Internationally recognised as anthropologist, author and photographer, Charles Mountford is perhaps less well-known as farm labourer, itinerant stereoscope salesman and tram conductor in the decade after leaving school when he was 11 years old. For more than thirty years of his adult life, he was an electrical mechanic with the Postmaster-General's Department, and it was on (often unpaid) leave of absence from this job that he undertook much of the work on which his fame rests. That he was self-taught in each of the three fields at which he excelled is noteworthy - that he so successfully integrated them in his many publications over more than fifty years is indeed remarkable.

His interest in photography came first; it dates from his early teenage years. His application brought with it some success as an amateur; while on transfer to Darwin in the early 1920s, he was awarded seven first prizes in the Darwin Photographic Exhibition in 1923. He was an active member of the Adelaide Camera Club (and its president in 1927 and 1932) and two of his works from that period entered the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Missed opportunities at work and the death of his first wife in 1925 unsettled him and inspired him to seek a fresh interest in life. Shortly afterwards, while on holiday with his parents near Peterborough, he and his father discovered some early Aboriginal rock markings. He showed his photographs to Norman Tindale at the South Australian Museum, whose interest resulted in the joint publication of a short paper - Mountford's first - in 1926. His anthropological career was launched.

In 1935 he participated in an expedition to the Warburton Range as a still photographer [item 1]. His biographer records that 'Even when his official function has been as ethnologist or specialist in Aboriginal art, he has taken a still camera on every expedition since, finding that static shots gave him valuable records, while occasions for recording the Aborigines and their way of life in calculated composed shots gave him aesthetic satisfaction'. He was eventually a member of 20 expeditions and a leader of 14 of them.

'The four-month expedition in 1940 with Lauri Sheard and the cameleer Tommy Dodd [to the Western Desert areas] resulted in a detailed survey of the art and mythology of Ayers Rock and the Olgas. Mountford's exhibitions of photographs, his book, Brown Men and Red Sand … and his prize-winning film of the same name became springboards for his later career' (Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15). [Items 2 to 9].

As a photographer he won many awards, including the Sherlock Gold Cup for the best amateur cine film in 1941 (and the silver cup two years later), and the Kodak medal for documentary photography in 1951.

He undertook two lengthy lecture tours of the US (from December 1944 to June 1945, and from September 1945 to May 1946), where his award-winning films achieved popular and critical acclaim. The contacts he made there resulted in the 1948 expedition to Arnhem Land [items 10 and 11] and the 1954 expedition to Melville Island [items 12 and 13]. In 1960, he carried out research into totemic routes in the north-west of Central Australia [item 14].

Significantly, six - and possibly eight - of the ten Central Australian photographs in this current offering of fourteen appeared in the 1966 Adelaide Festival of Arts exhibition of Mountford photographs, The Desert Aborigines of Australia (DAA). As well, all but two of these fourteen have been published (most of them more than once, some at least five times). The Mountford photographic archive in the State Library of South Australia contains 'well over 20,000 negatives, mostly of … aboriginal life'; only 47, all of Central Australian interest, featured in the 1966 exhibition. The frequent recurrence of the same relatively few images strongly suggests that apart from their undeniable quality per se, they were perhaps among the personal favourites of the photographer. Having said that, examples of these - indeed, of any of his - photographs rarely appear on the market.

Mountford's published works include Brown Men and Red Sand (BMRS: 1948); Australian Aboriginal Portraits (AAP: 1967); The Aborigines and their Country (ATC: Rigby, 1969); Nomads of the Australian Desert (NAD: Rigby, 1976) and Aboriginal Conception Beliefs (ACB: 1981). Monty, the Biography of C.P. Mountford (Rigby, 1972) was written by Max Lamshed. Copies of these books, and many other books and journal articles written and illustrated by Mountford, are offered for sale on the companion booklist.