A vintage photograph of an Indigenous Australian man producing rock art near Mount Conner in 1940
A large-format sepia-toned gelatin silver print (245 × 300 mm), unmounted as developed; a few printer's annotations on the verso; in fine condition.
A detailed description of a close variant of this photograph is to be found in Mountford's magnum opus, 'Nomads of the Australian Desert' (1976). In his account of his 1940 Central Australian expedition with Lauri Sheard (see pages 76-77), he writes that 'when travelling with the desert nomads along the Mann and Musgrave ranges, we saw many examples of rock poundings made by our companions. [Plates 19 and 20 illustrate] ... designs which one of our Aboriginal companions pounded on some flat rocks near Mount Conner [in the Northern Territory] ... The ovals symbolise the breasts of young girls, and the concentric circle and the other with the attached appendage, symbolise women's breasts which have become pendant during child bearing'. The photograph for sale was taken a short time earlier than that shown in Plate 19, when there were fewer markings on the rock. We have found a small reproduction of the photograph in Berndt and Phillips' 'The Australian Aboriginal Heritage' (1973): see plate 87, captioned 'An Aboriginal pounding the surface of the rtock with an upper grinding-stone to produce the lighter-coloured marks of a design, Musgrave Ranges, Northern South Australia, 1940'. Mountford did not have selling exhibitions of his works, and his extensive archive is in the State Library of South Australia. The Mountford material that we have handled or know about in private collections was given by him to the original recipients, and is often still in private hands. Accordingly, original Mountford photographs, especially vintage prints of this calibre, rarely appear on the open market. Provenance: Ainslie Roberts AM (1911-1993, surrealist painter, photographer, and book illustrator, who collaborated with Mountford on numerous books of Indigenous Australian myths and legends. A small inkstamp with his name and address appears on the verso.
Item #144227
Price (AUD):
$7,500.00