Newsletter Editor: Ian Brown PH 0403 036 119 E: ian@ianbrowndesign.com.au
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From your Secretary
Elaine Herbert ARPS
Hon Secretary, Australian Chapter
RPS International Members’ Representative, Claudine Hart LRPS
We are delighted to extend a warm welcome to Claudine Hart LRPS who has been appointed as the RPS International Members’ Representative, after a closely contested ballot in which we were all invited to vote. Claudine will be representing all international members of the Society on the RPS Members’ Committee (‘MemCom’) and the RPS Representatives’ Committee (‘RepCom’). She’ll also be advocating for us across the RPS, strengthening our collective impact and furthering support for all international members wherever they live around the world.
Claudine lives in Switzerland and has extensive international experience. She tells us a little about herself – and her photographic interests – in the February issue of the RPS International Newsletter which was emailed to us on 20 February. She is very keen to hear from any of us, so please contact her on if there are matters you’d like to raise with her.
News of Members
• Congratulations to two of our members, Gigi Williams FRPS ASIS and Robin Williams FRPS ASIS on their successes in the International Garden Photographer of the Year 18. You can see their amazing work, starting on page 8. It is great to learn that they’ve again been successful in this prestigious competition, following on from their awards in previous years. The exhibition is on display at the Kew Gardens in London until 16 March. So if you’re escaping the heat of an Australian summer and are heading to the UK, do include a visit to Kew Gardens.
• Did you take any photographs on Christmas Day? We congratulate three of our members who did – Michel Claverie, Palli Gajree Hon FRPS and Ted Richards ARPS. They responded to a challenge for the RPS International Newsletter, and the February issue (which we’ve all received by email) displayed the results. And what a range of images were submitted by international members! December 25 is a big day for many of us, but in some countries it’s just another day. You can see the images in the February issue
• Michel Claverie, one of our SA members, is reaching out to members in Australian time zones offering to set up an eCircle in which members meet online monthly to share and discuss their images. As well as including Australian and NZ members, this time zone extends through parts of SE Asia, Japan - and even way north to Eastern Siberia! Michel can be contacted via DICircles@rps.org and it’s a great idea. Michel – do keep us posted on the responses you get.
• Congratulations also to two of our Australian members whose images were in the thirty selected for inclusion in the RPS Digital Imaging Group’s 2025 Print Portfolio: Rob Morgan ARPS of Melbourne for his image ‘Smart Move’ and Barbara Brown of Perth WA for ‘Corroboree’. See page 6.
The RPS International Newsletter, February 2025
This quarterly Newsletter was initiated last year and is proving an excellent means of reaching out to the international members of RPS, bringing news of RPS events and activities, and demonstrating the wide range of expertise and varied image making amongst us. The latest (February 2025) issue includes:
• A welcome and introduction to Claudine Hart LRPS, our new International Members’ Representative
• The images from the 25 December Photo Challenge
• Michel Claverie’s suggestion of establishing an eCircle for RPS members in our time zones
• Interviews, projects and images by international members
• A consolidated list of forthcoming online events and activities
• A summary of what each of the RPS Special Interest Groups offer.
• And more!!
We congratulate the international team of volunteers for the production of this excellent newsletter and thank them for all they are doing to support us.
Welcome from the Editor
Ian Brown Editor, Australian Chapter
Well, I survived the first one, and with not too many smelling errors.
Hopefully everyone is happy with the new format, and broadcasting it through Issuu. Doing it this way allows us create the design as a traditional page turning magazine.
On the back cover of this issue, we are advertising some of the online courses the RPS are running in March. These courses are advertised on the RPS website, we thought we would highlight some of the courses if you don’t have time to check them out on the website. You can click the links to sign up.
We have also put a link to the bursary that international members can apply for.
We are currently working on how to create a back catalogue of our newsletters for anyone who wishes to access back issues.
If you want to download the Issuu version as a PDF you can click on the download button along the bottom edge. See below. The only downside at the moment is the PDF you download is single pages.
Convenor’s Corner
Rob Morgan ARPS
So, tell me what you want, what you really, really want…
Your committee held its first meeting for the year on 17th February.
One question that involved much discussion at the meeting was how to understand what local Chapter members are looking to gain from membership of the RPS. What is it you are looking for?
With the aim of trying find some answers, committee members will be phoning RPS Australian Chapter members in the near future. So this is a heads-up before you get the phone call from one of us – what is it that we as a Chapter can do to increase the value of your membership of the RPS?
We have reluctantly acknowledged that, until we have some understanding of this, there is little point having a program of Zoom presentations by Chapter members or other people. These presentations involve considerable preparation time and effort, and yet these most entertaining and informative presentations are attended by only a handful of members. And while it is good to catch up with familiar faces and welcome the odd new face, this is only a minute fraction of our Chapter membership.
So have a think about what we as a Chapter can do to increase the value of your membership of the RPS. And if you prefer to contact us by email on this topic (or we don’t have your phone number), please email our Hon Sec, Elaine (see the Contents Page for details). Otherwise those of us on the committee each look forward to having a quick chat with a few of you and find out what you are looking for with your RPS membership.
Two of our Australian members were selected for inclusion in the RPS Digital Imaging Group’s 2025 Print Portfolio: Rob Morgan ARPS of Melbourne for his image ‘Smart Move’ and Barbara Brown of Perth WA for ‘Corroboree’.
Barbara Brown
My image is an aerial shot of a salt lake north west of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. It was taken from a plane at about 2,000ft. I called it "Corroboree" because it reminds me of Indigenous Australians singing and dancing at a gathering.
I am drawn towards abstract photography, and am particularly enamoured with aerial abstracts whether the subject is salt lakes, mudflats off Derby and Wyndham or the ethereal sandbars of Broome. I love them all.
I joined the RPS last year as I want to be more creative with my photography
and progress my multiple exposure and intentional camera movement prowess.
Rob Morgan
Following their AGM on 23rd February, the RPS Digital Imaging Group (DIG) announced which thirty images by DIG members had been successful in their annual DI Print Portfolio competition for 2025. As a fairly new member of DIG I was very pleasantly surprised to hear that my image ‘Smart Move’ has been one of those successful ones.
So here I am, a traffic engineer who has been on the national standards committee for road signs and pavement markings for decades, and I win a place in a photo competition with an image of some line marking! If there’s a message in this, perhaps it is that sometimes playing it safe and working to my strengths can be a winner.
The image is not actually on a road. I took it at Cairns Airport while our plane was sitting on the tarmac before departure. I noticed the well-placed pattern of lines out of the window and it was then a case of waiting for one of those baggage tractor drivers to do the right thing and drive ‘into’ the image and not go in the opposite direction.
More success for our members
We are delighted to report that Australian Chapter members Gigi and Robin Williams are amongst the recently announced winners and finalists of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition. This competition is one of the world’s most respected annual competitions and exhibitions. It is run in partnership with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the RPS; it attracts over 20,000 entries from photographers across the world. The competition name embraces the word ‘garden’ in its broadest sense with a wide range of subject categories such as: ‘The Beauty of Plants’, ‘Breathing Spaces’, ‘Plants and the Planet’, ‘Trees Woods and Forests’ and ‘Wildflower Landscapes.’ Gigi and Robin, both FRPS, have had remarkable success in this competition – with 32 images awarded over the last four years, including Gigi winning the Plants and the Planet Category and Robin winning the Beauty of Plants Category and also the overall winning entry in Competition 14.
‘Spirit Fading’, 2nd Place, Plants and the Planet Gigi Williams ASIS FRPS Spirit Island, Alberta, is a sacred place for the Stoney Nakoda First Nation people, who consider mountains the physical representations of ancestors. It is said that when the ancestral Gods needed to meet, they did so on this
island. How tragic it is to see that half of the majestic trees on the island are dead or dying, having been invaded by the mountain pine beetle. The island is situated on Maligne Lake, in the Jasper National Park, part of the UNESCO Canadian Rocky Mountain World Heritage Site.
‘Rain on the Rock’, 3rd Place, Plants and the Planet Gigi Williams ASIS FRPS Uluru (Ayers Rock), in the red centre of Australia, has traditionally been baked dry in soaring temperatures but recently climate change has caused rain to fall regularly on this Dreamtime place. ‘Dreamtime’ refers to the understanding of the world and its creation according to Australian Aboriginal culture.
‘Divine Lotus’, Commended, Beauty of Plants
Gigi Williams ASIS FRPS
This divine lotus flower was captured at the Blue Lotus Water Garden where there are thousands of lotus flowers. This one really caught my eye with the very subtle tones of green through lemon to cream.
Wild swathes of the noxious weed Echium plantagineum (Patterson’s curse) grow at the ancient site of Wilpena Pound; a remnant valley floor from an ancient range of mountains that have been eroding away over millions of years. This image is comprised of a focus stack of three images.
‘Ancient Oaks’, Commended, Trees Woods and Forests
Robin Williams ASIS FRPS
These ancient moss-covered oaks are gnarled and twisted – the result of having withstood Dartmoor’s fierce winds and snow for over three hundred years.
‘Red Centre’, Commended, Wildflower Landscapes
Robin Williams ASIS FRPS
These Swainsona formosa (Sturt’s Desert Pea) flower profusely after rainfall in the arid ‘red-desert’ of the Australian Outback.
‘Hallelujah Mountain’, Commended, Trees, Woods and Forests
Robin Williams ASIS FRPS
The trees that cling to these limestone Karst mountains are incredible. This particular mountain appears to float on the forest beneath and was the ‘model’ for ‘Hallelujah Mountain’ in the film Avatar. It was 40 degrees centigrade and 98% humidity on that day in the Zhangjiajie National Forest, China.
A year in observatories
Former RPS President Alan Hodgson HonFRPS documents the time he recently spent visiting selected observatories around the world.
One of my retirement projects is to write a book covering the history of some photographic emulsions used for scientific imaging. There are a number of key locations to be visited to support this and in 2024 Hilary and I set off to tick off some of these, in Europe as well as Australia. Here is a whistle stop tour of the locations we visited.
Jungfraujoch, Switzerland
Researching a history book entails spending a lot of time in libraries. Here I am explaining the book concepts to the custodians of the research station at the
Sphinx observatory on Jungfraujoch. It was an honour to be invited in as this is a library unlike any other I have ever visited. It is quite literally breath-taking as it is over 3,400m above sea level.
The image above, is the view from the roof of the library, taken from there because the library windows were caked in frost. From here you can look down on the Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps. Truly a library with a view!
Many observatories have telescope domes and the Jungfraujoch location has these too, seen here with the 4,000m Jungfrau in the background. Our next location was a bit different – not a telescope in sight.
We went directly from Jungfraujoch to Hafelekar and found it to be a very different location. First, it is (only) 2,300m above sea level and second it is predominantly a monument with no library. And finally, not a telescope in sight – this was a cosmic ray observatory.
Hafelekar has a very different geopolitical history to Jungfraujoch. It was most active in the 1930s but as some of the key workers had Jewish family history it came to a hard stop later in the decade. We have been following the trail of one Marietta Blau across Austria and there is more of this to do.
Even though this was European mid-summer, both observatories were above the snow line. It snowed on us in both locations but that was the last snow of the 2024 observatory tour.
Pic du Midi, France
We returned to Europe for a September visit to the Pic du Midi observatory, 2,900m up in the French Pyrenees. Above the clouds and (just) too warm for snow this was again a “traditional” observatory with telescope domes. We were made welcome by an academic and observatory staff who were intrigued by this research project.
Discussions here revealed that there was important connections with the photographic community in the nearby town of Pau, a popular winter resort town when photography started at Pic du Midi. Through this tour it was becoming evident that the movement of information and expertise across facilities and disciplines should be an important consideration in this history project. We started to explore this when we moved on to Australia.
Sydney observatory
Also in September we arrived in Sydney, spending some time at the small observatory site. The main object of attention here was the Melbourne Astrograph, initially moved here when the Melbourne observatory closed in 1944. It gained a new building in 1952 but in 1986 the astrograph, records and glass plates were moved to Macquarie University.
A modern custom built building near the site entrance of Sydney Observatory
was built in 2015, presumably to move the astrograph back. It is basically just a display case for the mechanism.
My interest for this project is to investigate how facilities such as the Sydney and Melbourne observatories acted as hubs for information exchange on photographic science. The next logical step had to be a visit to Melbourne Observatory.
Melbourne observatory
Now into October we had a wonderful visit to the Melbourne observatory, arranged by Elaine. The aim here was to see the reconstruction of the Great Melbourne Telescope but also to visit the original home of the Melbourne Astrograph, the aptly named Astrograph House.
The observatory was constructed in 1863 with Astrograph House following in 1877, when the observatory joined the international Carte de Ciel sky map project. The dome of Astrograph House can be seen in this image together with the main observatory building left and behind.
The interest for this project was once again movement of knowledge. How much moved to Australia with the commencement of involvement in Carte de Ciel? And when the Astrograph relocated to Sydney did knowledge move with it? Still questions to answer.
The site at Eden
One of the joys of research is when you find something unexpected. We knew of the observatories at Sydney and Melbourne but we stumbled on one more while searching out coffee in Eden.
This appeared to have been a temporary site, seemingly twinned with Sydney. But like with Pic du Midi how much would it have relied on local photographic knowledge and supply chains? With these unanswered questions I suspect you will see us back in Australia before long!
Australian photographer John Pollard FRPS died in 2018, leaving behind not just a grieving family and a substantial legacy of photographic work in public and private collections but also an eclectic collection of books representing his varied interests over his life. In this
ongoing column, I hope to stimulate interest and reflection on various aspects of photography based on the perusal of John’s collection of books. In the process I also aim to periodically shine a light on John’s career and his practice.
Main image: ‘Esztergom, Hungary’, 1915. ‘When the first World War started I joined the Army. Of course, I took along my camera and whenever there was a moment I took pictures of my comrades. This is the entrance to the wine cellar. I did not know the composition was unusual for that time.’
Top: Cover of the Book ‘Kertész on Kertész’ from the Great Masters of Photography Series published by The BBC in 1985.
Above: Portrait of Andre Kertész, by Susan May Tell, 1983.
Pondering Pollard 16: André Kertesz
Robin Williams ASIS FRPS
‘Kertész on Kertész’, Peter Adam
Pub. British Broadcasting Corporation, London, 1985.
John Pollard had two books in his collection from the BBC Masters of Photography series; last month, we looked at the work of Eisenstaedt, and this month, we looked at the Hungarian photographer André Kertész. As with Eisenstaedt, this is a book built on the on-screen interview done with the artist, and interested readers can see the original broadcast, albeit in poor resolution, on YouTube
André Kertész is widely regarded as one of Europe’s leading photographic artists, particularly for his contribution to photographic composition and the photoessay. He combined a photojournalistic interest in movement and gesture with a formalist concern for abstract shapes; hence, his work has historic significance in many areas of post-war photography. The ‘purist’ phase of Kertész’s work, identified with his time in Paris and pieces such as Fork and Mondrian’s Glasses and Pipe (1926), helped to build Kertész’s reputation as a photographer. Joie de vivre fills the camera art of André Kertész, a poet of tender feeling for humanity, a master of abstract form and now recognised as one
of the world’s great photographers. In this book, Kertész comments on his classic photos and also selects little-known images. A combination of revealing, often charming, text and duotone reproductions form a unique self-portrait of the man and artist: of his years in his native Hungary, in Paris in the 1920s and 30s, and in New York from 1936 to his death in 1985. Poignant and gently mysterious, always arresting, these photographs of Manhattan scenes and people of yesterday's irretrievably romantic Paris and Budapest, of sinuous nudes and celebrated artists, mark his genius.
‘We all owe something to Kertész’ said Cartier-Bresson – he called him his ‘poetic wellspring.’ Brassai said Andre Kertész had two qualities that were essential for a great photographer: ‘an insatiable curiosity about the world, about people, and about life, and a precise sense of form.’
The poem written by the Surrealist poet Paul Derée for the opening of Kertész’s first exhibition in Paris in 1927 rings as true today as it did then:
‘Kertész’
Eyes of a child whose every look is the first,
Who sees the emperor naked when he is clothed in lies,
Who is afraid of the canvas-draped ghosts haunting the quais of the Seine,
Who marvels at the new pictures by three chairs in the sun at the Luxembourg
Or Mondrian’s door opening onto a staircase, Or a pair of spectacles thrown on the table beside a pipe.
No setting up or tidying, no gimmickry or fakery, Your technique is as genuine and incorruptible as your vision
In our home for blind monks and beggars Kertész is a seeing brother.
Fig.4 ‘Hungary,’ 1918. ’My work is inspired by my life. I never had to go far for subjects – they were always on my doorstep; but I can’t analyse it. People ask me how I did it; I don’t know – the event dictated it.’
Fig.5 ‘Café du Dome, Paris,’ 1925. ‘The Café du Dome on the Montparnasse was the meeting place for all, and when I was not going around photographing I went there and it became my living quarters. I only went home to sleep.’
Fig.6 ‘Front Cover VU magazine,’ 1928. ‘The journal Vu had asked me to do a cover of an actress in a sports car. A member of the art department asked me if he could try to do the same picture. He put his camera right next to mine. I started to talk to the girl slowly, slowly, and then she had made a little movement – click– I wanted this. Ishak clicked too. Later he said “André mine is so very different to yours – how come?” I knew the little expression had changed in the two seconds between the two photographs. Two seconds are 1000 years in photography.’
André Kertész was born in Budapest in 1894 to a middle-class Jewish family and studied at the Academy of Commerce until he bought his first camera in 1912. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, and in 1925 had one of his photographs published on the cover of Erdekes Ujsay. ‘I had to make a living, and I worked as a clerk in the Stock Exchange in Budapest. But my heart was in photography and I had only one desire, to go to Paris, because for my generation, Paris was the centre of the art world.’ That same year he moved to Paris where he did freelance work for many European publications, including Vu, Le Matin, Frankfurter Illustrierte, Die Photographie, La Nazione Firenze, and The Times of London. He bought his first 35mm camera, a Leica, in 1928 (just three years after its release), and his innovative work with it on the streets of Paris was extremely influential. ‘Paris became my home, and in my heart, it still is. Paris accepted me as an artist just as it accepted any artist, painter, or sculptor. I was understood there.’ He spent, he said, ‘the eleven happiest and most fruitful years of my life there.’ Very quickly, Kertész became a friend of many creative people who recognised in him a fellow artist: Léger, Chagall, Colette, Eisenstein, Vlaminck, Mondrian, Giacometti, Lipschitz, Calder and Zadkine were amongst his closest friends. He became associated with members of the growing Dada movement, and in 1927 he exhibited 42 photographs at the left-bank gallery, Au Sacre du Printemps. In Paris he found both critical and commercial success, but political tensions and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany with its persecution of Jews led Kertész to leave Europe and head for New York. In 1936, Kertész accepted an invitation to join the American agency Keystone in New York and Kertész and his wife Elizabeth emigrated to the United States, and he began freelancing for Collier's, Harper's Bazaar, and House & Garden, among many other mass-circulation magazines. For Kertész, however, it was the beginning of many years of unhappiness. The war prevented Kertész and his Hungarian wife from returning to Paris. When André Kertész and his wife moved into an apartment on New York’s Washington Square in 1952, it was the
catalyst for a new body of work that would dominate the rest of the photographer’s life. Situated on the twelfth floor, the apartment afforded splendid views over the square and gave Kertész a permanent position from which to photograph from a high vantage point – a passion from his earliest days in Paris and a key Modernist trope practised by others, including Alexander Rodchenko.
Whilst making a living as a freelance photographer for American glossy magazines, he tried again and again to get the sort of pictures published that had been celebrated in Europe, but his photographs were often met with indifference. In 1949, Kertész joined Condé Nast, but he refused the compromises of commercial work. ‘Of course, a picture can lie, but only if you yourself are not honest or if you don't have enough control over your subject. Then it is the camera working, not you. Everything I do, I do for myself. Even when I do a commission for a magazine, I first of all do it for myself. Here in America, I was desperate because there was always an editor behind you telling you what to do, and in the end, the picture was lost – it wasn’t yours any longer.’
His ‘real’ work went largely unrecognised. Steichen’s mammoth photographic exhibition of 1956, ‘The Family of Man’ (which included the work of 273 contemporary photographers), showed none of Kertész’s work, and Helmut Gernsheim’s magnum opus on creative photography, published in 1961, made no mention of Kertész. Eventually, in 1964, the Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Kertész a one-man show –Kertész was seventy years old by this time! The man who seemed so long ‘not to fit’ was suddenly accepted and celebrated. In 1965, he was made an Honorary Member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers. The nomination read ‘to Andre Kertész for whom all photojournalists are indebted for his work as one of photography's great pioneers; who for more than 50 years observed and captured in sober and tender images the unfolding of everyday life.’ Among his many honours and awards were a Guggenheim Fellowship and admission to the French Legion of Honor. The French Government’s gift of an apartment for the rest of his life seems to have given him
more joy than any honours bestowed by his adopted country. Underneath the warm and polite exterior, the wound that would not heal lay only skin deep for Kertész. Reclusive by nature, he became an increasingly isolated figure in his apartment as he grew old. He was dogged with constant regret and disappointment that he had never gained recognition in national institutions. Bitterness welled up frequently during his time with Peter Adam in a swirling tirade of reproaches. But underneath the modesty of the man lay the self-assurance of the artist who always knew, despite the World’s one-time indifference, the merit of the work. ‘My work is inspired by my life. I express myself through my photographs. Everything that surrounds me provokes my feelings. I have kept the memory alive in my photographs. I am a sentimentalist, born that way, happy that way. Maybe out of place in today's reality. I am always saying that my best photographs are those I never took.’
Top left: ‘Broken plate, Paris’, 1929. ‘In this picture of Montmartre, I was just testing a new lens for a special effect. When I went to America, I left most of my materials in Paris, and when I returned I found 60% of the glass plates were broken This one I saved because it had a hole in it. I printed it anyway – an accident helped me to produce a beautiful effect.’
Bottom left:‘Distortion #49’, 1933. ‘In Paris they wanted to do a book of my distorted nudes to be published in France and Germany. When Hitler came to power this was no longer possible. When I came to New York the publishers said to me in the United States “this is pornography and we will go together to prison if we publish it”. My sort of photography was just not understood.’
Top right: ‘Washington Square, New York City’, 1954. ‘My wife and I found the apartment, which I still live in. I take many pictures from the balcony which overlooks the park. If you are too high everything is flat but here on the twelfth floor the perspective is just right.’
Bottom right: ‘Landing Pigeon, New York,’ 1960. ‘“The landing pigeon” was taken around 59th Street where they had demolished the houses and I saw a pigeon flying in and out. The original idea for this photograph dates back to my days in Paris, where I also saw some old run-down houses and wanted to photograph them with a pigeon. But the pigeon never came. Here in New York I sat and waited. Time and time again I went back to the same place, but it was never right. Then one day I saw this lonely pigeon. I took maybe two or three pictures. The moment was eventually there – I had waited over thirty years for that instance. In the last five years I have managed to do what I have wanted and now there are many portfolios and exhibitions.’
RPS Bursaries
In partnership with The Guardian
The Bursary was established in 2005 in memory of distinguished documentary photographer and Honorary Fellow of The Society, Joan Wakelin. The Bursary is administered by The Society in partnership with The Guardian and offers £2000 for the production of a photographic essay on a social documentary issue.
The 2025 bursary is now open for applications
Joan Wakelin Bursary
Find out more >
Online workshops
Macro Photography with Nigel Wilson
11 Mar, 10:00 – 16:00, Online
Non-Member £98 / RPS Member £73
Join Nigel Wilson for an engaging and informative workshop on macro photography. This workshop is designed for photographers who want to learn how to make technically superb and arresting macro images. Limited to 10 places, no prior knowledge is required. This session will provide detailed guidance on camera set-up, lighting recommendations, and focus stacking with practical shooting session later in the day.
Book here
Compelling Street Photography Projects with Simon Ellingworth
19 Mar - 23 Apr, 10:00 – 16:30, Online, Non-Member £98 / RPS Member £73
This theory based workshop split into 6 weekly sessions is a foundation to equip you with understanding, knowledge and practical skills to be able to shoot compelling street photographs of your own. Each week you will be introduced to concepts, techniques and compositional influencers to help develop your own vision.
