• Title
  Item 122g: Henry Lawson, 1915 / photographer William Johnson
• Creator
  William Johnson, active 1897-1921
• Call number
  PXA 1559/Item 122g
  
• Level of description
  item
• Date
  
  1915
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Photographs
• Reference code
  442278
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  1 photographic print - gelatin silver - image 11.2 x 15.8 cm, on card 23 x 25 cm
  
• Scope and Content
  Eight half-length separate portrait of Henry Lawson sitting on a chair.
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright:
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• General note
  
  Transferred from P1/Lawson, Henry (BM), March 2010
  
  By using a `multiplying camera', with a repeating back (which moved the glass plate negative between exposures), William Johnson was able to make eight separate portraits on a single half-plate negative. Normally, these would be cut into inexpensive prints, but he has retained them all, so that we have a range of Lawson expressions, from serious to smiling. The multiple image repeating back was essentially a means of making a cheap portrait, although its almost cinematographic quality was appealing in the early twentieth century. The three-minute automatic photographic booth reached Sydney in 1899 and gave rise to even more uninhibited facial expressions. -- Notes by the Curator of Photographs, Mitchell Library, 2003
  
  Photograph from the Angus & Robertson collection - pictorial material (Guide available at PXD 359, Mitchell Library).
  Digital order no:Album ID : 981176
• Date note
  
  Previously dated ca. 1905, this series of photographs was taken in 1915, when James Tyrrell took Lawson around the corner to the Johnson studio.
  
  Reference:
  Old books, old friends, old Sydney / by James R. Tyrrell. Sydney [N.S.W.] : Angus and Robertson, 1952
• Subject
  Lawson, Henry, 1867-1922--Portraits
  
• Topic
  authors
  
• Exhibited in
  
  Faces of Australia: image, reality and the portrait. - State Library of New South Wales (25 May - 12 October, 1992)
  Eye 4 photography - State Library of New South Wales (January, 2005 - May, 2005)
  Australian Portraits Timeline - National Portrait Gallery (Australia) (December, 2008 - December, 2011)

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