good record.
| Keith & Iris Carnall. Iris was born in Blundell's cottage. This picture was about to be taken as they were about to go to reception at American Embassy for some visiting Davis Cup players. | Carnall on an early trip to the snowfields. |
| Taken on the first field trip to Corkhill's Dairy Farm. Ewan Mackinnon (standing on left). Seated front row L to R Keith Carnall and Ken Dinnerville. Others not known. |
JOY NOTT AND THE FIRST FIELD TRIP
Miss Joy Nott also attended the inaugural meeting and went home that night as the first Treasurer of the Society. Joy was probably younger than May and had less photographic experience. She was the author of some very nice prints brought along for the first discussion night, and by November 1945 she had produced her first enlarged prints and was quite excited by the event. She thought that enlarging was good fun.
Together with May Steed, and fifteen others, Joy was a participant
in the very first field trip of the Society when they visited
the junction of the Molonglo River and Sullivan's Creek, now under
Lake Burley Griffin, on Sunday 14th October 1945. Most members
would have walked there but one car, driven by Radio 2CA announcer,
Graham Connelly,, was available to carry heavy tripods and afternoon
tea. The purpose of that excursion was to photograph the poplars
growing in the area near the Kaye and Corkhill dairy farms. Both
still and movie photographers were active, and Joy was reported,
in the innocent language of the day, as having tried bribery to
secure a young boy to pose for her in a river scene.
Life was about to change for Joy. The December 1945 bulletin reported
that Joy had granted all Society members high priority to attend,
and take pictures of her wedding early in the New Year; and that
Joy's future home was to be in the U.S.A. Sadly, the next news
bulletin included a short paragraph reporting that sympathy was
expressed in the sad loss suffered by Joy Nott. Joy was expecting
her fiancé home when news was received of his death in
a plane crash over Tokyo.
Joy retired from the Society for a few months after this, but then came back and was regularly mentioned in news bulletins thereafter, as was her trusty 620 Duo camera. Joy was farewelled from the Society in March 1947 a few weeks before travelling to the U.S.A. In August 1947 she wrote that she had met up with May Steed and other New York City Camera Club members, had joined an instruction class in one of America's biggest studios and was taking her photography seriously, as well as having a grand time.
The last letter from Joy said that she had finished her course, was freelancing around for the time being, thought the U.S.A. was wonderful, and had met up with her sister, Lyndal, who was over there capitalizing on her marvellous skating abilities. There is no postscript on Joy.
So these have been the stories of how two of the founding office bearers were lost to the Society and ended up in North America with very different experiences of life to recount.
The society had some membership turnover worries in the early years and May and Joy are just two examples. However, by the end of the first year there were about 30 members and, suffice to say, over the next 61 years the Society has always had enough members to remain viable.
| Taken on the first field trip to Corkhill's Dairy Farm 1945. Joy Nott & her Fiance. He was killed in a plane crash over Tokyo the following year. |
| Taken on the first field trip to Corkhill's Dairy
Farm late1945. May Steed hiding behind Willow. |
An early meeting at the radio 2CA theatrette. |
MAY STEED
Sixty-one years ago, Miss May Steed was living in Donaldson Street, opposite the original Ainslie Primary School, less than 2 kilometres from this place (CMAG). She probably walked down to the 2CA Theatrette in Mort Street for the inaugural meeting, and went home from the meeting as a newly elected Vice-President of C.P.S.
May was an active print maker before the Society began and was thus able to comply with the request made at the inaugural meeting that members should bring along prints to the first monthly meeting for discussion and, as the news bulletin put it, to break the ice.
May brought along three prints, two of which were bromoils which required elaborate processing beyond the production of the initial print, and which clearly placed May into the Advanced Photographer category.
By the next monthly meeting Advanced and Beginners Print Competitions had been established and May won the Advanced class. She was clearly a photographer to contend with.
With the competitions launched, everybody was looking forward to a good future for the Society; and so it has happened that, on the first Tuesday of each month for eleven months in each year for the next sixty-one years, bringing us up to the present time, there have been competitive print exhibitions at CPS. Think of how many prints must have been through that process.
May won again at the December 1945 competition against the
likes of Chris Christian who had just joined CPS, and other leading
print makers, and so before Christmas 1945 May had cemented her
position as the leading print maker in the Society.
The judge for the December competition was RAAF Sgt. Maxwell Ahern of the RAAF School of Photography. I mention his name as representative of all the judges and lecturers who have given their time and expertise to the Society over 61 years. Max contributed a lot to the Society by way of judging and lecturing in the formative years. Max went on in photography to eventually open a studio in East Row in the late 50s.
May's circumstances suddenly changed in early 1946 and it was announced in the bulletin, without further explanation, that she would be travelling to New York and would be away for 12 months. There was some consternation within the Society because, apart from being a leading print maker, May was in charge of producing the news bulletins, written by Keith Carnall, and her loss would be felt.
May was away for longer than expected and had not returned by the end of the news bulletin series in 1948. In the meantime May managed to retain her Vice-President's position and corresponded regularly with the Society; some of her letters being described as epics. Among other things, May joined the Camera Club of New York City, had a landscape published in The New York Sun, managed a trip to Cuba, became a convert to Kodachrome and sent back magazines and cine camera accessories hard to obtain in Australia.
Reflecting on all of this, the bulletin published a limerick about May let me read it to you.
We once had a member named May
Who went over to old U.S.A.
Instead of the pub, she joined up a Club
Met all the nice people, and then paid her sub.
She entered some pictures, had three of them hung
And then had a picture in The New York Sun.
Ambassadors go there, and some come this way
But none could do better than our little May.
As a postscript to May's story I can say that some detective work, beginning with a post card sent to May by the New York Camera Club together with help from Dr Maureen Dee of DFAT, has established that May went to New York as a member of the 1946 Australian Government Mission to the United Nations, headed up by Paul Hasluck.
May eventually returned to Canberra as Mrs Burton Wolcott, to visit her father and renew old acquaintances. She attended the June 1950 meeting of CPS where she was warmly welcomed and invited to judge a portrait competition and, significantly, the first ever colour slide competition to be conducted by the Society. She then showed some of her own, and some of her husband's excellent slides. At the end of the night, Society members wished May a pleasant voyage on her return to America and a very happy future.
While in Canberra, May collected prints from CPS members for an exhibition at the Camera Club of New York City, which was being arranged by her husband. May went on to live out her life with her husband in Alberta, Canada, occasionally visiting Canberra, and sending back photographs of snow and maple syrup harvesting.
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